boshu2__agentops/CHANGELOG.md

# Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on [Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/),
and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

## [Unreleased]

### Added

- **`security` domain in eval-suite manifests** — `$defs/domain` enum in `schemas/eval-suite.v1.schema.json` now accepts `security` alongside the existing eight domains. Paired updates land in `cli/internal/eval/coverage.go` (`DefaultCoverageDomains`) and `cli/cmd/ao/cobra_commands_test.go` (`evalCoverageDomains`) so schema, production default, and test fixture stay in lock-step. `ao eval coverage` will report `security` as a missing required domain until a security-domain manifest is authored.

### Fixed

- **GitHub eval advisory setup** — the `agentops-eval-advisory` job now installs the deterministic canary toolchain (`jq`, `ripgrep`, `bats`, `bd`, and `gocyclo`) and initializes a disposable bd database before running `scripts/eval-agentops.sh --fast`, matching the local environment expected by the public canaries.

## [2.39.0] - 2026-04-27

### Added

- **`ao agents` command group** - added `ao agents inspect`, `ao agents lint`, and `ao agents doctor` for `.agents/` write-surface introspection, linting, orphan reporting, and combined health checks.
- **Dream finding-generator pipeline** - added generator sidecar recording, aggregation, external-watchlist candidate emission, RFC 0001 authoring docs, and an `external_watchlist_emitted` fitness counter.
- **RPI next-work v1.4 metadata** - promoted `status`, `requires`, `dedup_key`, and external-watchlist routing into first-class next-work contract fields, validators, and skill documentation.
- **Goals measurement filtering** - added `ao goals measure --exclude-tag` and tagged `flywheel-compounding` as `long-cycle` / `corpus-state` so long-cycle corpus state can be excluded from selected measurements.
- **`.agents/` write-surface contract** - catalogued repo memory write surfaces, added a lint gate, and added production-code smoke coverage for the allowlisted surfaces.
- **Harvest nested artifact support** - harvest now recurses into nested artifact directories and emits real rig metadata.

### Changed

- **Codex runtime packaging** - refreshed Codex skills for GPT-5.5, aligned Codex plugin metadata with the marketplace schema, regenerated manifests and shared hashes, converted remaining skill references to `$skill` notation, and reduced skill-catalog context footprint.
- **Hook runtime backend** - refactored hooks around a managed runtime backend and refreshed native Codex hook/runtime proof gates.
- **Docs and release governance** - restored `docs/index.md`, renamed the full catalog to `docs/documentation-index.md`, added `.agents/` operator and comparison docs, and accepted RFC 0001 for finding-generator parallelism.
- **Release gate coverage** - CI/local gates now cover command/test pairing, next-work schema rows, Codex RPI contracts, assertion-density scope, agents write surfaces, standards-injector completeness, and release audit artifact references.
- **Goals parsing internals** - reduced markdown parser complexity by extracting table-cell helpers without changing behavior.
- **Bootstrap behavior** - `/bootstrap` now recommends installing `bd` instead of attempting automatic installation.

### Fixed

- **CLI output safety** - fixed JSON and UTF-8 truncation bugs, command catalog drift, commit-review redaction, stale docs links, and temp-directory walk-up behavior in `FindAgentsDir`.
- **Security and scanner false positives** - closed the harvest TOCTOU path with `os.OpenRoot`, excluded safe regexp literals from broad secret scans, and split secret-regex construction so release gates do not flag their own patterns.
- **Codex/runtime drift** - fixed Codex skill chaining defaults, native hook manifest install, quiet session-start behavior, hook test gaps, `$skill` notation, and vibe language-gated complexity.
- **RPI, triage, and coverage edges** - repaired partial-batch lifecycle drift, pinned coverage-anchor parsing, isolated RPI supervisor test state, added inject/ratchet/harvest/overnight regressions, and normalized stale next-work bookkeeping.
- **Release blockers** - aligned the next-work schema contract with current queue enums and paired new command changes with regression tests so the release gate passes cleanly.

## [2.38.0] - 2026-04-22

### Added

- **Strict Delegation Contract** for `/rpi`, `/discovery`, and `/validation` — top-level orchestrator skills now declare strict sub-skill delegation as the default. Each skill points to the new canonical reference `skills/shared/references/strict-delegation-contract.md` which documents the contract, anti-pattern rationalizations, and supported compression escapes (`--quick`, `--fast-path`, `--no-retro`, `--no-forge`, `--skip-brainstorm`, `--no-scaffold`, `--no-behavioral`, `--allow-critical-deps`). There is no `--full` flag — strict delegation is always on.
- **Orchestrator Compression Anti-Pattern learning** at `docs/learnings/orchestrator-compression-anti-pattern.md`, surfaced through the orchestrator skill contracts. Includes detection phrases, corrective actions, and rationalizations to reject.
- **Orchestrator-owned step markers** in `skills/crank/SKILL.md` (STEP 3a.3, STEP 6.5 slop-scan, STEP 8.7) plus an "Inline Work Policy" footer documenting which steps are intentionally inline vs delegated.
- **MkDocs Material documentation site** — Pages site rebuilt on MkDocs Material (slate dark palette). Skill catalog and CLI reference are generated at build from `skills/*/SKILL.md` and `cli/docs/`. `mkdocs build --strict` wired into the pre-push gate (Check 25a). New dedicated pages for hooks, schemas, and upgrading, plus an expanded glossary. Theme tuned to the agentops-showcase terracotta-on-near-black palette; landing page leads with the primary use case and a headline skills table; flywheel diagram ASCII art realigned; doctrine back-links added to `12factoragentops.com`.
- **Shell completion for enumerated-value flags** — `ao <cmd> --<flag> <TAB>` now suggests the valid values instead of falling back to file completion. Covers `ao --output` (`json`/`table`/`yaml`), `ao seed --template`, `ao goals init --template`, `ao inject --format` and `--session-type`.
- **`ao doctor` stale-reference scan** now covers `skills-codex/*/SKILL.md` and `skills/*/references/*.md` in addition to the primary skill docs, catching drift in Codex mirrors and skill reference content.
- **Nightly close-loop throughput alarm** — the dream close-loop gate now fails loudly when `ingested > 0 && promoted == 0`, replacing the silent zero-throughput mode that previously masked citation-gate deadlocks.

### Removed

- Archived AO↔Olympus bridge integration: removed `docs/ol-bridge-contracts.md`, `docs/architecture/ao-olympus-ownership-matrix.md`, MemRL policy contracts, `skills/*/scripts/ol-*.sh`, `cli/cmd/ao/inject_ol_test.go`, and associated CLI types (`OLConstraint`, `gatherOLConstraints`, `.ol/` directory collector). Olympus predecessor's useful patterns live on inside `ao`.
- Lowercase `docs/index.md` duplicate removed after the MkDocs migration canonicalized the landing page.

### Changed

- **`--no-lifecycle` in `/discovery` renamed to `--no-scaffold`** for semantic clarity — the flag controls STEP 4.5 scaffold auto-invocation only, not broader lifecycle checks. `--no-lifecycle` is honored as a deprecated alias through v2.40.0; when both flags are passed, they are equivalent. Other skills (`/crank`, `/validation`, `/implement`, `/evolve`) retain `--no-lifecycle` with its existing lifecycle-skill-invocation semantics.
- **`/discovery` flags table** expanded: `--auto` is now explicitly documented (was transitively honored but undocumented); `--interactive` scope clarified ("research + plan gates, not pre-mortem").
- **`/validation` flags table** expanded: `--complexity=<level>` syntax formalized to match `/rpi` and `/discovery`; `--interactive` scope documented.
- **`/rpi` `--interactive` flag** scope note added: applies to discovery (research + plan) and validation (Gate 1, Gate 2); does NOT override pre-mortem or vibe council autonomy.
- **ASCII fast-path performance sweep** across rune-aware truncation call sites in `cli/` (`TruncateText`, `TruncateRunes`, `truncateForError`, plus goals/pool/search/rpi/parser call sites) — ASCII inputs now skip the full UTF-8 rune scan.
- **Compile and overnight internals refactored** — `runCompile` split into phase + preflight helpers; article scan, inbound count, and prune extracted from `repair`; dream packet corroboration split per source epic; dream yield emptiness guard extracted into a dedicated helper. No behavior change; lower cyclomatic complexity and tighter test surfaces.
- **Skills-codex DAG bodies converted to `$skill` notation** for the Codex runtime.
- **GitHub Actions bumped** — `actions/upload-pages-artifact 3→4`, `actions/deploy-pages 4→5`, `actions/configure-pages 5→6`, plus docs.yml workflow action versions aligned.
- **Precommit hook prefers local Go** when available.
- **Skills backfill pass** — docs, validators, and lint synced across all skills; Codex drift surface reset to no-op.

