Release automation fixes for 0.38.0 prep #3363

Observed

• The cut_release bump commit (chore: bump versions for vX.Y.Z [skip ci]) is later carried into the main-branch snapshot PR by create_snapshot_pr's git reset --hard $RELEASE_BRANCH. GitHub appears to skip CI for the whole push when any included commit has [skip ci], so the snapshot PR's required status checks never ran and it sat unmergeable.
• create_or_update_tracking_issue read docs/release-process.md / docs/release-testing-checklist.md from the release branch, which is a long-lived snapshot from cut time — doc-only updates landing on main during a multi-beta or patch-release cycle would silently drop out of the posted checklist.
• docs/release-process.md had two stale "manually delete api/chain/notifications pods" lines and an "ArgoCD refresh Development" line that are no longer needed.
• docs/release-testing-checklist.md had a stale "7.1.7 Valid start time picker works with running clock" line.

Fixed (branch: prerelease-prep-0.38.0)

• Dropped [skip ci] from the cut_release commit message.
• create_or_update_tracking_issue now checks out main instead of the release branch for the checklist docs.
• Removed the stale pod-restart/ArgoCD lines from release-process.md.
• Removed the stale 7.1.7 line from release-testing-checklist.md.