v4.0.0-rc.1 — Verbs

Released: 2026-07-11

Release candidate. Panda Verbs is the public skill pack. Personal context,
memory, runtimes, schedulers, connectors, and project truth stay with the host.

Breaking

• Product, repository, plugin, and namespace rename to Panda Verbs,
  panda-verbs, verbs@verbs, and /verbs:*.
• /pandastack:* has no alias. Claude Code and Codex must remove the old plugin
  before installing verbs@verbs; otherwise stale v3 policies remain active.
• /ship knowledge and the knowledge-ship alias moved out of the public pack.
  Knowledge lifecycle and persistence belong to the host's knowledge system.
• scripts/verbs-state, scripts/pandastack-state, and the project lifecycle
  store are removed. State belongs to the host/project.

Changed

• The product definition is now one sentence: "An opinionated skill pack for
  taking software work from ambiguity to verified delivery."
• manifest.toml owns the complete product dictionary. scripts/verbs sync
  deterministically generates all Claude, Codex, and Agents loader metadata.
• Automatic plugin hooks are removed. DISPATCH.md and the reference guard
  scripts remain available for hosts that opt in explicitly.
• verbs doctor checks the 14-skill source surface and installed plugin parity.
  The retired capability map, ticket/worktree policy hook, lifecycle state
  helper, and /loop driver kickoff are gone.
• Claude Code and Codex both use their real local marketplace installers.
  Hermes remains selective manual import; OpenClaw is experimental.

Compatibility

• scripts/pandastack remains a one-line RC forwarding shim with a deprecation
  notice on stderr. The old state CLI has no v4 replacement.
• PANDASTACK_VERIFY_GATE remains an RC fallback when the new variable is
  unset for hosts that wire the optional verify adapter.
• GitHub's old repository URL redirects after the rename. Recreating the old
  repository name is intentionally unsupported because it breaks that redirect.
• Migration pins v3.4.2 commit
  8d9a382b74d5b3e0ef0b6e91375fab3a172a916f as an immutable rollback
  checkout through the RC dogfood window.

Verified

• Generated metadata fails red on product id, repository, hero, category,
  version, or skill-surface drift.
• Automated preflight proves the packaged tree and synthetic cache scanner.
  The RC operator gate separately installs the exact tagged checkout in
  disposable Claude and Codex profiles before the tag is pushed.
• Prerelease tags publish with --prerelease --latest=false; archives and their
  SHA-256 checksums use the panda-verbs-v<version> prefix.