### Fixed

- **Orchestrator compression vulnerability** — a live compression was observed 2026-04-19 where `/rpi` was invoked but phases were inlined instead of delegated. This release **documents** the anti-pattern (forged learning + loud skill text), **scaffolds** future enforcement (shared contract reference used by all 6 orchestrator skills), and explicitly **defers** runtime hook enforcement to a follow-up initiative. It does not mechanically prevent compression yet — the durable fix depends on `ao inject` surfacing the forged learning on future session starts. See `.agents/research/2026-04-19-rpi-skill-dag-audit.md` for the audit and `.agents/plans/2026-04-19-rpi-dag-hardening.md` for the remediation plan.
- **Close-loop promotion deadlock** — `flywheel` close-loop auto-promotion and the loop-dominance signal are unblocked; citation-gate cycles no longer silently zero throughput.
- **Overnight findings router** now emits schema-compliant `next-work` v1.3 enums — valid `claim_status=available` (was `pending`), severity collapsed to `high` for `critical` and `blocker` inputs — with a build-time guard that fails on future drift.
- **Quality stale-refs scan** skips rename-doc lines so it no longer false-positives on deliberate rename notes.
- **Release and compile gates** — `go-complexity-ceiling` self-heals a missing `gocyclo`; `compile-*` gates fall back to Dream defrag preview when the primary path is unavailable.
- **Proof-run Phase 2** calls `pool ingest` before `close-loop` so the downstream stage has input to consume.
- **Hooks** — `git-worker-guard` narrowed to avoid false blocks on selective flags; test-hook harness tolerates environments without a locally built `ao`.
- **Scripts** — `goal-staleness`, `pillar-coverage`, `goal-quality`, and `bootstrap-maturity` now skip cleanly after the `GOALS.yaml → GOALS.md` migration and preserve existing JSONL maturity with compact output.
- **CI** — resolved 7 failures from the MkDocs rebuild, committed the forged-learning artifacts, and regenerated the codex shared hash.
- **Docs markdownlint** — unresolved `+ 9 findings).` continuation in the cross-disk harvest plan now reads as prose instead of tripping MD004.

## [2.37.2] - 2026-04-15

### Added

- **Swarm evidence validation** — AgentOps now ships a swarm-evidence schema and validator, and wires that proof surface into validation and release gates.
- **Lead-only worker git guard** — worker sessions now have an explicit lead-only git guard in the hook chain, reducing accidental write authority in multi-agent runs.
- **Compile and harvest operator controls** — `ao compile` adds runtime preference plus `--reset` and `--repair` controls, while harvest now reports excluded low-confidence candidates and top near-misses.

### Changed

- **Release and pre-push validation** — local release, pre-push, and command coverage gates now validate more of the hook, evidence, and Codex runtime surface before publish.
- **Codex/runtime artifacts and docs** — compile, evolve, post-mortem, swarm, and related runtime docs and artifacts were decomposed and synchronized to better match shipped behavior.
- **Flywheel backlog bookkeeping** — next-work aggregates, consumed markers, and enum normalization were cleaned up so carry-forward work is recorded consistently.

### Fixed

- **Pre-mortem gate ambiguity** — the crank pre-mortem gate now denies ambiguous state by default instead of failing open.
- **CLI and shell reliability edges** — `ao rpi serve --run-id` now accepts legacy 8-hex IDs, `ao mine --dry-run` emits a single clean JSON payload, and bash invocations are sanitized to bypass unsafe shell aliases.
- **Compile, harvest, and release drift** — compile repair defaults, malformed frontmatter salvage, YAML parse error surfacing, CI fixture drift, shellcheck drift, and Codex artifact metadata drift were corrected.

## [2.37.1] - 2026-04-15

### Added

- **Dream morning packets** — Dream can now emit ranked morning work packets with evidence, target files, exact follow-up commands, and queue/bead handoff metadata.
- **Dream yield telemetry and long-haul corroboration** — overnight reports now record packet-confidence telemetry and can trigger a bounded long-haul corroboration pass when the first pass produces weak morning output.

### Changed

- **Dream decision flow** — overnight runs now prefer cheaper evidence corroboration before slower council fan-out, so strong runs stay short and extended runtime is reserved for genuinely weak output.

### Fixed

- **Headless Claude Dream council** — Dream now uses Claude's working JSON output contract for headless council runs and normalizes the returned envelope before validation.
- **Dream close-loop and report surfaces** — overnight runs now write real close-loop callbacks and post-loop report artifacts instead of leaving placeholder `pending` steps.
- **Retrieval ratchet release gate fallback** — the retrieval-quality release check now falls back to checked-in eval data when a local manifest is absent.

## [2.37.0] - 2026-04-14

### Added

- **Windows install and smoke coverage** — `scripts/install-ao.ps1` adds a first-class Windows install path, and the blocking `windows-smoke` gate exercises PowerShell install, local `ao doctor`, and Windows-sensitive Go packages.
- **Compile command** — `ao compile` makes knowledge compilation a first-class CLI surface with docs and tests.
- **Local LLM forge pipeline** — `ao forge` can now redact, summarize, structurally review, and queue transcript-derived wiki pages with Dream worker integration.
- **Dream curator and evolve sub-cycle** — Dream gained a local curator adapter plus `ao evolve --dream-first|--dream-only`, allowing overnight knowledge passes to feed the daytime improvement loop.
- **`.agents` wiki surfaces** — INDEX, LOG, wiki directories, and search integration formalize `.agents/` as a Karpathy-style knowledge wiki with index-first navigation.
- **Operational quality surfaces** — beads audit/cluster commands, swarm preflight advice, status quality signals, retrieval eval queries, and a retrieval-quality CI ratchet broaden release-time proof.

### Changed

- **Knowledge scoring and search behavior** — inject now deduplicates by content hash, boosts indexed pages, weights stability, and search can pull Dream vault and wiki sources with stronger local recall.
- **Overnight and RPI internals** — overnight, lifecycle, search, inject, harvest, and RPI flows were decomposed into smaller helpers while tightening proof paths, mixed-mode provenance, and worktree cleanup.
- **Public framing and contributor docs** — README, philosophy, planning/post-mortem docs, and reference surfaces now better match the context-compiler and operational-layer story.

### Fixed

- **Windows overnight liveness** — Windows process checks no longer rely on Unix `signal(0)` semantics.
- **Dream RunLoop status invariants** — live-tree hash coverage now exercises every terminal RunLoop status, and `degraded` reflects the current rollback semantics.
- **Release retag safety** — release tooling now preserves annotated tags, validates audit artifact manifests and refs, and cancels stale reruns before duplicate publish attempts.
- **Post-mortem and closure audits** — metadata links, evidence-only closure packets, parser-path handling, and closure packet evidence modes were normalized.
- **Codex and runtime reliability** — same-thread lifecycle restart, root-scoped fallback reads, JSON config writes, bridge contract validation, and next-work proof-path handling were hardened.

## [2.36.0] - 2026-04-11

### Added

- **Evolve operator command** — `ao evolve` now exposes the v2 autonomous improvement loop directly in the CLI, including `--max-cycles`, `--queue`, `--beads-only`, `--quality`, `--compile`, and strict-quality passthrough flags.
- **Autodev program contract** — root `PROGRAM.md` gives evolve/autodev a repo-local operating contract with mutable and immutable scope, validation commands, escalation policy, and stop conditions.
- **Beads stale-scope tooling** — `ao beads verify|lint|harvest` adds first-class stale-citation checks for bead-driven planning and RPI recovery.
- **RPI discovery artifacts** — RPI can now persist and consume discovery artifacts, with tests and docs covering the `--discovery-artifact` path.
- **Dream RunLoop invariant coverage** — `TestRunLoop_LiveTreeHashInvariant_AllStatuses` locks the `IsCorpusCompounded()` and live-tree mutation invariant across deterministically reproducible terminal statuses.
- **Dream failed-summary contract coverage** — regression tests now lock the `finalizeOvernightSummary` contract for MEASURE consecutive-failure halts and persisted iteration history.
- **Dream operator mode** — `ao overnight start|run|report|setup` adds a private overnight lane with shared `dream.*` config, keep-awake defaults, scheduler/bootstrap guidance, council-ready runner packets, and DreamScape-style morning summaries
- **Nightly live retrieval proof** — the dream-cycle now runs `ao retrieval-bench --live --json`, emits retrieval proof in nightly summaries, and keeps a visible artifact trail for flywheel health
- **Pattern-to-skill drafts** — repeated patterns can now generate review-only skill drafts under `.agents/skill-drafts/` during flywheel close-loop
- **Fresh-repo onboarding welcome** — new session-start routing helps first-time repos enter discovery, implementation, or validation without needing the full RPI lane first
- **Docs-site and contribution proof surfaces** — GitHub Pages navigation, comparison pages, behavioral-discipline guidance, strategic-doc validation patterns, and a first-skill guide expand the public proof surface

