edit state and edit own now actually somewhat depend on the permissions on the workflow transitions. as a result we need to figure out how to migrate people especially those with custom article level permissions onto workflows

This is made more complex with v3 as wf can now be disabled or even partially disabled

Do we need a migration path at all now as the workflow is disabled by default?

Unless you dont want any existing site to be able to use workflows then we still need something for them. Don't we?

Depends :)
As @wilsonge said, the "conflict" is, that user with core.edit.state permissions (directly in an article) suddenly can't change the state and featured values anymore, because then a transition is needed.
But my feeling is, that due the fact that an admin has to enable the workflow intentional, probably we have to point out this fact but probably don't have to fix this "gap".

To me thats a lame solution by avoiding the problem

I don't disagree with you, it's a bit lame.
But compared with the effort to fix it (one workflow for each article and user group with that permission + categories) I would suggest to fix the "gap" with documentation.

Is there potential for some sort of cli command which would do a one off migration of edit.state permission to execute transition (for those who can run cli)? On top of docs.

Ofc there is, but then we will have (I think) in the worst case hundreds (or thousands) of similar workflows just with different execute transition permission, based on article, category and global edit.state settings...

for what i can tell you this should be degraded from Release Blocker to some kind of "nice to have"

after all workflow is disabled by default

@alikon but what happens when a user upgrades from j3 and then enables the workflows? That is where the problem lies.

well i've to admit that this scenario i've never had explored it yet myself, but i hope that who will do that have taken an informed decision
thats why imho it's docmentation matter and not a RB

We need to add some documentation and we are done.

Until we have the documentation its still a release blocker - nothing has changed

Until we have the documentation its still a release blocker - nothing has changed

No it wasn't a release blocker from the start.

Well that's one way to resolve blockers