Benchside 0.4.0

Benchside 0.4.0

Eight research roles, simpler setup and readable private records.

• Broad supervisor: pi supports exploratory, qualitative and planning work without demanding a hypothesis. pi-hypothesis retains focused hypothesis critique.
• Private continuity: save research questions and answers alongside decisions; preserve existing sitting history and decision wording.
• Readable local records: agent/ holds structured state; researcher/projects/<project name>/ holds automatically refreshed copies of the complete saved history. Setup asks once for ODT (default), Markdown or both.
• Lighter setup: keep five independent participation choices together, defer analysis-source/activity-label questions until needed, allow multiple disciplines, and suggest relevant roles sparingly.
• Community direction: contribute scientific role profiles through PRs. Shared workaround discovery and researcher connections are planned, not built.
• Agent-led installation: clearer installer discovery and honest capability checks across hosted and local agents.

Download

Installation route	Asset
Claude plugin	benchside-claude-plugin-0.4.0.zip
OpenAI / portable plugin	benchside-plugin-0.4.0.zip
Claude standalone skill	benchside-claude-0.4.0.zip
Python runtime	benchside-0.4.0-py3-none-any.whl

Give a capable agent the repository and ask it to set up Benchside using SETUP.md. It should install through available tools and ask only for choices or approvals it needs. Hosted accounts without agent-accessible installation tools may still require manual ZIP upload. Installation does not itself grant execution, durable storage or network access.

This is a downloadable GitHub release, not a public plugin-directory listing or PyPI publication. Do not use GitHub's generated source ZIP as a plugin.

Updating

Update every agent sharing a store before writing new research-question or multiple-discipline records. Existing open sittings retain their original role rules; begin a new sitting to use the broader supervisor.

Existing flat local stores remain supported. Organise them into the split layout only after every sharing agent has been updated and stopped. Migration verifies a copy, retains a private backup and preserves project identities, preferences and receipts. Generated ODT/Markdown edits do not update the journal; ask Benchside to record corrections. Native cloud notebooks keep their existing storage format.

Full release notes · Readable-record guide

Validation

536 core tests, 72 receiver tests and 64 reporting tests pass. GitHub CI passed for the updated build on Python 3.11 and 3.14. All three archives pass offline cold-install checks across all eight roles, local and native restore, ODT/Markdown export and damaged-dependency refusal. Independent review findings were fixed and documented on PR #10. The compatible receiver is deployed. A registered synthetic usage report verified the new role and multiple disciplines through the production endpoint, and Benchside’s client verified its receipt and duplicate retry. The reporting import confirmed the synthetic object was excluded and existing research observations and aggregates stayed unchanged. No real research data was submitted for these release checks.

These checks cover code and packaging, not advice quality for every model or live storage capability in every cloud account. Verify saving and fresh-chat restoration in the intended account before relying on it for research.