### Changed

- **RPI wave recovery integrated** — recovered RPI wave work landed across Dream, council, stale-scope planning, discovery artifacts, CI hardening, and Codex runtime surfaces.
- **Council `--mixed` strict contract documented** — `skills/council/references/cli-spawning.md` documents that `/council --mixed` requires Codex CLI and emits a hard error instead of silently falling back to Claude-only.
- **Plan and pre-mortem skill bodies decomposed** — focused reference files now carry the detailed pre-decomposition, scope-mode, mandatory-check, output, wave-matrix, and task-creation guidance while keeping the top-level skills within lint budgets.
- **Bead-input pre-flight wired into planning skills** — `/plan` and `/pre-mortem` invoke `ao beads verify <bead-id>` for full-complexity, aged, or prior-session bead inputs before decomposition or validation.
- **Operational-layer framing** — README, onboarding, docs, comparisons, and linked surfaces now consistently explain AgentOps as bookkeeping, validation, primitives, and flows for coding agents
- **Dream runtime positioning** — the public GitHub nightly is now documented as a proof harness, while `ao overnight` is documented as the private local compounding engine
- **Codex default path** — native hooks, install copy, runtime smoke coverage, and checked-in Codex artifacts are aligned around the native-plugin path on supported Codex versions
- **Validation guidance** — behavioral-discipline and strategic-doc review are now first-class references alongside code review and runtime validation

### Fixed

- **Windows Codex installer** — Codex installation now has a Windows path instead of assuming Unix shell behavior.
- **golangci-lint v2 contract** — the local lint wrapper and CI configuration now pin the v2 behavior expected by the repository.
- **security-toolchain-gate CI** — deterministic fixture generation in `cli/internal/overnight/fixture/gen_fixture.go` is annotated as a non-cryptographic seeded-random use, avoiding a false-positive semgrep blocker.
- **Recovered RPI validation blockers** — validation drift from the recovered RPI wave was cleared before retagging the release.
- **Stale-scope reference placement** — shared stale-scope validation guidance now lives under `skills/shared/references/` so `heal.sh --strict` can resolve it consistently.
- **Release and CI drift** — resolved docs-site Liquid/frontmatter issues, headless runtime smoke portability problems, pre-push shim test drift, and compile-skill headless command drift caught during release prep
- **Codex install and artifact drift** — fixed stale slash-command references, refreshed checked-in artifact metadata, added a Codex compile wrapper, and corrected plugin/marketplace mismatches exercised by smoke coverage
- **Runtime proof stability** — promoted Codex runtime smoke into the blocking smoke path and fixed related shellcheck and install-surface rough edges

### Removed

- **DevOps-rooted tagline** — public framing no longer leads with the old DevOps-layer tagline; the Three Ways lineage remains supporting doctrine instead of the category label

## [2.35.0] - 2026-04-07

### Added

- **Codex native hooks** — AgentOps hooks now install natively into Codex CLI v0.115.0+ via `~/.codex/hooks.json`; 8 hooks wired (session-start, inject, flywheel-close, prompt-nudge, quality-signals, go-test-precommit, commit-review, ratchet-advance); installer enables `codex_hooks` feature and upgrades from hookless fallback to native hook runtime
- **Knowledge compiler skill** — renamed athena → `/compile` with Karpathy-style incremental compilation, pluggable LLM backend (`AGENTOPS_COMPILE_RUNTIME=ollama|claude`), interlinked markdown wiki output at `.agents/compiled/`
- **App struct dependency injection** — `App` struct carries `ExecCommand`, `LookPath`, `RandReader`, `Stdout`, `Stderr` seams; gc bridge, events, executor, context relevance, tracker health, and stream modules accept injected dependencies instead of mutable package-level vars
- **Test shuffle in CI** — `-shuffle=on` added to `validate.yml` and `Makefile` test targets, exposing and fixing 6 ordering-dependent tests (cobra flag leaks, maturity var leaks, env var leaks)

### Changed

- **CLI internal extraction (waves 5-13)** — business logic extracted from `cmd/ao` monolith into 15 `internal/` domain packages (`rpi`, `search`, `context`, `quality`, `goals`, `lifecycle`, `bridge`, `forge`, `mine`, `plans`, `knowledge`, `storage`, `pool`, `taxonomy`, `worker`) using Options struct pattern for dependency injection
- **Goals test migration** — 7 goals test files moved from `cmd/ao` to `internal/goals` as external test package (`goals_test`) with `t.Parallel()` and direct `goals.Run*()` calls replacing cobra command wiring
- **Test isolation** — `resetCommandState` now saves/restores 10 maturity globals; `resetFlagChangesRecursive` resets flag values to defaults; RPILoop and toolchain tests clear `AGENTOPS_RPI_RUNTIME*` env vars via `t.Setenv`

### Fixed

- **Defrag test flag leak** — `TestDefragOutputDirFlag` used `cmd.Flags().Lookup("output")` which matched the root persistent `--output` flag; changed to `cmd.LocalFlags().Lookup("output")`
- **Goroutine leak false positive** — `TestRunGoals_GoroutineLeak` used `goleak.VerifyNone` which caught goroutines from parallel tests; switched to `goleak.IgnoreCurrent()` to only detect leaks within the test itself
- **Secret scan false positives** — excluded `.gc/` directory and `Getenv`/`os.Environ` patterns from secret pattern scan
- **Codex skill validation** — added `output_contract` as valid schema key, `cross-vendor`/`knowledge` as valid tiers, fixed `$/` prefix in codex forge/post-mortem/scenario skills
- **Scenario CLI snippets** — replaced non-existent `--source`/`--scope` flags with valid `--status` variants

### Removed

- **Coverage percentage CI gates** — removed `coverage-ratchet` job, `check-cmdao-coverage-floor.sh`, `.coverage-baseline.json`, and associated BATS tests; percentage gates blocked CI during architectural refactors without catching bugs
- **`fire.go`** — FIRE loop (find-ignite-reap-escalate) superseded by gc sling + bead dispatch; `formatAge` helper moved to `inject_predecessor.go`
- **`rpi_workers.go`** — per-worker health display superseded by gc agent health patrol; `ao rpi workers` subcommand removed from CLI and docs

## [2.34.0] - 2026-04-05

### Added

- **Stage 4 Behavioral Validation** — new validation tier between council/vibe and production:
  - Holdout scenarios stored in `.agents/holdout/` with PreToolUse isolation hook preventing implementing agents from seeing evaluation criteria
  - Satisfaction scoring (0.0-1.0 probabilistic) in verdict schema v4, replacing boolean-only PASS/FAIL
  - Agent-built behavioral specs generated during `/implement` Step 5c
  - `/scenario` skill for authoring and managing holdout scenarios
  - `ao scenario init|list|validate` CLI commands (4 subcommands, 11 tests)
  - STEP 1.8 in `/validation` pipeline evaluating holdout scenarios + agent specs
  - `schemas/scenario.v1.schema.json` defining the holdout scenario format
- **Flywheel gate command** — `ao flywheel gate` checks readiness for retrieval-expansion work (research closure, rho threshold, holdout precision@K)
- **Citation confidence scoring** — `citationEventIsHighConfidence` with bucketed confidence (0/0.5/0.7/0.9) gates MemRL rewards on match quality
- **Retrieval bench refactor** — train/holdout splits, section-aware scoring (`scoreBenchSections`), manifest-based benchmark cases
- **Proof-backed next-work visibility** — `classifyNextWorkCompletionProof` unifies completed-run, execution-packet, and evidence-only-closure proof types; context explain and stigmergic packet now report proof-backed suppressions
- **Three-gap contract proof gates** — lifecycle gap mapping gates added to GOALS.md
- **Cross-vendor execution** — `--mixed` flag for Claude + Codex council judges
- **Gas City bridge** — gc as default executor for RPI phase execution with L1-L3 tests
- **149 L2 integration tests** — AI-native test shape ("L2 first, L1 always") validated at scale; coverage floor raised 78.8% → 81.0%
- **Test coverage hardening** — GPG commit-signing fixes, root-skip guards for containerized CI, 350+ lines of vibecheck detector/metrics tests, maturity.go empty-content bugfix

