Changelog

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

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[Unreleased]

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 .agents/learnings/2026-04-19-orchestrator-compression-anti-pattern.md, surfaced via ao inject at session start. 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.

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.

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.

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.

[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 ½/4/6+) 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