I had planned to do groupings on the inventory in V0.2.0, but doing the same to actions would make sense so long as I can make decent "new actions available" indicators. It's already hard to tell sometimes.
You can hl new actions just with flag and hover to clear it. Like factorio new recipes.. For me it's far more comfortable than any animations and easily to do.
Yeah, that'd be my go-to. My only concern is when new actions are added to the bottom of the list, but you're scrolled to the top... I'll play around with some UIs when I get there and see what works.
May be add new actions counter? I thought it's simplest solution. May be isn't so elegant, but useful. (Especially in games where old actions don't disappear but still moved to archive part)
Even just keeping the highlight until it's been moused over - but it doesn't seem like a particular issue when mistakes and looking around how to do things better is part of the game anyway