### Changed

- **Codex parity hook** — `codex-parity-warn.sh` now supports opt-in blocking mode via `AGENTOPS_CODEX_PARITY_BLOCK=1` (exit 2 instead of advisory)
- **12-factor doctrine** — compressed from 474 to 114 lines, reframed as supporting lens rather than product definition
- **Skill count** — 65 → 66 (added `/scenario`)
- **Research skill** — now persists reusable findings to `.agents/findings/registry.jsonl` with finding-compiler refresh
- **Closure integrity audit** — accepts durable closure packets without scoped-file sections as valid evidence
- **Proof-backed legacy entries** — `shouldSkipLegacyFailedEntry` uses `CompletionEvidence` field (proof-only, no heuristic fallback)
- **`readQueueEntries`** — returns all non-consumed entries; proof filtering is downstream via `shouldSkipLegacyFailedEntry`

### Fixed

- **6 CI failure categories** resolved in one commit (f1b83b25)
- **Cobra test registration** — `scenario` and `flywheel gate` added to expectedCmds
- **Citation feedback test** — assertion corrected for recorded confidence preference (0.5 not 0.7)
- **RPI hardening** — UAT version pre-flight, goals history filter, proof-backed suppression, fail-closed gates, cross-epic handoff contamination, bare ag- prefix guard
- **Branch consolidation** — 10 stale Codex branches analyzed, cherry-picked (9 commits, ~3,500 lines), and deleted; 25 orphaned worktrees pruned
- **git rerere enabled** — conflict resolution memory for future merges

## [2.33.0] - 2026-04-02

### Added

- **Backlog hygiene gates** — added `bd-audit.sh`, `bd-cluster.sh`, and Crank/Codex guidance for cleaning stale or mergeable beads before execution
- **Retrieval benchmarking and global scope** — added `ao retrieval-bench`, benchmark corpora, `--live`, `--global`, and nightly IR regression coverage
- **`/red-team` adversarial validation** — added a persona-based validation skill plus checked-in Codex runtime artifacts
- **Software factory operator lane** — added a CLI/operator surface and Claude factory startup routing for software-factory workflows
- **Flywheel maintenance utilities** — added global garbage purge tooling and nightly retrieval benchmarking for knowledge quality tracking

### Changed

- **Release policy** — removed the enforced release cadence gate so releases no longer block on a minimum wait between tags
- **Knowledge operator surfaces** — plan and validation now wire knowledge operator surfaces directly into execution flow
- **Proof and runtime docs** — goals, RPI docs, and contributor guidance now reflect the expanded proof surfaces and hookless runtime behavior

### Fixed

- **Codex artifact parity** — restored checked-in Codex parity for red-team and cleaned Codex runtime metadata/frontmatter drift across crank, forge, post-mortem, release, and swarm artifacts
- **Retrieval quality** — replaced exact-substring filtering with token-level matching and tuned penalty, deduplication, and OR-fallback behavior
- **Harvest metadata preservation** — promotion now preserves source metadata and fills missing maturity, utility, and type fields safely
- **Release tooling** — release artifact directories are created safely and audit artifacts now resolve against release tag names
- **Documentation and link drift** — repaired the post-mortem Codex link and aligned runtime docs around the newer startup and lifecycle flows

## [2.32.0] - 2026-04-01

### Added

- **Knowledge activation skill** — new `/knowledge-activation` skill and CLI surfaces for activating cross-domain knowledge at runtime, with operator surface consumption and ranked intelligence context
- **Session intelligence engine** — complete runtime engine with explainability, ranked context assembly, and trust policy enforcement
- **Runtime selection for `ao rpi serve`** — serve now supports explicit runtime selection for Claude and Codex execution modes
- **Quality signals hook** — new `quality-signals.sh` hook with test coverage for session quality telemetry
- **Pre-push gate expansion** — 9 checks migrated from CI-only to the local pre-push gate for faster feedback
- **Inject stability warnings and status dashboard** — closed 3 harvest items with signal tests and dashboard improvements

### Changed

- **README refresh** — product-minded rewrite with gain-framing and Strunk-style prose fixes
- **Philosophy doc** — new `docs/philosophy.md` and observations section added to README
- **Documentation alignment** — repo front doors and codex artifact guidance unified across entry points
- **Claude Code architecture lessons** — retry budgets, stability flags, quality signals, and orchestration patterns applied to skills
- **Homebrew formula** — updated to v2.31.0 with pre-built binaries

### Fixed

- **Post-mortem closure integrity** — normalized file parsing for closure integrity audits
- **CI reliability** — resolved CI failures across codex refs, test pairing, hook coverage, worktree handling, docs parity, hook portability, and codex lifecycle
- **Lookup nested scanning** — `ao lookup` now scans nested global knowledge directories correctly
- **Pre-push test stubs** — added test stubs for new pre-push checks, skip non-shell in shellcheck

### Dependencies

- Bumped `codecov/codecov-action` from 5 to 6
- Bumped `DavidAnson/markdownlint-cli2-action` from 22 to 23

## [2.31.0] - 2026-03-30

### Added

- **9 lifecycle skills** — bootstrap, deps, design, harvest, perf, refactor, review, scaffold, and test skills wired into RPI with auto-invocation and mechanical gates
- **`ao harvest`** — cross-rig knowledge consolidation extracts and catalogs learnings from sibling crew workspaces
- **`ao context packet`** — inspect stigmergic context packets for debugging inter-session handoff state
- **Hook runtime contract** — formal Claude/Codex/manual event mapping with runtime-aware hook tooling
- **Evidence-driven skill enrichment** — production meta-knowledge, anti-patterns, flywheel metrics, and normalization defect detection baked into 9 skill reference files
- **Research provenance** — pending learnings now carry full research provenance for discoverability and citation tracking
- **Context declarations** — inject, provenance, and rpi skills declare their context requirements explicitly
- **Goals and product output templates** — `/goals` and `/product` produce evidence-backed structured output

### Changed

- **Three-gap context lifecycle contract** — README, PRODUCT.md, positioning docs, and operational guides reframed around the context lifecycle model
- **Dual-runtime hook documentation** — runtime modes table and troubleshooting updated for Claude + Codex hook coexistence

### Fixed

- **CI reliability** — resolved 4 pre-existing CI failures, restored headless runtime preflight, repaired codex parity drift checks
- **`ao lookup` retrieval** — fixed retrieval gaps that caused lookup to return no results
- **Embedded sync** — using-agentops SKILL.md and `.agents/.gitignore` now written correctly on first session start
- **Closure integrity** — 24h grace window for close-before-commit evidence, normalized file parsing
- **Skill lint compliance** — vibe, post-mortem, crank, and plan skills trimmed or restructured to stay under 800-line limit
- **Codex tool naming** — added CLAUDE_TOOL_NAMING rule and fixed 5 Claude-era tool references in codex skills
- **ASCII diagram consistency** — aligned box-drawing characters across 23 documentation files
- **Fork exhaustion prevention** — replaced jq with awk in validate-go-fast to prevent fork bombs on large repos

## [2.30.0] - 2026-03-24

### Added

- **Codex hookless lifecycle support** — `ao codex` runtime commands, lifecycle fallback, and Codex skill orchestration now cover hookless sessions end to end
- **PROGRAM.md autodev contract** — Added a first-class `PROGRAM.md` contract for autodev flows and taught `/evolve` and related RPI paths to use it
- **Long-running RPI artifact visibility** — Mission control now exposes run artifacts and evaluator output so long-running RPI sessions are replayable and easier to inspect

### Changed

- **Codex runtime maintenance flow** — Refreshed Codex bundle hashes, lifecycle guards, runtime docs, and release validation coverage around the expanded Codex execution path

### Fixed

- **Codex RPI scoping and closeout** — Tightened objective scope, epic scope, closeout ownership, and validation gaps in the Codex RPI lifecycle
- **Release gate reliability** — Restored headless runtime coverage, runtime-aware Claude inventory checks, and release-gate coherence validation
- **Reverse-engineer repo hygiene** — Repo-mode reverse engineer now ignores generated and temp trees when identifying CLI and module surfaces

