v2.0.0

🚀 Key Highlights

Micro-service Architecture

Includes training, inference, agent, and weight update services.

Hermes Agent Example

End-to-end agent built on the agent service and wired into the 2.0 training loop. Check out the Hermes RL training example for more details.

CLI Commands

A unified areal CLI to launch, manage, and operate each micro-service. See the per-service guides: training, inference, agent.

What's Changed

• perf(infra): pipeline controller initialization with background threads by @garrett4wade in #1294
• ci: add nightly workflow for long-running tests by @garrett4wade in #1312
• feat: support pp for Sglang by @TaoZex in #1162
• perf(archon): parallelize inference controller initialization by @garrett4wade in #1314
• fix(archon): improve HTTP client reliability and reduce logging verbosity by @garrett4wade in #1315
• refactor(experimental): remove redundant capacity grant from inference service by @garrett4wade in #1318
• refactor(experimental): add unified group semantics to inference service session lifecycle by @garrett4wade in #1321
• chore: migrate repo references from InclusionAI to areal-project by @garrett4wade in #1325
• fix(proxy): refuse default admin API key on non-loopback bind by @sebastiondev in #1323
• refactor: consolidate admin key validation into shared helper by @garrett4wade in #1328
• fix: Add error detection function and test for ZeroDivisionError and other errors alike by @chenzhiyi021 in #1332
• docs: Add OpenSSF Best Practices badge to README 📛 by @mingcheng in #1348
• gov: add new maintainer by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1349
• fix(utils): mask 2d sequence advantages by @haoyang9804 in #1346
• feat(awex): add colocated CUDA IPC weight transfer by @garrett4wade in #1310
• fix(infra): correct staleness capacity inflation after recovery by @daihaowz in #1345
• fix(test): add missing colocate field to wu_controller connect tests by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1357
• refactor(infra): backport rl infra cleanup by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1353
• feat(megatron): implement async_save with AsyncCallsQueue by @dingzhiqiang in #1356
• feat: controller v2 refactor by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1354
• fix(fsdp): maintain fp32 master weights for AdamW (#1292) by @guozhihao-224 in #1369
• chore: add 0516 community meeting materials and update agenda for the next biweekly sync by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1371
• docs: fix some typos by @jeis4wpi in #1352
• feat:enable v2 training pipeline with controller parity by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1363
• fix(trainer): skip controller-side CUDA sync in single-controller mode by @Adiactive in #1377
• fix[v2]: localize RTensor trajectories before reading on controller by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1387
• chore: migrate community governance files to external repository 📋 by @mingcheng in #1386
• feat(megatron): Qwen3.5 dense + MoE training/inference support via megatron-bridge by @Adiactive in #1384
• feat(distillation): add on-policy distillation using RolloutEngine by @zahrayousefijamarani in #1376
• docs(roadmap): add 2026 Q2 and H2 milestones by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1390
• Fix LoRA model training by @lifeiteng in #1385
• fix(v2/awex): unblock weight-update bring-up by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1401
• fix(engine): default shard_ids=None on clear_batches across all engines by @Adiactive in #1402
• docs: add community section with WeChat QR code to README 📢 by @mingcheng in #1409
• Supporting features for IcePop and KPop by @guojiapub in #1405
• fix: per-sample version tracking with loss_mask filter and multi-turn… by @pyq623 in #1408
• docs: add IcePop/KPop feature introduction by @guojiapub in #1424
• fix(vllm): forward frequency_penalty and stop in generation requests by @EazyReal in #1429
• fix(awex): allow disabling batch_send_recv use_group via AWEX_WU_USE_GROUP by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1414
• feat: disable megatron grad buffers CPU backup to save host memory by @HT-Yuan in #1393
• fix(network): find_free_ports ignores out-of-range exclude_ports by @EazyReal in #1436
• fix(reward): guard clevr_count_70k_reward_fn against scoring failures by @EazyReal in #1430
• feat(megatron): make MTP head opt-in to support Qwen3.6 MoE RL by @Adiactive in #1403
• feat(ppo): add CISPO loss surrogate (MiniMax-M1) by @EazyReal in #1412
• fix(CI): fix vlm_grpo CI OOM bug by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1438
• feat(cli): add experimental cli scaffold for service-style subcommands by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1440
• refactor: move 5 experimental modules into areal/v2 for 2.0 release by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1448
• feat: support v2 weight update disk mode for lora RL by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1450
• feat(cli): add training service cli by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1446
• feat(cli): add agent service cli by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1447
• feat(cli): add inference service cli by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1434
• feat(agent_service): add agent service with OpenClaw and Hermes examples by @IF007 in #1383
• feat(ppo): add reuse_train_logp proximal logp method by @Le8r0nJames in #1453
• fix(ppo): coerce ppo_n_minibatches to 1 for reuse_train_logp instead of raising by @Le8r0nJames in #1457
• Chore/add areal 2 report paper by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1461
• feat(launcher): add best-effort post-exit hook by @Le8r0nJames in #1459
• feat(megatron): add CP-safe vocab stats and MoE config support by @Le8r0nJames in #1460
• fix(ppo): handle variable-size trajectory groups in reward normalization by @Le8r0nJames in #1454
• fix(openai): parse tool_call arguments from JSON string to dict before chat template by @Le8r0nJames in #1463
• feat(swe): add SWE-bench RL training workflow example by @Le8r0nJames in #1462
• fix: fix safe-to-test CI workflow by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1456
• feat(openai): add proxy preprocessors and Qwen tool-call parsing by @Le8r0nJames in #1458
• test(ppo): update singleton leave-one-out group expectation by @Le8r0nJames in #1464
• chore: update AReaL 2.0 report paper by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1465
• chore: bump v2.0.0 by @sitabulaixizawaluduo in #1466

New Contributors

• @sebastiondev made their first contribution in #1323
• @mingcheng made their first contribution in #1348
• @haoyang9804 made their first contribution in #1346
• @jeis4wpi made their first contribution in #1352
• @zahrayousefijamarani made their first contribution in #1376
• @lifeiteng made their first contribution in #1385
• @guojiapub made their first contribution in #1405
• @pyq623 made their first contribution in #1408
• @EazyReal made their first contribution in #1429
• @IF007 made their first contribution in #1383
• @Le8r0nJames made their first contribution in #1453

Full Changelog: v1.0.4...v2.0.0