Is any form of code analysis out of the question? Static and dynamic analysis of the code would seem like a promising idea rather than just trying to defer the update and hence the problem.
Seen favorably, staged publishing is a band aid. Seen more realistically I believe that in the long run it will even hurt our efforts for more secure infra.
For trusted publishing, it's not a band-aid, it's a significant improvement that kills an entire class of CI takeover publish attacks. I'm sure attackers will find another way but it's a big gap this is closing up.
This is the biggest question I also had after reading the blog post. Given the recent chain of attacks, wouldn't it make sense to enforce staged publish by default or at least gradually move over to it?