## [2.29.0] - 2026-03-22

### Added

- **Model cost tiers and config writes** — `ao config` can now assign per-agent models by cost tier and persist repo configuration changes directly
- **Search brokerage over session history and repo knowledge** — `ao search` now wraps upstream `cass` results with repo-local AgentOps artifacts by default
- **Reviewer and post-mortem reference packs** — Added model-routing, iterative-retrieval, confidence-scoring, write-time-quality, and conflict-recovery guidance across council, research, swarm, vibe, compile, and related skills

### Changed

- **Competitive comparison and CLI docs** — Refreshed comparison docs, release smoke coverage, and command documentation around the expanded search/config surface

### Fixed

- **Flywheel proof and citation loop** — Added deterministic proof fixtures, preserved exact research provenance, and made citation feedback artifact-specific so flywheel health reflects real closure state
- **Search alignment with forged session history** — Search now stays aligned with forged session artifacts and fallback behavior
- **Hook-launched validation** — Pre-push and release gates now isolate inherited git env/stdin correctly and cover newer hook scripts in integration tests
- **Codex council profile parity** — Source and checked-in Codex council docs are back in sync for the shared profile contract

## [2.28.0] - 2026-03-21

### Added

- **Node repair operator** — Crank now classifies task failures as RETRY (transient), DECOMPOSE (too complex), or PRUNE (blocked) with budget-controlled recovery
- **Knowledge refresh auto-trigger** — Lightweight compile defrag runs automatically at session end via new SessionEnd hook
- **Configurable review agents** — Project-level `.agents/reviewer-config.md` controls which judge perspectives council and vibe spawn
- **Three-tier plan detail scaling** — Plan auto-selects Minimal, Standard, or Deep templates based on issue count and complexity
- **Adversarial ideation** — Brainstorm Phase 3b stress-tests each approach with four red-team questions before user selection

### Fixed

- **Crank SKILL.md line limit** — Consolidated duplicate References sections to stay under 800-line skill lint limit
- **Codex skill parity** — Synced all five competitive features to skills-codex with reference file copies

## [2.27.1] - 2026-03-20

### Fixed

- **Flywheel golden signals always shown** — Golden signals were gated behind `--golden` flag, causing `ao flywheel status` to report "COMPOUNDING" while the hidden golden signals analysis showed "accumulating". Golden signals now compute and display by default.

## [2.27.0] - 2026-03-20

### Added

- **Flywheel golden signals** — Four derived health indicators (velocity trend, citation pipeline, research closure, reuse concentration) that distinguish knowledge compounding from noise accumulation; accessible via `ao flywheel status --golden`
- **Forge-to-pool bridge** — Forge auto-writes pending learnings as markdown to `.agents/knowledge/pending/` for close-loop pool ingestion
- **SessionStart citation priming** — `ao lookup` wired into SessionStart hook to close the citation gap between inject and session context
- **Skill catalog quality** — Improved descriptions, extraction patterns, and reference linking across skill catalog

### Fixed

- **`.agents/.gitignore` scope** — Replaced broad `!*/` pattern with explicit subdirectory list to prevent accidental tracking
- **Codex runtime skill parity** — Hardened Codex runtime skill discovery and validation
- **Codex install smoke tests** — Fixed test assertions for install path edge cases

### Changed

- **CLI reference docs** — Regenerated with updated date stamps

## [2.26.1] - 2026-03-16

### Fixed

- **RPI stops after Phase 2** — Restructured rpi, discovery, and validation orchestrator skills as compact DAGs with execution sequence in a single code block; eliminates LLM stopping between phases due to `###` section headings acting as natural breakpoints
- **Test grep patterns for DAG headings** — Updated `test-tuning-defaults.sh` to match new complexity-scaled gate headings after DAG restructure

### Changed

- **Goals reimagined** — GOALS.md rebuilt from first principles with fitness gate fixes
- **README progressive disclosure** — Lead with moats, collapse detail into expandable sections
- **CLI reference docs** — Regenerated with updated date stamps
- **Doctor + findings helpers** — Added CLI test coverage for extracted helpers

## [2.26.0] - 2026-03-15

### Added

- **BF6–BF9 test pyramid levels** — Regression (bug-specific replay), Performance/Benchmark, Backward Compatibility, and Security (in-test) bug-finding levels with language-specific patterns for Go and Python
- **Test pyramid decision tree expansion** — 4 new routing questions for BF6–BF9 in the "When to Use" guide
- **RPI phase mapping for BF6–BF9** — Bug fix → BF6 mandatory, hot-path → BF7 benchmark, format change → BF8 compat fixture, secrets → BF9 redaction tests
- **`regen-codex-hashes.sh`** — Manifest hash regeneration script for Codex skill maintenance

### Changed

- **Go standards** — Added benchmark tests (BF7), backward compat with `testdata/compat/` (BF8), regression test naming convention (BF6), security tests for path traversal (BF9)
- **Python standards** — Added Hypothesis property-based testing (BF1), `pytest-benchmark` patterns (BF7), backward compat with parametrized fixtures (BF8), regression test naming (BF6), secrets redaction tests (BF9)
- **Coverage assessment template** — Extended BF pyramid table from BF1–BF5 to BF1–BF9

### Fixed

- **Codex skill audit** — 60+ findings fixed across all 54 Codex skills; removed orphaned `claude-code-latest-features.md` and `claude-cli-verified-commands.md` references
- **Skill lint warnings** — Resolved all warnings in crank, rpi, recover skills
- **README skill references** — Corrected broken references and linked orphaned templates
- **Skill linter refs** — Fixed directory reference and backtick formatting in reverse-engineer-rpi
- **CHANGELOG sync hook** — Replaced broken awk extraction with sed; awk failed on em-dash UTF-8 content producing header-only syncs
- **Plugin version parity** — Added pre-commit check that warns when `.claude-plugin/` manifest versions don't match the release version

## [2.25.1] - 2026-03-15

### Fixed

- **Codex BF pyramid parity** — Synced BF1/BF2/BF4 bug-finding level selection into skills-codex implement, post-mortem, and validation skills
- **Codex Claude backend cross-contamination** — Removed orphaned `backend-claude-teams.md` files (Claude primitives: TeamCreate, SendMessage) from 4 Codex skills (council, research, shared, swarm)
- **Dead converter rule** — Removed stale sed substitution for `backend-claude-teams.md` rename in converter script
- **Swarm reference integrity** — Added Reference Documents section to swarm SKILL.md; updated validate.sh to check only Codex-native backend references

## [2.25.0] - 2026-03-14

### Added

- **L0–L7 test pyramid standard** — Shared reference doc (`standards/references/test-pyramid.md`) defining 8 test levels, agent autonomy boundaries (L0–L3 autonomous, L4+ human-guided), and RPI phase mapping
- **Test pyramid integration across RPI lifecycle** — Discovery identifies test levels, plan classifies tests by level, pre-mortem validates coverage, implement selects TDD level, crank carries `test_levels` metadata, validation audits coverage, post-mortem reports gaps
- **RPI autonomous execution enforcement** — Three-Phase Rule mandates discovery → implementation → validation without human interruption; anti-patterns table documents 7 failure modes
- **Evolve autonomous execution enforcement** — Each cycle runs a complete 3-phase `/rpi --auto`; anti-patterns table documents 6 failure modes; large work decomposed into sub-RPI cycles
- **Codex skill standard** — New `standards/references/codex-skill.md` with tool mapping, prohibited primitives, two-phase validation, DAG-first traversal, and prompt constraint boundaries
- **Codex-native overrides** — Durable overrides for crank, swarm, council that survive regeneration
- **DAG-based Codex smoke test** — `scripts/smoke-test-codex-skills.sh` validates 54 skills with dependency-ordered traversal
- **Codex skill API contract** — `docs/contracts/codex-skill-api.md` with conformance validator
- **Output contract declarations** — `output_contract` field on council, vibe, pre-mortem, research skills with canonical finding-item schema

### Changed

- **Codex converter rewrite** — Strips Claude primitives instead of mapping to unavailable tools; rewrites reference files through `codex_rewrite_text`
- **CI pipeline** — Removed codex skill parity check (skills-codex/ now manually maintained); fixed shellcheck and embedded sync issues

### Fixed

- **Converter primitive stripping** — Task primitives (TaskCreate, TeamCreate, SendMessage) properly stripped instead of mapped to non-existent Codex equivalents
- **Embedded hook sync** — Added missing `test-pyramid.md` and `codex-skill.md` to CLI embedded references
- **ShellCheck SC1125** — Fixed em-dash in shellcheck disable directive in smoke test script
- **Skill line limits** — Moved verbose autonomy rules to reference files to stay under tier-specific line budgets

