Make e2e tests mandatory for PR merging

Increasing Access

Unsure

Feature enhancement details

Context:

This issue is a followup from GSOC:

• @Geethegreat has create an e2e test suite for his GSOC 2026 project
• We purposely made it so that e2e tests were not required for merging PR's so that the GSOC project did not unnecessarily block other work on the repo
• We also purposely made it so that e2e tests were gated by approval from @Geethegreat, @clairep94, @khanniie, or @raclim during the GSOC period, so that we did not accidentally overspend on GHA hours

• Now that GSOC is complete, we should update so that the e2e test suite is mandatory for merging into develop
• Ideally we should update to:
  • Remove the approval gating
  • Have e2e tests trigger automatically after successful unit tests
  • Add some concurrency rules to ensure this doesn't result in a lot of GHA hours useage
    • Cancel any in-progress runs if a later run is triggered
    • Maybe debounce triggers if this is possible
  • Ideally update to minimize the required amount of time for e2e tests to run:
    • Make app startup in CI faster if possible
    • Caching any installations (some work previously done here already)

--> Will self-assign this issue

Requirements:

• Access to repo settings > environments & branch protection