Rendered from CHANGELOG.md at build time without changing its status. The repository source controls if this presentation differs.

Changelog#

Acronyms: 64-bit Arm instruction-set architecture (ARM64); artificial intelligence (AI); Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); application programming interface (API); Amazon Web Services (AWS); Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR); continuous integration (CI); command-line interface (CLI); conjunctive normal form (CNF); CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE); grounded decision certificate (GDC); Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS); Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); Java unit test report format (JUnit); JavaScript Object Notation (JSON); nondeterministic polynomial time (NP); Python Package Index (PyPI); reduced instruction set computer (RISC); Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT); Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit (SHA-256); Secure Hash Algorithm 3 256-bit (SHA3-256); Supply Chain Integrity, Transparency, and Trust (SCITT); Secure Shell (SSH); Coordinated Universal Time (UTC); Verifier Standard (VSTD); ZIP archive format (ZIP); zero-identity/zero-knowledge (ZIZK).

Unreleased#

1.5.0 - 2026-09-18#

Zero-Identity / Zero-Knowledge (ZIZK) Actor Identity Architecture#

• Normative three-token specification (standard/VSTD-ZIZK-TOKENS.md) and schemas (vstd-birth-token-1, vstd-aging-token-1, vstd-lifetime-token-1, vstd-actor-binding-1).
• Enforce the ZIZK prime invariant: actor identity never substitutes for, upgrades, or shortcuts independent artifact verification.
• Provide zero-identity offline evaluation engine and comprehensive adversarial audit harness blocking 16 prohibited inference classes and 6 attack vectors.

1.4.2 - 2026-09-17#

Diagnostics and Verification Modernization#

• Route scripts/check_pages_deployment.py failure diagnostics to standard error so a failing run explains itself in the log instead of inside the redirected coordinate file.
• Diagnose Pages promotion guard failures by printing the observed mismatch to standard error before exiting.
• Terminology and wire modernization: reinforce that VSTD-1 and VSTD-2 operate on ladder-level profile identifiers (VSTD-1, VSTD-2) rather than pre-ladder legacy aliases.

1.4.1 - 2026-09-15#

Documentation#

The package's executable surface, schemas, wire identifiers, and declared results are unchanged by this release. Every claim about maturity, boundaries, and unresolved obligations stands exactly as it did at 1.4.0.

• Add docs/USE_CASES.md, which states ten situations with the mechanism that addresses each one, a runnable path, and what the mechanism leaves unestablished, followed by a table of situations the project does not address.
• Add docs/tutorials/SEAL_AN_ARTIFACT.md, which carries a freeze, seal, thaw, and status sequence through to its adversarial branches, including the THAWED_DIRTY verdict and an expected-identifier mismatch.
• Add docs/tutorials/PUBLISH_A_SILO.md, which publishes an experimental artifact-network silo, exports and rebuilds it byte for byte, and shows the canonical member ordering a wire record must already satisfy.
• Add docs/PYTHON_API_GUIDE.md, which organizes the supported exports by task and separates the four ways a bound proposition returns something other than PASS.
• Correct the release the installation, first-receipt, walkthrough, hosting, and continuous-integration instructions pin, so a reader installs and fetches the released version rather than its predecessor.
• Advance the pinned documentation mirror to the 1.4.0 release commit and bind the new guides, whose routes exist only in the repository edition, to the edition that actually contains them.

1.4.0 - 2026-09-13#

Experimental artifact-network interoperability#

The package version does not promote experimental interfaces to supported compatibility or change the project's alpha maturity. Source grounding, an actual deriver's self-status, source relation and boundary correctness, global-cycle validity, stronger completeness, runtime correspondence, and general composed authority axiom agency remain open obligations. The finite mechanisms below retain their declared bounds and UNKNOWN results.

• Add content-addressed publisher silos, signed heads, key continuity, signed directories, deterministic export/rebuild, and a host-neutral push request. Reconstructibility, derivation closure, self-derivation, explicit-kind completeness, silo grounding, and authority axiom agency remain independent result axes. Self-derivation uses a fixed interpreted structural mechanism; census completeness requires an exact typed denominator across every declared category. Authority axiom agency requires exact alpha identity, while local extensions and unsupported bindings remain UNKNOWN. Silo grounding separately checks that the exact authority coordinate and its closed finite model are necessary and ground-reachable; it does not imply that reachable states preserve the agency floor. Compositions require their own full census and six-axis assessment; schema validity, discoverability, and signatures do not establish artifact correctness, real-world identity, authority, or deployed interoperability.
• Add experimental finite typed-formation production, independent checking, retained-silo inspection and portable receipt replay, with source-level obligations explicitly separate from finite syntax and byte retention.
• Add a separate bounded authority-composition checker for an exact selected asynchronous-interleaving model product. Package retention, catalog discovery, detection, planning and readiness remain nonexecuting; no source proof, runtime correspondence, general agency or six-axis status upgrade is implied.
• Add opt-in strict network compose --require-finite-authority-composition qualification: require exact selected inputs, the legacy composition admission, and the finite product checker together. Preserve both reports, all residual obligations, and the unchanged no-flag diagnostic and stored receipt semantics.