## [2.24.0] - 2026-03-12

### Added

- **Error & rescue map template** — Pre-mortem Step 2.5 with 3 worked examples (HTTP, database, LLM)
- **Scope mode selection** — Pre-mortem Step 1.6 with 3-mode framework (Expand/Hold/Reduce) and auto-detection
- **Temporal interrogation** — Pre-mortem Step 2.4 walks implementation timeline (hour 1/2/4/6+) for time-dependent risks
- **Prediction tracking** — Pre-mortem findings get unique IDs (`pm-YYYYMMDD-NNN`) correlated through vibe and post-mortem
- **Finding classification** — Vibe separates CRITICAL (blocks ship) from INFORMATIONAL findings
- **Suppression framework** — Vibe loads default + project-level suppression patterns for known false positives
- **Domain-specific checklists** — Standards skill extended with SQL safety, LLM trust boundary, and race condition checklists, auto-loaded by vibe
- **RPI session streak tracking** — Post-mortem Step 1.5 shows consecutive session days and verdict history
- **Persistent retro history** — Post-mortem Step 4.8 writes structured JSON summaries to `.agents/retro/` for cross-epic trend analysis
- **Prediction accuracy scoring** — Post-mortem Step 3.5 scores HIT/MISS/SURPRISE against pre-mortem predictions
- **Commit split advisor** — PR-prep Phase 4.5 suggests bisectable commit ordering (suggestion-only)
- **Council finding auto-extraction** — Significant findings from WARN/FAIL verdicts staged for flywheel consumption

### Changed

- **Post-mortem examples condensed** — Verbose examples replaced with concise 4-mode summary to stay under skill line limit

## [2.23.1] - 2026-03-12

### Fixed

- Resolved all golangci-lint quality findings
- Synced embedded standards after skill audit fixes
- Synced Codex bundle after skill audit fixes
- Resolved audit findings across council, vibe, standards skills

## [2.23.0] - 2026-03-11

### Added

- **Discovery and validation phase orchestrators** — New `/discovery` and
  `/validation` skills decompose the RPI lifecycle into independently
  invocable phases (research+plan+pre-mortem and vibe+post-mortem)
- **Stigmergic packet scorecard** — Ranked scoring for flywheel knowledge
  packets so higher-utility learnings surface first
- **Pinned work queue** — `/evolve` gains a pinned work queue with blocker
  auto-resolution for directed improvement loops
- **Per-package coverage ratchet** — Pre-push gate enforces per-package
  coverage baselines that only move upward
- **Fast pre-push mode** — `--fast` flag for diff-based conditional checks,
  skipping unchanged packages
- **Standards auto-loading** — Go and Python coding standards injected
  automatically into `/crank` and `/swarm` workers
- **271 test functions** — Four internal packages (`pool`, `ratchet`,
  `resolver`, `storage`) brought to 100% coverage

### Changed

- **README restructured** — Extracted reference material into dedicated docs,
  reducing README from 679 to 472 lines
- **RPI skill refactored** — `/rpi` now delegates to `/discovery` and
  `/validation` phase orchestrators instead of inlining all phases
- **Go and Python test conventions** — Canonical standards enriched with
  assertion quality rules, naming conventions, and table-driven test guidance
- **Documentation alignment** — Lifecycle, flywheel, primitive chain, and
  positioning docs updated to reflect current architecture

### Fixed

- **Goal runner deadlock** — Fixed goroutine deadlock in goal runner and added
  job timeouts to prevent stalls
- **17 CLI bugs from deep audit** — Addressed goroutine leaks, race
  conditions, panics, buffer overflows, and nil-check inconsistencies
- **Session close reliability** — Resolved pre-existing session_close issues
  surfaced by vibe council review
- **~50 zero-assertion tests** — Upgraded smoke tests from no-op to
  behavioral assertions across cmd/ao and internal packages
- **Test file hygiene** — Merged `_extra_test.go` and `cov*_test.go` files
  into canonical `<source>_test.go` names
- **CI stability** — FIFO test skip on Linux, embedded skill sync, coverage
  ceiling adjustments, crank SKILL.md trimmed below 800-line limit
- **Auto-extract quality gate** — Added quality gate to prevent low-fidelity
  auto-extracted learnings from entering the knowledge store

## [2.22.1] - 2026-03-10

### Added

- **Repo-native redteam harness** — Added a packaged redteam pack and prompt
  runner to `security-suite` for repeatable repository-local security
  exercises
- **Findings management commands** — Added CLI commands for listing and
  managing saved findings from the terminal

### Changed

- **Closed-loop prevention validation** — Completed the end-to-end finding
  compiler and prevention-ratchet validation path so saved findings feed back
  into earlier planning and task validation more reliably
- **Runtime contract parity** — Localized shared Claude runtime reference
  packs into the source skills and regenerated Codex artifacts so source and
  generated bundles stay aligned

### Fixed

- **Finding metadata injection** — Exposed finding metadata consistently in
  inject output and JSON integrations after the merged findings work landed
- **Release gate regressions** — Restored goals/package coverage, learning
  coherence, and hook-fixture isolation so the local release gate matches the
  shipped tree again

## [2.22.0] - 2026-03-09

### Added

- **Finding registry** — Council findings are saved to a persistent registry
  and automatically fed back into planning and validation, so the same class
  of bug is caught earlier next time
- **Repo execution profiles** — `.repo-execution-profile.json` lets skills
  and runtimes adapt to each repository's validation gates, startup reads,
  and done-criteria
- **Headless team backend** — Multi-agent workflows can run non-interactively
  (e.g. in CI) with structured JSON output and automated validation

### Changed

- **Codex and embedded artifacts** — Synced generated Codex bundles, embedded
  standards references, and install artifacts after merging branch work
- **Validation feedback capture** — Recorded validation-cycle feedback into
  `.agents` learnings so tracked patterns match the shipped tree

### Fixed

- **Lookup findings** — Fixed `ao lookup` and inject scoring so findings
  render, cite, and score correctly after the branch merge
- **23 CLI bug fixes** — Fixed goroutine leaks, race conditions, panics,
  buffer overflows, missing error handling, and nil-check inconsistencies
- **Post-mortem evidence hardening** — Staged changes and worktree evidence
  are now captured durably so proof isn't lost during compaction or cleanup

## [2.21.0] - 2026-03-09

### Added
- Codex-first skill rollout across the full catalog with override coverage, generated-artifact governance, and install/runtime parity validation
- Claim-aware next-work lifecycle handling with contract parity checks for `/rpi` and follow-on flows
- Headless runtime skill smoke coverage and Codex backbone prompt validation in the release gate stack

### Changed
- Codex maintenance guidance, override coverage docs, and CLI-to-skills mapping to match the generated runtime model
- Release-prep validation flows for runtime smoke, Codex artifact sync, and release note generation

### Fixed
- Next-work queue mutation races by making claim/update handling concurrency-safe and per-item
- Codex prompt parity drift by syncing generated prompts and tightening override coverage gates
- Worktree Git resolution and vibe-check runtime environment handling
- Push/pre-push validation regressions and nested pre-push wrappers
- Streamed phase timeout cancellation so phased runtime tests and release gating terminate promptly

## [2.20.1] - 2026-03-07

### Fixed
- Codex install workflow now uses `~/.agents/skills` as the single raw skill home and stops recreating an AgentOps mirror in `~/.codex/skills`
- Native Codex plugin refresh now archives overlapping legacy `~/.codex/skills` AgentOps folders instead of repopulating them
- Codex install docs now consistently describe the `~/.agents/skills` workflow and the need for a fresh Codex session after install
- Codex skill conversion now preserves multiline YAML `description` fields correctly, fixing malformed generated metadata for skills such as Compile
- `ao doctor` now treats plugin-cache plus `~/.agents/skills` as the supported Codex layout and reports manifest drift with accurate wording

## [2.20.0] - 2026-03-05

### Added
- Flywheel loop closure — `ao session close --auto-extract` produces lightweight learnings and auto-handoff at session boundary
- Handoff-to-learnings bridge — `ao handoff` now extracts decisions into `.agents/learnings/` automatically
- Session-type scoring in `ao inject --session-type` — 30% boost for matching session context (career, debug, research, brainstorm)
- Identity artifact support — `ao inject --profile` surfaces `.agents/profile.md` in session context
- MEMORY.md auto-promotion in `ao flywheel close-loop` (Step 7) after maturity transitions
- Session-type detection in `ao forge` output metadata
- Production RPI orchestration engine — `ao rpi serve <goal>` with SSE streaming and auto mode
- Knowledge mining — `ao mine` and `ao defrag` commands for automated codebase intelligence
- Context declarations — `ao inject --for <skill>` reads skill frontmatter `context:` block for scoped retrieval
- Sections include allowlist and context artifact directories for skill-scoped injection
- `ao handoff` command for structured session boundary isolation
- Behavioral guardrails — 3-layer hook defense-in-depth (intent-echo, research-loop-detector, task-validation-gate)
- Context enforcement hook and run-id namespaced artifact paths
- Headless invocation standards and RPI phase runner
- Nightly CI compile job for automated knowledge warmup
- Coverage ratchet gate with BATS integration tests for shell scripts
- Fuzz targets, property tests, and golden file contracts for CLI
- Git worker guard, embedded parity gate, and swarm evidence validation hooks
- Release cadence gate warns on releases within 7 days of previous

