This sounds super frustrating, as someone who has an idea or two for browser extensions I'm not looking forward to all the bureaucracy. I actually love the idea of requiring and validating reproducible builds but they really should invest in reviewers competent enough to manage that.

I do have half an idea to deal with it that I plan to try, thought it might be helpful to suggest: implement a Fisher-Price build system that checks and automates every single step and cannot go wrong. Ideally if the reviewers can run Docker, do it all in a container. Wrap package.json scripts with functions to validate the build environment before proceeding and either fix it automatically or fail and print clear instructions to the console. A preinstall hook could verify they have proper NPM auth and prompt for it if needed.

Annoying to have to do that at all though. I'm starting to come to similar conclusions on Firefox, using it currently but I've been thinking about jumping ship for a while. What browser would you recommend now? I wanted to get away from Google but I'm considering just Chromium since any remotely comparable options I've found are poorly thought out wrappers of it.