AIWG 2026.8.19 — Smaller installs, more trustworthy graphs

[jmagly]

AIWG 2026.8.19 is out.

The most visible change is also the simplest: aiwg use all now gives every provider the compact kernel by default. You keep the small set of orientation and maintenance skills in context, while the full catalog stays available through aiwg discover and aiwg show. Existing installations are cleaned up on the next deployment without removing operator-owned files.

If you maintain an integration that genuinely needs the old fully materialized surface, it is still available explicitly:

aiwg use all --provider codex --copy-all

The artifact graph also got more faithful. Relative Markdown links between indexed local artifacts can become scoped markdown-link edges; global graphs appear in normal index statistics; and symlinked or junctioned artifact directories are followed with cycle protection. These changes matter most in shared-corpus and split-root projects, where an apparently empty graph or low coverage figure can otherwise be a scanner artifact rather than a property of the project.

A useful way to try the release:

aiwg use all --provider codex
aiwg discover "release publication verification"
aiwg index build
aiwg index stats

I would especially like to hear:

• Does the kernel-only default leave the right capabilities close at hand for your provider?
• Are there workflows where you still need --copy-all, and what makes the materialized surface necessary?
• If you use a shared or split-root artifact corpus, do the new graph and coverage results match what you expect?

Release links:

• GitHub release
• npm: aiwg, @aiwg/cli, @aiwg/cockpit
• Full release notes
• CHANGELOG entry