### Changed
- Coverage floor raised to 84% for `cmd/ao`, average floor to 95%
- Complexity ceiling tightened to 20 (from 25)
- Default session-start hook mode switched from manual to lean
- Hard quality gate on injection — maturity + utility filter
- Post-mortem redesigned as knowledge lifecycle processor
- RPI god-file split — 1,363 lines reduced to 203 with structured handoff schema
- Legacy RPI orchestrator retired — serve now uses phased engine (-1,121 lines)
- Council V2 findings synthesized into agent instructions and skill contracts
- 10k LOC of coverage-padding tests deleted; 72 stale tests quarantined
- Skill hardening — web security controls across 5 skills, CSRF protection, crank pre-flight
- Session-end hook wires `ao session close --auto-extract` before existing forge pipeline

### Fixed
- Flywheel signal chain — confidence decay, close-loop ordering, glob errors
- Path traversal in context enforcement hook and frontmatter parsing
- Race condition in handoff consumption at session boundary
- `ao mine` stabilized — dedup IDs, error propagation, `--since` window, empty output guard
- Hook test assertions aligned with warn-then-fail ratchet pattern (strict env required)
- Pre-mortem gate exit code corrected to 2 in strict mode (was 1)
- RPI serve event pipeline and coherence gate hardened
- jq injection via bare 8-hex run IDs in serve classifier
- Goals parser edge cases — paired backtick strip and rune-aware truncation
- UTF-8 truncation across six functions converted to rune-safe slicing
- CORS headers and stale doc references cleaned up
- Cross-wave worktree file collisions prevented
- hookEventName added to hookSpecificOutput JSON schema

## [2.19.3] - 2026-02-27

### Changed
- README highlights `ao search` (built on CASS) — indexes all chat sessions from every runtime unconditionally; adds Second Brain + Obsidian vault section with Smart Connections local/GPU embeddings and MCP semantic retrieval

## [2.19.2] - 2026-02-27

### Fixed
- CHANGELOG retrospectively updated to document all v2.19.1 post-tag commits (skills namespace fixes were shipped but not recorded)

## [2.19.1] - 2026-02-27

### Fixed
- Quickstart skill rewritten from 275 lines to 68 lines — removes 90-line ASCII diagram and 50-line intent router that caused 3+ minute runtime; now outputs ~8 lines and completes in under 30 seconds
- `truncateText` edge case: maxLen 1–3 now returns `"..."[:maxLen]` instead of the original string unchanged
- Dead anti-pattern promotion functions removed from `ao maturity` (`promoteAntiPatternsCmd`, `filterTransitionsByNewMaturity`, `displayAntiPatternCandidates`, ~99 LOC)
- Windows file-lock and signal support — replace no-op `filelock_windows.go` with real `LockFileEx`/`UnlockFileEx` via kernel32.dll; extract `syscall.Flock` and `syscall.Kill` into platform-specific helpers so the binary compiles on Windows without POSIX-only syscalls
- `heal.sh` Check 7 false positive — script reference integrity check now strips URLs before pattern matching, preventing remote `https://…/scripts/foo.sh` references from being validated as local files
- Security gate `BLOCKED_HIGH` — three persistent findings resolved: gosec G118 false positive (context cancel func returned to caller), golangci-lint nolint syntax (space in `// nolint:` directive), radon double-counting `reverse_engineer_rpi.py` from `skills-codex/` copy
- 71 stale `ao know *` and `ao quality *` namespace references replaced across 17 `skills-codex/` SKILL.md files — agents running rpi/evolve/crank were invoking non-existent commands from the pre-flatten CLI namespace
- Three HIGH-severity stale command references fixed across `skills/` and `skills-codex/`: `ao flywheel status` → `ao metrics flywheel status`, `ao settings notebook update` → `ao notebook update`, `ao start seed/init` → `ao seed`/`ao init`

### Added
- Spec-consistency gate (`scripts/spec-consistency-gate.sh`) validates contract files before crank spawns workers
- Command-surface parity gate (`scripts/check-cmdao-surface-parity.sh`) ensures all CLI leaf commands are tested
- `scripts/post-merge-check.sh` now validates `go mod tidy` sync and blocks on symlinks
- `scripts/merge-worktrees.sh` now propagates file deletions and preserves permissions
- Post-mortem preflight script checks reference file existence before council runs
- Hooks.json preflight validates script existence
- Windows binaries added to GoReleaser and SLSA attestation subject list

### Changed
- Coverage floor raised 78% → 80% with CI enforcement gate; Codecov threshold aligned to 75%
- Six truncation functions converted to rune-safe Unicode slicing
- `truncateID` in pool.go delegates to shared `truncateText`
- Crank skill invokes spec-consistency gate before spawning workers
- Vibe skill carries forward unconsumed high-severity next-work items as pre-flight context
- Release skill warns on unconsumed high-severity next-work items
- next-work JSONL schema formalized to v1.2
- Skills installation switched from `npx skills` to native curl installer (`bash <(curl -fsSL …/install.sh)`)
- README updated with 5-command summary, compound effect section, and `/vibe` breakdown

## [2.19.0] - 2026-02-27

### Added
- `ao mind` command for knowledge graph operations.
- New RPI operator surfaces: normalized C2/event plumbing plus `ao rpi stream`, `ao rpi workers`, and tmux worker nudge visibility.
- Codex install/bootstrap improvements, including native `~/.codex/skills` install and one-line installer flow.
- Windows binaries added to GoReleaser build outputs.

### Changed
- CLI namespace migration completed and aligned across hooks, docs, integration tests, and generated command references.
- Codex skill system moved to regenerated modular layout with codex-specific overrides and runtime prompt tailoring.
- CI/release gates hardened (codex runtime sections, release e2e validation, parity checks, stricter policy enforcement).
- High-complexity CLI paths refactored (`runRPIParallel`, `runDedup`, `parseGatesTable`) to lower cyclomatic complexity.

### Fixed
- Multiple post-mortem remediation waves landed for CLI/RPI/swarm reliability and edge-case handling.
- Hook delegation and integration behavior corrected for flat command namespace.
- `heal.sh` false-positive behavior reduced and doctor stale-path detection improved.
- Skill/doc parity and cross-reference drift issues corrected across codex and core skill catalogs.

### Removed
- Legacy inbox/mail command surface and stale/dead skill references from active catalogs.

## [2.18.2] - 2026-02-25

### Fixed
- `ao seed` now creates `.gitignore` and storage directories — reuses `setupGitProtection`, `ensureNestedAgentsGitignore`, and `initStorage` from `ao init`
- `ao seed` text updated from stale `ao inject`/`ao forge` to current MEMORY.md + session hooks paradigm
- MemRL feedback loop closed — `ao feedback-loop` command wired, `ao maturity --recalibrate` dry-run guard added
- Quickstart skill updated to reference `ao seed` and current flywheel docs
- CLI reference regenerated after `ao feedback-loop` and seed help text changes

### Changed
- `.agents/` session artifacts removed from git tracking
- PRODUCT.md updated — Olympus section removed, value props and skill tier counts corrected
- GOALS.md coverage directive updated to measured 78.8% (target 85%)

## [2.18.1] - 2026-02-25

### Changed
- SessionStart hook default mode changed from `manual` to `lean` — flywheel injection now fires every session
- Auto-prune enabled by default (`AGENTOPS_AUTO_PRUNE` defaults to `1`, opt-out via `=0`)
- Anti-pattern detection threshold lowered from `harmful_count >= 5` to `>= 3`
- Eviction confidence threshold relaxed from `< 0.2` to `< 0.3`
- Maturity promotion threshold in `--help` text synced with code (`0.7` → `0.55`)