Post-release clarification#

• Clarify that current-candidate evidence, final-main publication evidence, and unreleased source has passed it in the immutable version 1.3.0 release notes describe the pre-publication review coordinate. Version 1.3.0 was published from tag v1.3.0 at commit adc0415ea653376ed3f4c146a84daac1f72913f6; subsequent commits remain unreleased descendant source even while package metadata still reads 1.3.0. This clarification does not rewrite the tagged changelog or published release notes.

1.3.0 - 2026-09-08#

Integration contract preparation#

• Carry each selected stored implementation's declared package dependencies into exact package-qualified planning prerequisites. Readiness no longer omits those obligations; retained dependency artifacts do not establish resolution or installation. Changed plans require fresh authorization-declaration bindings. Missing package bytes remain NOT_ESTABLISHED, and independently checkable plan substitutions remain INVALID. Registry-only planning and stored-format identifiers are unchanged.
• Define certifier as an explicit certificate-issuance capability, distinct from proving, checking and issuer authority. Existing relation, mechanism and native-contract metadata carry that capability without changing the closed component-kind enumeration or adding an unevidenced native integration. Supported analysis/comparison and experimental catalog, package, planning, readiness and topology interfaces remain distinct.
• Separate platform test intent from exact recorded observations and current-candidate evidence. Preserve platform skips, the pre-retarget observation coordinate, and the requirement for fresh integration and final-main publication evidence.
• Read release-verification Git blobs in one bounded raw-object batch, preserving exact path, byte and digest comparisons while avoiding one process launch per file. Reject malformed or misbound responses and retain rejection of archive export substitutions or omissions; no generated archive replaces the raw Git-byte comparison authority.
• Exclude local benchmark, type-checker and linter caches from the public presentation scan. Generated tool state is neither a publication surface nor stable input to release claim checks.

Explicit graph topology interpretations#

• Add experimental graph-bound topology contracts and vstd data topology: distinguish simultaneous Boolean equations from explicitly declared backward-time relations. Report self-reference, cyclic groups, forks, joins and disconnected components separately from bounded equation and clock-offset consistency. Paradox candidates remain annotations; unsupported semantics and exhausted bounds remain NOT_ESTABLISHED. No physical causation, receipt conformance or mechanism-earned support follows from these diagnostics.
• Register the typed checker for exact nonexecuting planning and configure its tests on all four existing platform coordinates. New registry/package/plan digests require fresh bindings; historical run evidence does not qualify this added component. Existing receipt formats and cyclic-assurance admission guards are unchanged. See topology interpretation.
• Repair a dependency traversal that falsely reported a cycle in an acyclic branching graph; preserve genuine cycles, self-reference and deep-graph handling.

Artifact awareness semantics#

• Define artifact awareness, awareness relations, awareness boundaries and confidentiality of awareness. Separate actual awareness, permitted awareness and potentially inferable awareness, including indirect disclosure through composed artifacts.
• Surface prohibited awareness inferences in existing inspection, analysis, planning and readiness diagnostics. Permission does not establish knowledge; withholding direct access does not establish non-inferability.
• Add an experimental exact-graph-bound analyzer for finite observer-relative knowledge closure across composed higher-order interfaces. Conjunctive hyperpaths preserve the all-premise derivation; exact supported traversal is FAIL, incompatible relevant rule evidence remains CONFLICTED, missing evidence or exhausted bounds remain UNKNOWN, and MATCH requires complete bounded closure of the declared model. This is not an awareness tracker, universal non-inferability proof, runtime enforcement, authorization or actor attribution. Expanded diagnostics and the added catalog component require fresh package, plan and platform evidence. Receipt identifiers and the stored-package format are unchanged.
• Bind observer, interface, rule and completeness evidence to the exact graph digest; require interface sources and graph-backed rule inputs/outputs to match the strict graph snapshot exactly. Caller-selected identifiers and emitted relationship metadata can themselves disclose information, so analyzer contracts and reports inherit the source graph's confidentiality requirements.
• Bind complete fact records at observer, interface and rule support points; retain typed seed evidence and exact graph-backed steps in concrete witnesses. Use an explicit goal-directed bounded traversal schedule, while preserving UNKNOWN whenever its firing or depth limits prevent completed closure.

Stored verifier-like components#

• Add experimental VSTD-COMPONENT-PACKAGE-1: a bounded, self-contained JSON format retaining exact implementation artifact bytes, a strict catalog 1.1 registry, literal entry-point bindings, dependency declarations, and unsigned descriptive publisher/license metadata. Canonical package and artifact digests bind those bytes and declarations; they do not establish native correctness, authentic authorship, executable dependency completeness, or permission to execute.
• Add nonexecuting save/load/inspection functions, vstd components inspect, and vstd surface analyze --plan --package with optional expected package digests. Unknown formats, duplicate keys, broken bindings, tampered content, nonportable artifact names, and resource-bound violations fail closed. Loading never extracts, installs, fetches, or invokes a stored implementation.
• Bind package-aware plans and execution-readiness preflight to the exact revalidated package bytes, not only its registry. Changed payloads invalidate the plan binding; caller-supplied authorization declarations must bind the exact package-aware plan. Missing package bytes remain NOT_ESTABLISHED. Registry-only planning stays explicit, and these checks neither authenticate authority nor grant permission to execute.
• Add a source-snapshot exporter for the 19 first-party catalog entries and portable format specimens. Public hosting and native-runtime qualification remain separate gates; this stored-format foundation is part of the v1.3.0 interoperability scope.

