TRACE-OS 0.1.0-rc24

Changes in 0.1.0-rc24

TRACE-OS now carries the licence its paper carries on arXiv, describes itself as the paper does, and is published from a new repository whose history begins with this release.
Its tools, records and instructions are those of 0.1.0-rc23; records, registries and ledger rows written by an earlier release keep their meaning.

The licence

• LICENSE is no longer the Apache License 2.0. It is a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to distribute, modelled on the arXiv.org licence under which the paper is posted, and the two authors reserve every other right.
• You may install and use TRACE-OS in your own research, teaching and evaluation, let its setup and updates change your project's files, edit it to configure it for your projects, and share it with the people you work with on those projects. This permission does not end.
• You may not distribute, publish, sell or sublicense TRACE-OS or a version of it, or make it publicly available, in a public repository or as part of a public project for instance, without the authors' written permission.
• The authors keep their copyright and stay free to license or transfer it, to a publisher for instance. The licence claims nothing in the research, records, manuscripts or data you make with TRACE-OS, and it comes without warranty.
• Setup still does not copy LICENSE into a project, because a project's own licence is its owner's choice. The export manifest names the licence LicenseRef-TRACE-OS-Nonexclusive-Distrib.

How TRACE-OS describes itself

• README.md describes TRACE-OS as the paper does: an operating system for AI-assisted research projects, in which researchers direct the work and AI agents carry it out and record it, putting the five TRACE principles into practice, and it names the paper.

The distribution repository

• From this release TRACE-OS is published on a new repository, amrhs-zohrevand/trace-os, whose history begins at 0.1.0-rc24, with one commit, one tag and one pre-release for each release as before. It stays private until the authors make it public.
• The earlier candidates, 0.1.0-rc1 to rc23, are withdrawn and are not for use or redistribution. They were only ever available to the two authors, and 0.1.0-rc19 to rc23 carried the Apache License 2.0; they stay in a private archive repository, marked withdrawn there.
• SETUP-AGENT.md and scripts/kit_projects.py say that the releases page carries 0.1.0-rc24 and later, and that a chain from an earlier release takes the earlier archives from a folder named with --release-store.

Release

• The supported pair 0.1.0-rc23 to 0.1.0-rc24 is nominated, with unchanged profiles, agent adapters and schemas, and the rc23 archive joins the pinned releases list with the digest its release page published (0ac1f54b...767e). No managed instruction section changes its version.

Updating from 0.1.0-rc23, rc22 or rc21

• A project on 0.1.0-rc23 updates in one step with this archive, as any single update does; the update changes SETUP-AGENT.md, RELEASE-NOTICE.md and scripts/kit_projects.py.
• A project on 0.1.0-rc22 or rc21 updates through the chain (--update-chain), which applies rc23, and rc22 before it, on the way. Their archives are not on the releases page: name a folder that holds them with --release-store, and each is checked against the digest this release pins, whatever its file name. kit_projects.py takes the same --release-store, with --release-archive or with --download. The authors, the only people who had those candidates, keep their archives.
• A section edited under a compatibility declaration for its current version stays compatible, because no section's version changes.
• A project's README.md is the project's own once setup seeds it, so an update leaves it as an earlier candidate wrote it, including that candidate's licence sentence; its person may change that line.

Limits

• The licence was drafted by claude-opus-5-5 from the arXiv licence and has not been read by a lawyer. It names the two authors as the copyright holders, which an employer's rules on work made in employment may change.
• Copies of 0.1.0-rc19 to rc23 that the authors already hold keep the Apache License 2.0 they came with; withdrawing those candidates stops their distribution and does not change the terms of copies already made.
• This candidate changes text and one message of kit_projects.py; its checks are the release checks of 0.1.0-rc23 run again on this cut, and no model review was run. No person has accepted the work.
• AH-354 (the note a rehearsal run lost) and AH-357 (an automatic exclusion keep keeps) remain open, as in 0.1.0-rc23.
• Only macOS on Apple silicon with Python 3.12 was run; Linux and Windows were not.

Updating a project from 0.1.0-rc23 or earlier

Ask the project's agent, in your own words, to update the kit: its AGENTS.md sends it to the Update section of SETUP-AGENT.md, which says how to find this release, check the archive against trace-os-0.1.0-rc24.zip.sha256, and show you the plan before applying it. A project on 0.1.0-rc23 updates in one step. A project on an earlier candidate updates through the chain, whose earlier archives are not published here: name the folder that holds them with --release-store.

To update every TRACE-OS project on your machine at once, unpack this archive outside your projects and run its own scripts/kit_projects.py: plan --root <folder> --release-archive trace-os-0.1.0-rc24.zip --sha256-file trace-os-0.1.0-rc24.zip.sha256 --release-store <folder of earlier archives> shows what would change in each, changing nothing, and update with the same arguments and --all applies after your yes, skipping projects with uncommitted changes and committing nothing.

First published here, on 2026-10-16, from the export run against trace-os-dev commit a40d239 in a clean detached checkout. This repository's history begins with this release; the earlier candidates are withdrawn.

This is a release candidate: its status, what it was tested on and its limits are in the archive's RELEASE-NOTICE.md.

Licence: perpetual, non-exclusive licence to distribute; see LICENSE.