diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 33db8031..957dab98 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -5,6 +5,46 @@ All notable changes to taskito are documented here. The format is based on
 [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html). All SDKs (Python, Node, Java) and the
 underlying Rust crates are released together, in lock-step.
 
+## 0.20.0
+
+Scaling release: the queue survives higher task ingest/dispatch and pub/sub fan-out rates, and
+schema management moves to code-first migrations. Worker dispatch now respects each pool's
+execution capacity, so a worker no longer claims more than it can run and starve its peers.
+
+### Added
+
+- **Code-first migrations.** All schema DDL is built programmatically with `sea-query` (no raw
+  SQL) and applied by a versioned migrator with path-based auto-discovery — dropping a
+  `migrations/mXXXX_*.rs` file registers it automatically. Migration recording is atomic and
+  idempotent, so concurrent startups and interruptions are safe. New scaling indexes ship as
+  part of the baseline.
+- **Batching.** Keyed pub/sub fan-out is committed in a single transaction, Redis subscription
+  reads are pipelined to constant round trips, execution claims are taken per batch, and
+  successful results are finalized together — cutting round trips under load across all SDKs.
+- **Bounded in-flight dispatch.** A scheduler now caps how many jobs it keeps in flight at the
+  worker pool's execution parallelism, freeing a slot (and refilling immediately) as each job
+  finishes.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **Drain-until-empty polling.** Each poll wake dispatches all ready work instead of one job per
+  tick, removing the throughput ceiling imposed by the poll interval.
+- **Jittered backoff.** Retry backoff uses full jitter, and the poller's gate-reschedule delays
+  are jittered, to avoid retry stampedes.
+- Topic fan-out releases the GIL during publish/reap/backlog work (Python).
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **Worker fairness.** Under drain-until-empty, one worker could claim a whole backlog and
+  strand it `Running` on itself while peers sharing the database sat idle; in-flight dispatch is
+  now bounded to the pool size.
+- **Workflow step double-execution.** A step now honors the task's `max_retries`, and the
+  tracker reacts only to a node's terminal job failure — closing an exactly-once violation under
+  load.
+- Jobs stranded by a transient claim error return to `Pending` immediately rather than waiting
+  out the stale-job reaper.
+- Postgres batch claims run in one transaction (no partially-committed claims on error).
+
 ## 0.19.0
 
 Parity release: the Java SDK reaches feature parity with the other SDKs (and its baseline moves
diff --git a/Cargo.lock b/Cargo.lock
index c8b39747..fb88a519 100644
--- a/Cargo.lock
+++ b/Cargo.lock
@@ -1487,7 +1487,7 @@ checksum = "adb6935a6f5c20170eeceb1a3835a49e12e19d792f6dd344ccc76a985ca5a6ca"
 
 [[package]]
 name = "taskito-core"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 dependencies = [
  "async-trait",
  "chrono",
@@ -1512,7 +1512,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "taskito-java"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 dependencies = [
  "async-trait",
  "crossbeam-channel",
@@ -1531,7 +1531,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "taskito-mesh"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 dependencies = [
  "base64",
  "bincode",
@@ -1546,7 +1546,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "taskito-node"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 dependencies = [
  "async-trait",
  "crossbeam-channel",
@@ -1565,7 +1565,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "taskito-python"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 dependencies = [
  "async-trait",
  "base64",
@@ -1585,7 +1585,7 @@ dependencies = [
 
 [[package]]
 name = "taskito-workflows"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 dependencies = [
  "dagron-core",
  "diesel",
diff --git a/crates/taskito-core/Cargo.toml b/crates/taskito-core/Cargo.toml
index b98d9433..9b277e24 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-core/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/taskito-core/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "taskito-core"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 edition = "2021"
 
