The scan-gate / dep-bounds-gate jobs use needs.changes; if the changes
job itself fails, its dependents would be skipped via a failed dependency
(not a conditional skip), leaving the required check unreported — the same
"pending forever" failure this PR fixes. Add always() and switch the gate
condition from == 'false' to != 'true' so the gate still fires (and reports
SUCCESS) when changes fails and its output is empty.
5cd0673217