v3.5.0

P.O.W.E.R. 3.5.0 release candidate

This document describes the 3.5.0 candidate contract. It is not a published
release until a clean signed v3.5.0 tag, package/SBOM artifacts, and remote
readback pass the final release workflow.

Core outcome

• Lean base installation and offline FTS are the canonical path.
• Dense, reranker, graph, query-expansion, and ROT implementations live under
  power_framework.experimental; core keeps lazy compatibility shims and does
  not import optional adapters during startup.
• auto reports actual_mode, fallback_reason, and index age; explicit
  semantic retrieval remains fail-closed when its optional profile is absent.
• CLI, local MCP, and library callers share typed application envelopes for
  discovery, retrieval, proposal/apply, receipts, handoff, and degraded fleet status.
• Portable lifecycle adapters cover session-start, post-write verification,
  pre-compact checkpoint proposals, and stop/drift checks without silent
  semantic writes; the fresh-agent chaos suite records eight redacted scenarios.
• Doctor and bootstrap are bounded/read-only by default; proposal content is
  accepted through a file or stdin rather than process arguments.
• Maintenance is preview-first, exact-hash-bound, reversible for safe_auto,
  and plan-only for retention/deletion candidates.
• The retention soak proves exact preview/applied manifests, bounded backup
  growth, newest-valid-backup restore, and preservation of source/control files.
• The cheap health loop deduplicates issue notifications with exponential
  backoff; opt-in external evidence captures exact bytes in a content-addressed
  store and fails closed on tamper or unavailable-source readback.
• power control-plane materializes a conflict-safe Markdown cockpit and an
  optional, marker-owned POWER Control.base with four views, while
  power migrate-state provides a content-free state-plane inventory only.
• The synthetic Phase 8 benchmark covers 20 technical workflows and compares
  POWER with a declared no-POWER handoff baseline, bilingual strata, five
  false-premise abstentions, and a historical/current state filter; it remains
  technical-only and does not replace blind human or real-vault outcome
  evidence.
• A separate continuity receipt runs 20 handoffs across independent worker
  processes and checks replay idempotency, proof-carrying resume, blocked
  decisions, and source preservation; it remains synthetic evidence.
• The executable upgrade matrix also kills a subprocess at before_move,
  after_move, and after_pointer, then proves active-generation readback,
  restart recovery, source-byte preservation, and no data loss. This is a
  hermetic Ubuntu release matrix, not physical 3.4.5 runtime or Windows/macOS
  compatibility evidence; macOS and Windows are deferred from this release.
• Crash recovery reaps only lease-expired building rows and their UUID-owned
  staging/generation artifacts; fresh rows are retained for live writers. CI
  uploads one content-free Ubuntu report and blocks on its aggregate.

Evidence boundary

The candidate gate records local tests, lint, types, documentation drift, the
FTS-first packaging contract, and the aggregated Ubuntu executable upgrade
matrix. macOS and Windows are explicitly deferred and are not supported-platform
claims for v3.5.0.
Dense quality, real-vault outcome improvement, blind sealed-human scoring,
signed tag, package indexes, and remote release readback remain separate
mandatory release evidence. Physical Windows/macOS migration is deferred and
is not a v3.5.0 gate. The final release
workflow fails closed unless the maintainer provisions the two content-free
Phase 8 receipts described in release/evidence/README.md.
The workflow receives them through the protected power35-stable-release
environment; they are not inferred from a passing unit suite.

Validation commands

./.venv/bin/pytest
./.venv/bin/ruff check src tests scripts
./.venv/bin/ruff format --check src tests scripts
./.venv/bin/mypy src/power_framework
./.venv/bin/python scripts/check_doc_drift.py
./.venv/bin/python scripts/verify_upgrade_matrix.py --from-version 3.4.5 --to-version 3.5.0
./.venv/bin/python scripts/retention_soak.py --output /tmp/power35-retention.json

CI executes the content-free upgrade invariants on Ubuntu only for this release;
macOS and Windows are deferred. Final publication additionally requires a clean tag-bound baseline generated by
scripts/generate_release_baseline.py --tag v3.5.0 --validation-report <power.release-validation.v1.json>, validation with
scripts/verify_release_contract.py --require-tag, package smoke, SBOM and
readback of the release body/assets.