v0.5.1

Changelog

All notable changes to Chronicle are documented here.
Format follows Keep a Changelog.
Versioning follows Semantic Versioning.

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[0.5.0] — 2026-04-10

Added

New Commands

• chronicle doctor — validates .lore/ health: checks for missing files, broken ADR links, cache integrity, and git hook installation
• chronicle search <query> — full-text search across all .lore/ markdown files with highlighted matches and file:line context; --json flag for machine output
• chronicle serve [--port] — zero-dependency local web viewer (dark theme, sidebar nav, live search); opens in browser automatically
• chronicle session save|list|show — save and browse session notes in .lore/sessions/; supports piped input for auto-summaries

Parallel Extraction

• extractFromCommits() now runs LLM batches concurrently (default concurrency=4 for API providers, 1 for Ollama)
• --concurrency <n> flag on init and deepen for manual override
• Benchmark: 4 batches in parallel → ~4× speedup vs sequential for Anthropic/Gemini/OpenAI

Progressive History (--limit)

• chronicle init --limit <n> — cap initial scan to N most recent commits
• chronicle deepen --limit <n> — process additional batches incrementally
• Enables fast first-run (20 commits → ~5s with API) then deepening as needed

LLM Provider Updates

• Gemini updated to gemini-2.5-flash with thinkingBudget: 0 (thinking mode disabled for structured extraction — 8× faster)
• All providers now defensively handle partial LLM responses (missing title, affects, risk fields no longer crash)

Null-safety fixes

• buildStore, formatDeepADR, formatDecisionEntry, formatRejectionEntry all handle LLM responses missing optional fields
• Cache fallback: results matched to commits by hash field, with positional fallback

Fixed

• deepen now accepts --llm, --limit, --concurrency (was hardcoded to anthropic, no limit)
• git log delimiter changed from | to \x1f (ASCII unit separator) — fixes parsing for repos with | in commit subjects

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[0.4.0] — 2026-04-10

Added

Semantic Clustering Extraction (strategy: 'clustered')

• extractFilesFromDiff() — parses diff --git a/X b/X headers to extract the file set touched by a commit
• clusterCommitsByFileOverlap() — groups commits into cohesive clusters where all members share at least one touched file
• Isolated commits (no file overlap with neighbours) are batched together up to 4 per group to avoid excessive LLM calls
• Clusters respect MAX_CLUSTER_SIZE=8 and MAX_CLUSTER_CHARS=8000 to stay within LLM context limits
• strategyClustered() — runs one LLM call per semantic cluster instead of per fixed-size batch
• Pass { strategy: 'clustered' } to extractFromCommits() to use the new strategy

Why it matters: The v1 simple strategy could batch "add JWT auth" with unrelated CSS tweaks. The clustered strategy ensures the LLM sees a coherent feature narrative — all commits that touched auth/ together — yielding richer rationale extraction.

Tests

• 8 new clustering tests: file parsing, overlap detection, singleton merging, MAX_CLUSTER_SIZE cap, LLM call count
• Total: 64 tests passing (58 TS + 6 Python)

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[0.3.0] — 2025-04-10

Added

Evolution Records (chronicle evolution)

• buildEvolution() — groups git history into eras (one per release tag + current untagged work)
• Each era contains: decisions made, rejections logged, most-changed files, date range
• renderEvolutionMarkdown() — renders eras to human+AI-readable .lore/evolution.md
• mergeWithExisting() — preserves manually-written > summary fields when regenerating
• chronicle evolution --regen — force-rebuild; --view — print to stdout
• Auto-generates evolution.md at the end of chronicle init
• Evolution included in chronicle inject output (first era, compact)

Terminal Status Indicator

• Before every write command: ◆ chronicle │ N decisions · N rejected · N ADRs · last capture: Xm ago
• After every write command: ◆ chronicle wrote +N decisions, +N rejections (only if something changed)
• Written to stderr — doesn't pollute chronicle inject stdout pipe
• Active for: init, deepen, setup, diagram, evolution, capture

Tests

• 12 evolution tests: tag detection, era chaining, HEAD detection, rendering, merge behavior
• Total: 62 tests passing (56 TS + 6 Python)

[0.2.0] — 2025-04-10

Added

Tool adapters (chronicle setup --tool=<name>)