### Fixed
- Empty learnings no longer inflate flywheel metrics — extract prompt skips empty files, pool ingest rejects "no significant learnings" stubs
- `ao pool ingest` now runs automatically in session-end hook after forge (was manual-only)
- 8 stale doc/comment references to old thresholds updated across hooks, ENV-VARS.md, HOOKS.md, using-agentops skill
- 13 empty stub learnings removed from `.agents/learnings/`

## [2.18.0] - 2026-02-25

### Added
- `ao notebook update` command — compound MEMORY.md loop that merges latest session insights into structured sections
- `ao memory sync` command — sync session history to repo-root MEMORY.md with managed block markers for cross-runtime access (Codex, OpenCode)
- `ao seed` command — plant AgentOps in any repository with auto-detected templates (go-cli, python-lib, web-app, rust-cli, generic)
- `ao lookup` command — retrieve specific knowledge artifacts by ID or relevance query (two-phase complement to `ao inject --index-only`)
- `ao constraint` command family — manage compiled constraints (list, activate, retire, review)
- `ao curate` command family — curation pipeline operations (catalog, verify, status)
- `ao dedup` command — detect near-duplicate learnings with optional `--merge` auto-resolution
- `ao contradict` command — detect potentially contradictory learnings
- `ao metrics health` subcommand — flywheel health metrics (sigma, rho, delta, escape velocity)
- `ao context assemble` command — build 5-section context packet briefings for tasks
- Work-scoped knowledge injection: `ao inject --bead <id>` boosts learnings tagged with the active bead
- Predecessor context injection: `ao inject --predecessor <handoff-path>` surfaces structured handoff context
- Compact knowledge index: `ao inject --index-only` outputs ~200 token index table for JIT retrieval
- Learning schema extended with `source_bead` and `source_phase` fields for work-context tracking
- `ao extract --bead <id>` tags extracted learnings with the active bead ID
- Citation-to-utility feedback pipeline in flywheel close-loop (stage 5)
- Global `~/.agents/` knowledge tier for cross-repo learning sharing (0.8 weight penalty, deduped)
- Bead metadata resolver reads from env vars (`HOOK_BEAD_TITLE`, `HOOK_BEAD_LABELS`) or cache file
- Goal templates embedded in binary (go-cli, python-lib, web-app, rust-cli, generic) for `ao goals init --template` and `ao seed`
- Platform-specific process-group isolation for goal check timeouts (Unix: SIGKILL pgid, Windows: taskkill /T)
- SessionStart hook rewritten with 3 startup modes: lean (default), manual, legacy — via `AGENTOPS_STARTUP_CONTEXT_MODE`
- SessionEnd hook now gates notebook update and memory sync on successful forge
- Type 3 setup hook template: `hooks/examples/50-agentops-bootstrap.sh`
- Constraint compiler hook: `hooks/constraint-compiler.sh`
- Codex-native skill format (`skills-codex/`) with install and sync scripts for cross-runtime skill delivery
- Comprehensive cmd/ao test coverage push — 500+ tests across 5 waves reaching 79.2% statement coverage (13 untestable functions excluded)

### Changed
- SessionStart hook default mode changed from full inject to `lean` (extract + lean inject, shrinks when MEMORY.md is fresh)
- `ao flywheel close-loop` now applies ALL maturity transitions (not just anti-pattern)
- `ao hooks` generated config uses script-based commands instead of inline ao invocations
- `ao rpi` prefers epic-type issues before falling back to any open issue

### Fixed
- `truncateText` now uses rune-safe `[]rune` slicing to avoid breaking multi-byte UTF-8 characters
- `syncMemory` extracted from Cobra handler for testability
- `parseManagedBlock` detects duplicate markers and refuses to parse (prevents data loss)
- `readNLatestSessionEntries` warns on skipped unreadable session files
- `readSessionByID` detects ambiguous matches and returns error instead of first substring match
- `findMemoryFile` broad contains-fallback removed (was matching wrong projects)
- `pruneNotebook` iteration capped at 100 to prevent runaway loops
- `MEMORY_AGE_DAYS` sentinel initialized to -1 (was 0, causing false lean-mode activation when file missing)
- Lean-mode guard now requires `MEMORY_AGE_DAYS >= 0` before comparing freshness
- Memory sync moved inside forge success gate in session-end hook
- `ao search --json` returns `[]` (empty JSON array) when no results, instead of human-readable text
- `ao doctor` returns `DEGRADED` status for warnings without failures (previously only HEALTHY/UNHEALTHY)
- `ao rpi status` goroutine leak fix — signal channel properly cleaned up
- Inline rune truncation in `formatMemoryEntry` replaced with shared `truncateText`
- 6 new tests for dedup, ambiguity detection, iteration cap, duplicate markers
- Cobra pflag state pollution between test invocations — explicit flag reset in `executeCommand()` helper
- Goals validate.sh outdated checks and missing validate.sh for 7 skills
- 10 tech debt findings from ag-8km+ag-chm post-mortem (stale nudge, scanner, docs)
- ao binary codesigned with stable Mach-O identifier
- Hook integration tests updated — removed 8 stale standalone ao-* hook tests consolidated into session-end-maintenance.sh

## [2.17.0] - 2026-02-24

### Added
- GOALS.md (v4) OODA-driven intent layer — markdown-based goals format with mission, north/anti stars, and steerable directives
- `ao goals init` interactive GOALS.md bootstrap with `--non-interactive` mode
- `ao goals steer` command to add, remove, and prioritize directives
- `ao goals prune` command to remove stale gates referencing missing paths
- `ao goals migrate --to-md` converter from GOALS.yaml to GOALS.md format
- `ao goals measure --directives` JSON output of active directives
- `ao goals validate` reports format and directive count
- Format-aware `ao goals add` writeback (auto-detects md or yaml)
- Go markdown parser library with case-insensitive heading matching and round-trip rendering (26 tests)
- `/goals` skill rewritten with 5 OODA verbs (init/measure/steer/validate/prune)
- `/evolve` Step 3 rewritten with directive-based cascade for idle reduction

### Fixed
- `ao rpi` falls back to any open issue when no epic exists (#50)
- RPI phased processing tests added (~230 lines) for writePhaseResult, validatePriorPhaseResult, heartbeat, and registry directory

## [2.16.0] - 2026-02-23

### Added
- Evolve idle hardening — disk-derived stagnation detection, 60-minute circuit breaker, rolling fitness files, no idle commits
- Evolve `--quality` mode — findings-first priority cascade that prioritizes post-mortem findings over goals
- Evolve cycle-history.jsonl canonical schema standardization and artifact-only commit gating
- `heal-skill` checks 7-10 with `--strict` CI gate for automated skill maintenance
- 6-phase E2E validation test suite for RPI lifecycle (gate retries, complexity scaling, phase summaries, promise tags)
- Fixture-based CLI regression and parity tests
- `ao goals migrate` command for v1→v2 GOALS.yaml migration with deprecation warning (#48)
- Goal failure taxonomy script and tests

### Changed
- CLI taxonomy, shared resolver, skill versioning, and doctor dogfooding improvements (6 architecture concerns)
- GoReleaser action bumped from v6 to v7
- Evolve build detection generalized from hardcoded Go gate to multi-language detection

### Fixed
- `ao pool list --wide` flag and `pool show` prefix matching (#47)
- Consistent artifact counts across `doctor`, `badge`, and `metrics` (#46)
- Double multiplication in `vibe-check` score display (#45)
- Skills installed as symlinks now detected and checked in both directories (#44)
- Learnings resolved by frontmatter ID; `.md` file count in maturity scan (#43)
- JSON output truncated at clean object boundaries (#42)
- Misleading hook event count removed from display (#41)
- Post-mortem schema `model` field and resolver `DiscoverAll` migration
- 15+ missing skills added to catalog tables in `using-agentops`
- Handoff example filename format corrected to `YYYYMMDDTHHMMSSZ` spec
- Quickstart step numbering corrected (7 before 8)
- OpenAI docs skill: added Claude Code MCP alternative to Codex-only fallback
- Dead link to `conflict-resolution-algorithm.md` removed from post-mortem
- `ao forge search` → `ao search` in provenance and knowledge skills
- OSS docs: root-level doc path checks, removed golden-init reference
- Reverse-engineer-rpi fixture paths and contract refs corrected
- Crank: removed missing script refs, moved orphans to references
- Codex-team: removed vaporware Team Runner Backend section
- Security skill: bundled `security-gate.sh`, fixed `security-suite` path
- Evolve oscillation detection and TodoWrite→Task tools migration
- Wired `check-contract-compatibility.sh` into GOALS.yaml
- Synced embedded skills and regenerated CLI docs