 [features]
diff --git a/crates/taskito-core/src/scheduler/mod.rs b/crates/taskito-core/src/scheduler/mod.rs
index 7c0ec414..5df34012 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-core/src/scheduler/mod.rs
+++ b/crates/taskito-core/src/scheduler/mod.rs
@@ -274,15 +274,18 @@ impl Scheduler {
     /// refill. Only ids this scheduler dispatched are tracked, so results for
     /// recovered or foreign jobs (e.g. from maintenance) are a harmless no-op.
     fn release_in_flight(&self, job_id: &str) {
-        if self.config.max_in_flight.is_none() {
+        let Some(max) = self.config.max_in_flight else {
             return;
-        }
-        let freed = self
-            .in_flight
-            .lock()
-            .unwrap_or_else(|p| p.into_inner())
-            .remove(job_id);
-        if freed {
+        };
+        let mut in_flight = self.in_flight.lock().unwrap_or_else(|p| p.into_inner());
+        // Only wake the poller when the pool was saturated — that's the only time
+        // it's parked on the cap. Below the cap it's already dispatching on its
+        // normal cadence, so an extra wake per completion just adds needless
+        // dequeue contention with everything else touching the database.
+        let was_full = in_flight.len() >= max;
+        let freed = in_flight.remove(job_id);
+        drop(in_flight);
+        if freed && was_full {
             self.dispatch_wake.notify_one();
         }
     }
diff --git a/crates/taskito-java/Cargo.toml b/crates/taskito-java/Cargo.toml
index 2063abba..53135ffd 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-java/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/taskito-java/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "taskito-java"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 edition = "2021"
 description = "Java (JNI) bindings for the Taskito task-queue core"
 license = "MIT"
diff --git a/crates/taskito-mesh/Cargo.toml b/crates/taskito-mesh/Cargo.toml
index 469e63a2..08b76bb0 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-mesh/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/taskito-mesh/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "taskito-mesh"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 edition = "2021"
 
 [dependencies]
diff --git a/crates/taskito-node/Cargo.toml b/crates/taskito-node/Cargo.toml
index bae54810..ba4817ce 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-node/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/taskito-node/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "taskito-node"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 edition = "2021"
 description = "Node.js (napi-rs) bindings for the Taskito task-queue core"
 license = "MIT"
diff --git a/crates/taskito-python/Cargo.toml b/crates/taskito-python/Cargo.toml
index 03983c64..b9ec638d 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-python/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/taskito-python/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "taskito-python"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 edition = "2021"
 
 [features]
diff --git a/crates/taskito-workflows/Cargo.toml b/crates/taskito-workflows/Cargo.toml
index 7a72eada..bddd958a 100644
--- a/crates/taskito-workflows/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/taskito-workflows/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "taskito-workflows"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 edition = "2021"
 
 [features]
diff --git a/docs/app/lib/version.ts b/docs/app/lib/version.ts
index ad411799..4ae7b3e5 100644
--- a/docs/app/lib/version.ts
+++ b/docs/app/lib/version.ts
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
 // AUTO-GENERATED from /CHANGELOG.md by scripts/sync-changelog.mjs — do not edit directly.
-export const VERSION = "0.19.0";
+export const VERSION = "0.20.0";
diff --git a/docs/content/docs/resources/changelog.mdx b/docs/content/docs/resources/changelog.mdx
index 54ebe274..d69a0414 100644
--- a/docs/content/docs/resources/changelog.mdx
+++ b/docs/content/docs/resources/changelog.mdx
@@ -12,6 +12,46 @@ All notable changes to taskito are documented here. The format is based on
 [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html). All SDKs (Python, Node, Java) and the
 underlying Rust crates are released together, in lock-step.
 
+## 0.20.0
+
+Scaling release: the queue survives higher task ingest/dispatch and pub/sub fan-out rates, and
+schema management moves to code-first migrations. Worker dispatch now respects each pool's
+execution capacity, so a worker no longer claims more than it can run and starve its peers.
+
+### Added
+
+- **Code-first migrations.** All schema DDL is built programmatically with `sea-query` (no raw
+  SQL) and applied by a versioned migrator with path-based auto-discovery — dropping a
+  `migrations/mXXXX_*.rs` file registers it automatically. Migration recording is atomic and
+  idempotent, so concurrent startups and interruptions are safe. New scaling indexes ship as
+  part of the baseline.
+- **Batching.** Keyed pub/sub fan-out is committed in a single transaction, Redis subscription
+  reads are pipelined to constant round trips, execution claims are taken per batch, and
+  successful results are finalized together — cutting round trips under load across all SDKs.
+- **Bounded in-flight dispatch.** A scheduler now caps how many jobs it keeps in flight at the
+  worker pool's execution parallelism, freeing a slot (and refilling immediately) as each job
+  finishes.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **Drain-until-empty polling.** Each poll wake dispatches all ready work instead of one job per
+  tick, removing the throughput ceiling imposed by the poll interval.
+- **Jittered backoff.** Retry backoff uses full jitter, and the poller's gate-reschedule delays
+  are jittered, to avoid retry stampedes.
+- Topic fan-out releases the GIL during publish/reap/backlog work (Python).
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **Worker fairness.** Under drain-until-empty, one worker could claim a whole backlog and
+  strand it `Running` on itself while peers sharing the database sat idle; in-flight dispatch is
+  now bounded to the pool size.
+- **Workflow step double-execution.** A step now honors the task's `max_retries`, and the
+  tracker reacts only to a node's terminal job failure — closing an exactly-once violation under
+  load.
+- Jobs stranded by a transient claim error return to `Pending` immediately rather than waiting
+  out the stale-job reaper.
+- Postgres batch claims run in one transaction (no partially-committed claims on error).
+
 ## 0.19.0
 
