rpotato v0.53.0 - Bounded Runtime Architecture and Autonomous Grounding

Release date: 2026-07-29

This minor release completes a repository-wide responsibility refactor and makes freshness-sensitive questions enter runtime-owned web grounding before a small local model can answer from stale memory. The public CLI and TUI command surface remains compatible.

Included

• Replaces named product, event, and answer-shape exceptions with generic freshness features, typed query plans, evidence coverage, and answer binding.
• Keeps local repository questions and explicit no-web requests offline while routing volatile facts, current versions, and empirical comparisons through bounded WebSearch, WebOpen, and WebFind.
• Preserves runtime source attribution in generated and fallback grounded answers and rejects stale, conflicting, or unrelated evidence.
• Answers current-model identity questions from runtime configuration without intercepting model comparison or recommendation requests.
• Keeps ordinary active conversations tolerant of stale historical source pointers while explicit /resume reports invalid resume artifacts.
• Splits TUI, context, model, backend, install, workflow, patch, collaboration, web, CLI, persistence, terminal, tests, release notes, and retrospectives into bounded owners.

Compatibility and boundaries

• Existing public commands, stored sessions, model artifacts, lazy projectors, and managed llama.cpp behavior remain compatible.
• Web evidence remains bounded, read-only, untrusted input and grants no browser, shell, filesystem-write, credential, or approval authority.
• Supported release targets remain macOS Apple Silicon, macOS Intel, Linux x86_64, Linux ARM64, and Windows x86_64.
• GitHub Releases remains the only supported binary distribution channel.
• This refactor makes no new model-quality, benchmark, memory, or hardware claims.