v1.1.0 — ready to publicize

v1.1.0 — ready to publicize

The v1.0 line shipped the runtime; v1.1 ships the first 10 minutes a stranger spends with the runtime. No kernel refactor, no new dependencies, no abstractions — just the onboarding surface that turns "interesting README" into "I just ran it."

What's new

evolution-kernel init — three-question scaffolder (#28)

A new subcommand asks 3 questions — mission, template, allowed paths — and drops a valid evolution.yml in the current directory. Five starter templates ship as plain YAML and cover the common mission shapes:

• lint — drive a linter/formatter to zero violations
• coverage — raise test coverage
• perf — optimize a measurable workload
• benchmark — FunSearch / AlphaEvolve-style population search (k-branch parallel)
• custom — blank-ish starter

No interactive prompt library, no template base classes, no Python template generator — the wizard is 76 lines of stdlib input() calls, and the rendered output is fed through load_config() before it can hit disk, so a broken template can never escape.

examples/quickstart/ — see the loop close in 1.4 seconds (#30)

A turn-key demo that takes a stranger from git clone to evolution/accepted commit in one shell snippet, zero cost, no API key:

pip install -e . && pip install ruff
bash examples/quickstart/setup.sh
evolution-kernel --config examples/quickstart/evolution.yml \
                 --repo /tmp/ek-quickstart-target \
                 --ledger /tmp/ek-quickstart-ledger --loop

Measured wall-clock on a developer laptop: 1.4 s. The mission is small on purpose (drive ruff to zero violations on src/messy.py) so the entire closed loop — worktree sandbox, scope enforcement, ledger writes, evolution/accepted branch advancing — fits in one terminal scroll. No LLM in the loop; the planner/executor/evaluator are deterministic Python scripts committed into the demo target itself. This is intentional: the example demonstrates the runtime, not LLM smarts. For the LLM-driven story, see ⬇.

examples/oss_fix_demo/ — real OSS fix via claude CLI (#32)

The companion to quickstart, pointed at a real published OSS package: python-slugify v8.0.4 (1,106 LoC, MIT). The executor is claude -p --permission-mode acceptEdits, billed against the operator's Claude Pro / Max subscription — no API key, no per-token charge.

Verified end-to-end (2026-05-17):

• 10 real ruff violations on the cloned target
• Claude makes the semantic edits (F401 → explicit as-alias re-exports), wall-clock 34 s
• A ruff check --fix && ruff format postprocess mops up structural autofixes (I001 import sort)
• Run 0001 accepted, evolution/accepted advanced, real commit bae97a8 landed
• Total --loop time: 48 s, $0 marginal cost

The realistic split — LLM does semantic work, deterministic tooling handles structural cleanup — mirrors how production teams actually chain agents with formatters.

README hero block (#34)

The first thing a visitor sees is now a copy-pasteable ▶ Try in 10 minutes snippet plus a compact ASCII workflow diagram showing Observe → Plan → Execute → Evaluate → accept/reject → ledger. The existing investor-narrative Motivation / SWE-bench Verified worked-example sections are intact below.

Numbers

• 102 tests pass under python -m unittest discover -s tests on Python 3.10 and 3.12 (99 baseline + 3 new for the init wizard, covering all 5 templates via subTest).
• evolution_kernel/*.py: 1,969 lines — well under the v1.1 soft cap of baseline + 200 (= 2,089).
• Single runtime dependency (PyYAML) preserved.
• No kernel changes — every new behavior lives in init_wizard.py, the templates, or under examples/. The runtime that v1.0.0 froze is byte-identical.

Issues closed

• #27 evolution-kernel init subcommand + 5 YAML templates
• #29 examples/quickstart/ 10-minute zero-cost ruff cleanup demo
• #31 examples/oss_fix_demo/ real OSS fix via claude CLI
• #33 README hero — ▶ Try in 10 minutes + ASCII workflow

Migration

None. v1.1 is a strict superset of v1.0 on the kernel surface. Existing configs and ledgers continue to work unchanged.