v0.11.0-alpha

[nicotem]

v0.11.0-alpha: QualCoder 4.0 interop conventions

Pre-release. Install or upgrade with pip install --upgrade qualcoder-mcp, then restart your MCP host fully so it reloads the tool schemas. Full details: [CHANGELOG](https://github.com/nicotem/qualcoder_mcp/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md), [INSTALL](https://github.com/nicotem/qualcoder_mcp/blob/main/INSTALL.md), [PRIVACY](https://github.com/nicotem/qualcoder_mcp/blob/main/PRIVACY.md).

QualCoder 4.0 (currently a 4.0-Beta pre-release) ships its own AI assistant and defines conventions that live inside the project itself. This release makes qualcoder-mcp follow them, so a project touched by both tools behaves consistently. Schema-dependent conventions are detected by probing the project database, never by version strings; projects from QualCoder 3.8.x keep their previous behaviour. No tool was added or removed (67 in the full toolset, 20 in core); the changes are new optional arguments, new result fields, and a few changed defaults.

Highlights

• Memo privacy (#####). Everything from the first ##### marker in a memo is the researcher's private zone. Every read now strips it silently, searches match only the public part (with no way to probe the private zone through result counts), and every memo write preserves an existing private zone verbatim. Exported files (REFI-QDA, codebook, coded-segments report) keep full memos for parity with QualCoder's own exports and say so.
• Private notes and deletions. Deleting a coding or annotation whose memo carries a private note requires confirm_private_note_deletion=true, and a backup is always taken for such rows even when backups are switched off. Cascade previews report how many private notes an operation would remove.
• Attribution. New optional QUALCODER_MCP_AI_CODER_NAME. The default stays AI Coding Assistant; set it to AI Agent to group this server's work with QualCoder 4.0's built-in assistant in its visibility, undo, and reports. All rows this server creates now carry the configured name (previously some carried the project's coder name or "MCP Import").
• Coder visibility on 4.0 projects. Reads and analytics honour QualCoder's per-coder visibility by default and disclose when hidden-coder filtering shaped a result (a count, never names). A coder argument reads one coder's rows from the full data. Writes that target a hidden coder's row by id are refused unless allow_hidden_coder=true, and echoes for such rows carry ids only.
• Backups and copies. Workspace copies now apply QualCoder's own backup ignore set (no more duplicating the plaintext search.sqlite index or live sidecars). Backups and copies skip symlinks that point outside the project, dangle, or loop, and report what they skipped; a copy that fails part-way cleans up after itself.
• Detecting an open QualCoder 4.0 window. 4.0 removed the lock file this server relied on. select_project, get_current_project, analyze_for_coding, and the restore_backup preview now report qualcoder_gui_signals: heuristics from database sidecars, recent AI-index and chat activity, and a guarded local process scan. They warn and ask ("appears to be open"); they never refuse on their own. An open 4.0 window will not display external writes until the project is reopened.
• Recovery hint. Every "no project selected" error names the last project used on this machine, so a host that recycles the server process (observed with LM Studio 0.4.12) recovers with one select_project call. The selection is never restored automatically.

Also in this release

British English is now the house spelling for all prose: documentation, tool and prompt descriptions, and runtime messages. Identifiers such as analyze_for_coding, sanitize_formulas and recolor_code are unchanged. The repository gains CITATION.cff (citation metadata with the maintainer's ORCID) and CONTRIBUTING.md (how to report issues, how changes are reviewed before merge, style rules and scope). The LM Studio recipe in INSTALL.md now records a functional verification against LM Studio 0.4.22; model-quality evaluation for local models is still planned work.

Upgrading from 0.10.x

No migration step. Project files gain no tables or columns; session files are unchanged; the only new on-disk state is ~/.qualcoder_mcp/mru_project.json. Every new argument is optional and 0.10 call shapes keep working. Behaviour changes on every project: private memo zones are no longer returned to the AI; non-coding rows are attributed to the configured AI coder name; private-note deletions need confirmation and always back up; copies skip outward symlinks and the search index. Behaviour changes only on 4.0 projects: visibility-honouring reads with a possible coder_visibility block, hidden-coder write refusals, and memo carry-over on merge_category. Messages now use colons, semicolons, or commas where they used em dashes. The deprecated session_id duplicate in session-tool responses is still emitted and will be removed in a later release; read coding_session_id.

Quality gates

Built against QualCoder master at pinned commit 9bddf17. Passed a QA round, a Security gate, and two re-verification rounds, each with adversarial verification of every finding; suite at the release commit: 1534 passed, 45 skipped, 0 failed; CI green on macOS, Ubuntu, and Windows with Python 3.10 and 3.13.

Not in this release

pseudonymise_source, deferred from 0.10, is planned for a later 0.11.x or 0.12 release. Support and bug reports: GitHub Issues only. This remains experimental research software; please back up your projects (the server also does, before every write).

---

This discussion was created from the release v0.11.0-alpha.