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Backpack Runtime v0.2.0-alpha.1

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@github-actions github-actions released this 13 Sep 19:17
· 14 commits to main since this release
v0.2.0-alpha.1
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Backpack Runtime v0.2.0-alpha.1

This is the second public alpha. Interfaces and behavior remain subject to change before beta.

Install

Windows x64:

irm https://backpack.run/install.ps1 | iex

Linux x64 and macOS arm64 preview:

curl -fsSL https://backpack.run/install.sh | sh

Highlights

  • Experimental Codex CLI, Claude Code, and OpenCode launch integrations with child-only provider routing and isolated configuration.
  • OpenAI Responses and Anthropic Messages compatibility subsets with structured streaming and tool-result continuation tests.
  • A secure explicit backpack update command with stable/prerelease/exact-version selection, SHA-256 verification, bounded archive extraction, Unix rollback, and safe Windows staging.
  • Schema-versioned model, compute-target, session, and job state with deterministic legacy migration, backups, atomic replacement, and future-version refusal.
  • Expanded backpack models, backpack model show, interactive landing, and sanitized doctor diagnostics.
  • GitHub artifact attestations for tagged release archives and checksums.
  • Deployed hardened, channel-aware installers at backpack.run/install.sh and backpack.run/install.ps1, with idempotent user PATH configuration and an explicit opt-out.
  • Explicit opt-in qualification jobs for real macOS arm64, Codex/model, and SSH execution.
  • Resumable model downloads with exact HTTP range validation, size/SHA-256 verification, and atomic finalization. An 18.56 GB Qwen3-Coder transfer recovered from three real upstream resets.
  • Execution-qualified Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B chat, structured tool-result continuation, and streaming tool arguments through managed llama.cpp b10618 on Windows CPU.
  • Backpack Cloud private-alpha login, live model discovery, and secured Chat Completions/Responses/Messages proxying. The qualified Cloud model completed both a direct inference smoke and a real Codex CLI launch.

Compatibility status

Windows amd64 remains the supported alpha platform. Linux amd64 remains an experimental preview with real CPU GGUF qualification. macOS arm64 remains an archive/build preview until the opt-in Apple Silicon execution gate passes.

Agent launch is experimental. Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B and the Backpack chat API passed a real structured tool-result continuation, while the installed Codex binary and Responses compatibility protocol passed deterministic tool-loop qualification. A combined real-model Codex run connected and emitted tool requests, but the nested qualification host enforced read-only execution; the edit/test gate therefore remains pending. Claude Code and OpenCode binaries were unavailable on the qualification host. SSH has deterministic implementation coverage but no configured real host qualification.

Backpack Cloud is a private alpha. Use backpack login, inspect backpack cloud models, and pass an advertised :cloud ID to backpack launch. The live API currently qualifies qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct:cloud; it does not advertise qwen3-coder-next:cloud. Device private keys remain local, Cloud access tokens remain in memory, and third-party agents receive only a random local-daemon credential.

Z-Image and Wan remain package-change-required; no GPU output is claimed. Qwen3-Coder 30B A3B is execution-qualified on Windows CPU; other large, split, and projector GGUF paths remain experimental or preflight-only according to the model matrix.

Upgrade and rollback

Run backpack update --check --prerelease to inspect the prerelease channel and backpack update --prerelease to update after this release exists. Windows stages the verified replacement beside the running executable and prints manual completion instructions; Unix-like systems activate it atomically while preserving a timestamped rollback binary.

Existing legacy state is migrated on first read. Backpack writes a .v0.bak copy before rewriting non-versioned state and refuses unknown future schema versions without modifying them.

Known limitations

  • Custom POSIX installation directories are not written to a shell profile automatically; add a custom directory to PATH explicitly.
  • macOS managed-runtime inference, Linux audio, real SSH, and real-model agent execution require external qualification infrastructure.
  • API and CLI behavior remains pre-1.0 and follows the documented alpha compatibility policy.

Include sanitized backpack doctor --json output in bug reports. Report vulnerabilities privately through GitHub Security Advisories.

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