v0.16.0 — The Stewarded Graph

v0.16.0 — The Stewarded Graph

Released 2026-08-19.

Helixir v0.16.0 makes installation and post-install administration one coherent
product surface while preserving HelixDB as the only memory and RBAC source of
truth.

Package distribution

• Signed releases feed both nikita-rulenko/tap for Homebrew and a dedicated
  signed APT repository for Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04+ (amd64, arm64).
• Formula and Debian packages are derived from the same ABI-gated release
  archives. Container images reuse those native artifacts instead of compiling
  Rust again in Docker or QEMU.
• Package managers own immutable binaries and runtime resources only. Removal
  preserves ~/.helixir, HelixDB volumes, models, configuration, backups and
  MCP registrations.
• helixir onboard remains the single orchestrator after any install method.
  It distinguishes managed-local, existing-local and remote HelixDB, provisions
  mandatory NLI and verified embeddings, registers detected clients and
  converges permanent graph RBAC.
• Repeat onboarding of an existing enabled-RBAC installation reuses the
  persisted global administrator instead of mistaking the local OS account for
  a new bootstrap operator.

Shared installer and hardened API

• CLI and browser installation use the same typed
  detect → prepare → apply → verify service and native executor modules.
• Long-running browser applies are supervisor-owned, cursor-journaled and
  resumable after browser, container or supervisor interruption.
• The versioned browser API is global-admin-only, origin checked, body bounded,
  no-store, secret-safe and intentionally has no CORS surface.
• The web container remains non-root/read-only and receives neither the Docker
  socket nor the host home directory. An authenticated native supervisor owns
  the small allowlisted set of host mutations.

Stewardship room

• Global admins can inspect a redacted effective configuration and change an
  allowlisted operational subset. Provider credentials are write-only and are
  never returned to the browser or mutation receipt.
• Every patch is reviewed before apply, validated against effective cross-field
  constraints, written atomically with a private backup, and passed to the same
  reload coordinator as helixir config apply.
• The managed backup vault lists opaque archive ids rather than filesystem
  paths. Create, verify and restore are disabled for existing-local and remote
  databases.
• Restore requires the exact phrase RESTORE <archive-id>, creates a fresh
  safety snapshot first, and probes the real HelixDB schema after recovery. An
  incompatible restore automatically rolls back to the safety snapshot and
  verifies the current schema again.

Embedding cache identity

• The optional persistent embedding cache is private, byte bounded, locked
  across writers and atomically compacted.
• Its namespace includes cache format, provider, normalized endpoint, model,
  artifact revision, vector dimension and explicit epoch. An identity change
  causes a safe miss instead of reusing vectors from another embedding space.
• Ollama aliases resolve to the installed model digest automatically. Opaque
  remote providers can be invalidated explicitly with
  HELIXIR_EMBED_CACHE_EPOCH.
• Persisted keys contain a SHA-256 digest of the exact input; raw memory text is
  not written to the cache.

Documentation contract

• The root README is now a 296-line GitHub product landing page: product
  identity, explicit “is / is not”, a working Quick Start, core capabilities,
  security boundaries, and a direct map into detailed documentation. Exact
  installation and operational reference moved to maintained
  doc/installation.md and doc/operations.md instead of competing for the
  first screen.
• GitHub-native Mermaid diagrams now render the runtime architecture, an
  RBAC-scoped memory graph, and the active data-model core. Their source stays
  inline and reviewable; no duplicated binary render can drift. This adopts the
  durable presentation idea raised in #38 against the current v0.16 contracts.
• The product README, upgrade guide, glossary, engineering guides, integration
  templates, canonical Agent Skill and embedded cognitive protocol now describe
  the same permanent-RBAC identity/group rules.
• Schema documentation is generated from the current 22-node, 5-vector,
  30-edge, 180-query contract and distinguishes live producers from genuinely
  reserved types. Removed historical edge names are no longer presented as a
  roadmap.
• Retrieval documentation distinguishes a reasoning-model-free read path from
  the embedding request needed for a cold semantic query and records the
  primary-key expansion used to contain HelixDB v2.3.5 arena growth.
• The FastThink timeout and model-DELETE paths are documented as fail-closed
  and supersession-only respectively; neither silently writes or destroys data.
• Documentation lint now checks schema/MCP counts and rejects removed schema
  names in evergreen engineering guides.

Upgrade

There is no HelixDB schema migration from v0.15.0. Upgrade the package or
release binaries, run helixir onboard, then helixir doctor --json, verify
helixir control-plane status, and restart long-lived MCP clients so they load
the current binaries, prompts, resources and skill.