Engram v2.0.0-rc.8: MCP and Reliability Milestone

Engram v2.0.0-rc.8: MCP and Reliability Milestone

What's New

RC8 is 22 commits ahead of v2.0.0-rc.6. It makes MCP search responses more compact, protects delivery of the user's final answer, improves session-ownership recovery, makes maintenance operations fail more safely, and fixes TUI startup compatibility on Termux/Linux ARM64.

For supported workflows, RC8 includes the latest v2 hardening and validation. It remains a prerelease intended for testing and feedback. Keep a known-good installation available, and do not treat this as a declaration of universal production stability.

Changes Since RC6

MCP search and memory reliability

• Added bounded preview projections and compact response support for MCP mem_search, with complete observations still available through mem_get_observation (#1068).
• Preserved complete user-facing replies even when internal memory bookkeeping fails (#1038).
• Strengthened cwd-backed ownership validation, legacy ownership rescue, and actionable handling of ambiguous runtime sessions (#1064, #1065, #1066).

Safer maintenance and platform behavior

• Required an explicit confirmed selection before consolidation dry-runs can produce a merge plan (#1063).
• Deferred clipboard discovery until paste, preventing the RC6 startup failure on Termux/Linux ARM64 while preserving TUI paste behavior and input safety (#1069).

Release, CI, and operator hardening

• Added release and support policy, schema/protocol authority guidance, cloud production checks, Windows beta instructions, and updated RC installation guidance (#1029, #1037, #1042, #1043, #1044).
• Added publication/version coherence checks and a non-mutating go mod tidy -diff gate before GoReleaser (#1054, #1057, #1059).
• Hardened CI, action pinning, generated-dashboard drift detection, static analysis, dead-code detection, and cloud-image dependency monitoring (#1046, #1047, #1055, #1058, #1061, #1062).
• Removed stale clipboard module metadata so the immutable release source passes the tidy preflight (#1072).

RC7 Publication Note

The v2.0.0-rc.7 tag and cloud image were published from commit f8c4cdf, but its release workflow stopped at the tidy gate before GoReleaser. No RC7 GitHub Release archives or checksum manifest were published.

RC8 preserves that immutable history, includes the module-metadata correction, and provides the complete verified artifact set from current main.

Known Non-Blocking Follow-ups

These issues remain open and are not claimed as fixed in RC8:

• #1039: cap complete MCP mem_context output.
• #1026: repair stale sync mutation payloads and avoid unenrolled accumulation.
• #1013: define an explicit inbox for mutations from unenrolled projects.
• #886: prevent orphaned Windows processes from blocking Claude Desktop updates.

Installing It

Download the archive for your operating system and architecture, then verify it against checksums.txt before extracting it.

Linux example:

FILE="engram_2.0.0-rc.8_linux_amd64.tar.gz"
BASE="https://github.com/Gentleman-Programming/engram/releases/download/v2.0.0-rc.8"
curl -fLO "$BASE/$FILE"
curl -fLO "$BASE/checksums.txt"
grep -F "  $FILE" checksums.txt | sha256sum -c -
tar -xzf "$FILE"
./engram version

Expected version: 2.0.0-rc.8.

Community Testing

Please focus feedback on:

1. mem_search compact and legacy response paths, Unicode previews, and complete retrieval.
2. Legacy session ownership rescue and actionable ambiguity diagnostics.
3. TUI startup and paste behavior on Termux/Linux ARM64 and other supported platforms.
4. Windows setup and repeated MCP/plugin startup.
5. Cloud synchronization and consumption of the versioned cloud image.

When reporting a problem, include your OS, agent/client, engram version, exact command, and bounded relevant output: open an issue.

Validation

• Source: 869a3fb3aecc8353d95d2a47b108075e9398ecc1, 22 commits after RC6.
• Compare: v2.0.0-rc.6...v2.0.0-rc.8.
• Main CI: run 34110086772 passed all required jobs for the exact source commit.
• Release workflow: run 34114345559 completed successfully.
• Cloud image workflow: run 34114345548 completed successfully.
• Artifacts: six platform archives plus checksums.txt; all six archive checksums passed.
• Checksum manifest SHA-256: 303653c6edb04df0333d19ea4acdf9901944e88081d88441f54e8026c3d5aedc.
• GHCR multi-architecture index: sha256:968d3326782b94c1fc18ad041ba02dec53ce52bd9931fde86869778fb7e458c4 (linux/amd64, linux/arm64).
• Version evidence: GoReleaser injected 2.0.0-rc.8 into the release builds. Local execution of the Linux binary was unavailable because this validation host had neither WSL nor Docker; no unsupported runtime claim is made.

Distribution

This prerelease does not update the Homebrew stable line. Use a verified platform archive from this release.

Cloud image:

docker pull ghcr.io/gentleman-programming/engram:v2.0.0-rc.8

Immutable image:

docker pull ghcr.io/gentleman-programming/engram@sha256:968d3326782b94c1fc18ad041ba02dec53ce52bd9931fde86869778fb7e458c4

Contributors

Thank you to everyone who has helped harden the v2 release-candidate cycle.

Maintainers: @Alan-TheGentleman, @barbatdev, @dnlrsls.

Community contributors: @Alexter2003, @carolitascl, @CinloDev, @daniel-baf, @danielgap, @goutham80808, @gtrabanco, @jacsdev, @jarl9801, @MarsSall, @mgaldamez, @pablontiv, @pzentenoe, @Reaan06, @yudelsuarez.

What's Next

Further release-candidate work will continue to focus on stabilization, token efficiency, performance, and the known follow-ups above. This is a direction, not a guaranteed schedule.