• claude-code / openclaw — MCP server config (.claude/mcp.json) + SessionStart/Stop hooks (.claude/settings.json); merges with existing config
• cursor — generates .cursorrules with current .lore/ context
• aider — writes .aider.conf.yml with --read entries for .lore/ files; idempotent
• gemini-cli — generates GEMINI.md with compressed context
• copilot — generates .github/copilot-instructions.md
• codex — appends Chronicle context to AGENTS.md
• opencode — writes .opencode.json with contextFiles entries
• trae / factory — universal pipe instructions (chronicle inject | <tool>)
• chronicle setup with no args lists all available integrations
• chronicle setup --all installs every adapter at once

ASCII Diagrams (chronicle diagram)

• All diagrams are plain .txt files — render anywhere (terminal, GitHub, AI context windows)
• architecture.txt — module tree grouped by directory, relationships from decision log
• dependencies.txt — import graph from source files; highlights high-blast-radius files (≥3 dependents)
• evolution.txt — timeline from git tags + dated decision entries, grouped by year

Tests

• 11 adapter tests covering install, idempotency, merge behavior, pipe tools
• Total: 50 tests passing (44 TS + 6 Python)

Changed

• Diagram files use .txt extension instead of .mmd — ASCII format, no renderer needed

Unreleased

Planned

• Phase 8 (v3): Two-pass extraction (cheap LLM filter → quality model for complex decisions)

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0.1.0 — 2025-04-10

Initial release of Chronicle — AI-native development memory.

Added

Core (@chronicle/core)

• store.ts — file-based markdown store with findLoreRoot (walks up like git), readStore, writeStore, appendToStore, writeDeepDecision, initStore
• scanner.ts — git history scanner with noise filtering (chore/style/docs/test prefixes), diff size threshold (≥20 changed lines), diff capping (4000 chars), tag detection
• extractor.ts — LLM extraction engine with pluggable strategy pattern; v1 simple strategy (batches of 6, ≤5000 chars); clustered and two-pass slots reserved for v2/v3
• cache.ts — SHA-keyed JSON file cache; prevents reprocessing commits across runs
• ExtractionCache interface for swappable cache backends (in-memory, file, future SQLite)

CLI (chronicle-dev)

• chronicle init [--depth] — bootstraps .lore/ from git history; progressive scan defaults to 6 months
• chronicle inject [--files] [--full] [--format] — outputs compressed context to stdout; scopes to relevant files; supports markdown, xml, plain formats
• chronicle deepen [--depth] — extends scan further back without reprocessing cached commits
• chronicle hooks install/remove — installs post-commit (async decision capture) and prepare-commit-msg (risk annotation) git hooks
• Internal chronicle capture and chronicle enrich-commit commands (invoked by hooks)

MCP Server (@chronicle/mcp)

• chronicle_get_context — injects compressed project context; scopes to files if specified
• chronicle_log_decision — AI logs architectural choices mid-session
• chronicle_log_rejection — AI logs abandoned approaches (crown jewel: prevents future repetition)
• chronicle_get_risks — returns blast-radius info before touching a file
• chronicle_save_session — summarizes session to .lore/sessions/YYYY-MM-DD.md

Python wrapper (chronicle-dev on PyPI)

• Thin subprocess wrapper; delegates all logic to Node CLI
• Detects Node ≥ 20; falls back to npx chronicle-dev if not globally installed
• Entry point: chronicle command identical to npm version

Project

• .lore/ store structure: index.md, decisions.md, decisions/, rejected.md, risks.md, evolution.md, diagrams/, sessions/
• Hub-and-spoke ADR model: shallow decisions inline, complex decisions in decisions/<slug>.md
• ARCHITECTURE.md — full system design documentation
• GitHub Actions CI (test on every push/PR) and Release (publish npm + PyPI on tag)
• Vitest test suite for core package (store, extractor, scanner)
• pytest suite for Python wrapper

Architecture decisions

• Markdown-only store: no vector DB, no embeddings — plain files readable by any LLM
• Commit SHA cache ensures bootstrap is idempotent and cost-efficient
• Strategy pattern in extractor: v1 ships today, v2/v3 are drop-in replacements
• Python package delegates to Node — single source of truth, no duplication