The only current milestone on GitHub is 1.13.0, so I'd assume that it will wait for that release.
If you need it now you can manually modify some NodeBB files:
in src/middleware/user.js modify line 135 from
user.isModeratorOfAnyCategory(req.uid, next);
to
user.isAdminOrGlobalMod(req.uid, next);
In src/socket.io/posts/tools.js change line 75 from
if (!results.isAdmin && !results.isGlobalMod && !results.isModerator) {
to
if (!results.isAdmin && !results.isGlobalMod) {
in src/controllers/accounts/helpers.js change line 144 from
if (isAdmin || isSelf || ((isGlobalModerator || isModerator) && !results.isTargetAdmin)) {
to
if (isAdmin || isSelf || (isGlobalModerator && !results.isTargetAdmin)) {
That should remove all privileges from category moderators while leaving them for administrators and global moderators.
I'm really looking forward to 1.13.0 though, as I've not only added two things that will be useful for me (not to mention useful changes by NodeBB staff and other contributors. And the refactor), but also because I use the master branch for my dev enviroment the plugin I'm currently writing uses async/await where 1.12.x doesn't support it yet, so to avoid rewriting it twice I had to use util.promisify to make current callback based functions work like async ones
EDIT: btw. It seems like 1.13.0 might be close as there are no issues left assigned to this milestone. So while I'm not NodeBB staff and can't tell you when the refactor will be finished and when they think there are enough changes for an update to 1.13 I doubt it's really far away