 Parity release: the Java SDK reaches feature parity with the other SDKs (and its baseline moves
diff --git a/sdks/java/build.gradle.kts b/sdks/java/build.gradle.kts
index eab11896..3832d48a 100644
--- a/sdks/java/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/sdks/java/build.gradle.kts
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ plugins {
 }
 
 group = "org.byteveda"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 
 java {
     // Sources + javadoc jars are added by the maven-publish plugin below.
diff --git a/sdks/java/graalvm-smoke/build.gradle.kts b/sdks/java/graalvm-smoke/build.gradle.kts
index e0f613c7..957221ec 100644
--- a/sdks/java/graalvm-smoke/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/sdks/java/graalvm-smoke/build.gradle.kts
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ plugins {
 }
 
 group = "org.byteveda"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 
 repositories {
     mavenCentral()
diff --git a/sdks/java/processor/build.gradle.kts b/sdks/java/processor/build.gradle.kts
index e21b2cb7..f3b997ec 100644
--- a/sdks/java/processor/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/sdks/java/processor/build.gradle.kts
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ plugins {
 }
 
 group = "org.byteveda"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 
 mavenPublishing {
     publishToMavenCentral()
diff --git a/sdks/java/spring/build.gradle.kts b/sdks/java/spring/build.gradle.kts
index ae028ba0..e5b42e60 100644
--- a/sdks/java/spring/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/sdks/java/spring/build.gradle.kts
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ plugins {
 
 group = "org.byteveda"
 
-version = "0.18.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 
 mavenPublishing {
     publishToMavenCentral()
diff --git a/sdks/java/test-support/build.gradle.kts b/sdks/java/test-support/build.gradle.kts
index 5de72fa8..2b888d48 100644
--- a/sdks/java/test-support/build.gradle.kts
+++ b/sdks/java/test-support/build.gradle.kts
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ plugins {
 }
 
 group = "org.byteveda"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 
 mavenPublishing {
     publishToMavenCentral()
diff --git a/sdks/node/package.json b/sdks/node/package.json
index 71b8dc00..1676053c 100644
--- a/sdks/node/package.json
+++ b/sdks/node/package.json
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "@byteveda/taskito",
-  "version": "0.19.0",
+  "version": "0.20.0",
   "description": "Rust-powered task queue for Node.js — no broker required.",
   "license": "MIT",
   "type": "module",
diff --git a/sdks/python/pyproject.toml b/sdks/python/pyproject.toml
index 6929d106..382f3818 100644
--- a/sdks/python/pyproject.toml
+++ b/sdks/python/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "maturin"
 
 [project]
 name = "taskito"
-version = "0.19.0"
+version = "0.20.0"
 description = "Rust-powered task queue for Python. No broker required."
 requires-python = ">=3.10"
 license = { file = "LICENSE" }
diff --git a/sdks/python/taskito/__init__.py b/sdks/python/taskito/__init__.py
index 614f05ff..3f1c26ca 100644
--- a/sdks/python/taskito/__init__.py
+++ b/sdks/python/taskito/__init__.py
@@ -138,4 +138,4 @@
 
     __version__ = _get_version("taskito")
 except PackageNotFoundError:
-    __version__ = "0.19.0"
+    __version__ = "0.20.0"