ContextLean v0.3.0 — Balanced

ContextLean v0.3.0 — Balanced

Bootstrap once. Read less. Change locally.

ContextLean v0.3.0 makes Balanced the current product contract: compact maintained
project guidance that helps coding agents find the right code, avoid unnecessary
exploration, make focused changes and verify them proportionally.

Balanced runtime contract

The ordinary coding guidance retains owner-first/search-first navigation, the reuse
ladder, focused implementation and safety constraints, root-cause bug fixing,
proportional verification, reuse of equivalent passed checks, and targeted map
correction when work invalidates mapped information or encounters stale entries.

Representative automatic context falls from 5,486 to 4,752 bytes (−13.38%).
This measures the representative generated AGENTS.md plus its Claude wrapper;
project-specific maps vary. It is not a model-token or performance guarantee.

Intentional product simplification

Historical bootstrap compatibility no longer defines the runtime contract. Setup
no longer requires a historical facet-transfer certificate or measurement report.
Ordinary work no longer requires map checking after every task, mandatory project
Skill creation/discovery, or a mandatory Lean Review handoff in generated projects.

Architecture/refactor detail remains in the explicitly requested Lean Review.
Project Skill authoring/sharing is optional documentation. Claude wrappers/imports
and safe exclusions remain Bootstrap/install responsibilities. No automatic Skill
invocation, runtime package, hooks or telemetry is introduced.

Behavioral validation

The separate Balanced product-change validation contains six Old-versus-Balanced
Refactor sessions: 6/6 passed submitted tests, original regression tests and
acceptance tests, including independent offline grading. No material retained-contract
regression was found in this task. Balanced preserved the tested Refactor behavior
after simplifying the runtime contract.

The experiment does not establish equivalence for complex architectural refactors.
Three pairs do not justify statistical-significance claims. The historical v0.2.1
30-session study and its −8.96% descriptive token aggregate remain historical
performance evidence; they are not v0.3.0 performance results.

Balanced validation ·
Historical evidence provenance ·
Contract detail ·
Release verification