Surface analysis and experimental interoperability planning#

• Add a strict zero-dependency VSTD-2 geometry loader, stable top-level modeled-surface analysis API, and deterministic nonexecuting vstd surface analyze command. The loader rejects duplicate keys, non-finite numbers, unknown fields, invalid types, and broken geometry references before analysis.
• Add an explicitly experimental verifier.interoperability planning facade for immutable, domain-neutral component descriptors and registries plus deterministic, registry-digest-bound candidate plans. Keep the catalog and planner names outside the supported top-level verifier.__all__ boundary. Catalog schema 1.1 separates the VSTD-2 planning-surface coordinate from schemas actually accepted by each native entry point; strict 1.0 migration preserves planning matches without inventing native input compatibility.
• Populate a first-party planning catalog with 19 exact implementation entry points across 12 explicitly counted catalog grouping labels, and expose it through the nonexecuting vstd surface analyze --plan path. The denominator is not a count of independent or external native verifiers.
• Add a runnable non-critical sorted-grocery-list example that produces two exact candidates and leaves three self-closure holes unmatched without invoking its checker. Planning is not validation execution: component execution, evidence collection, post-execution reanalysis, safety, and critical-domain readiness remain unsupported or unestablished. Modeled closure is bounded to the supplied geometry.
• Add explicit examples/ and experiments/ directory maturity guidance and a component-by-component platform-interoperability evidence matrix.
• Add a non-critical executable proof-producing-solver to proof-checker composition with exact formula, proof, implementation, registry, and component-entry bindings. The checker rehydrates the canonical transition bytes and rejects modified proof or catalog coordinates before checking. The serialized transition also binds the current producer and checker implementation digest, and malformed canonical formula structures return a deterministic rejection instead of escaping the typed result. Forged-proof, wrong-formula, truncated-proof, transition-mutation, and bound-exhaustion tests remain fail-closed. Together with the existing SCITT example, this provides two bounded composition geometries without claiming actor independence, external interoperability, or safety.
• Qualify the cryptographic SCITT example against the exact installed scitt-cose==0.2.2, cbor2==6.1.4, and cryptography==50.0.0 distributions before native calls. Record the statement/receipt verification entry points and direct dependency versions in the local result while keeping them out of the producer-signed payload and native component catalog. These coordinates observe one verifier runtime; they do not authenticate its packages, identify the producer, or establish independent interoperability.
• Add an experimental declaration-bound cross-geometry diagnostic with deterministic witnesses for explicit VERIFIED versus FALSIFIED judgments and cycles in dependencies declared acyclic. Missing shared identity and indeterminate judgments remain NOT_ESTABLISHED; malformed bindings are INVALID. This is structural analysis, not Boolean satisfiability analysis or evidence of physical truth, safety, or conformance.
• Add an experimental nonexecuting execution-readiness preflight that binds an exact analysis, plan, and registry to native-input digests, planned result-to-evidence mappings, evidenced prerequisite resolutions, a caller-supplied authorization decision, and a mandatory post-execution reassessment contract. READY establishes only internal completeness of those declarations; it neither executes nor authorizes a component.

Cross-platform comparison#

• Add a supported bounded comparator and vstd compare-platforms command for VSTD-1 generic-run receipts. A declaration alone earns no result: PASS requires one canonically intact receipt per declared operating system, matching non-platform bindings, and matching declared result projections. Preserve comparable disagreement as CONFLICTED, incomplete or non-comparable evidence as NOT_ESTABLISHED, and malformed or contradictory evidence as INVALID.
• Bind Python implementation and machine identity into newly captured comparison declarations. Legacy receipts retain their historical canonical-digest semantics but cannot establish comparison without this additive environment binding; a mismatch between bound and reported environment data is INVALID.
• Add native GitHub-hosted Linux, Windows, and Intel macOS observation jobs for the portable generic example and require their aggregate diagnostic in the protected repository-check gate. Make the example's declared JavaScript Object Notation outputs use explicit line-feed bytes so Windows text translation cannot create a false portable surface. Extend release-artifact byte comparison to macOS. These checks do not establish universal portability, native-execution attestation within the receipt, semantic correctness, or actor independence.
• Add a separate complete Python contract matrix for Linux x86-64, Windows x86-64, macOS Intel, and macOS ARM64, including the optional artifact-seal and cryptographic SCITT profiles. Its diagnostic artifact binds the pull-request head and base, executed checkout, runner image, operating system, machine, interpreter, run identifier, and attempt before installation; its JUnit report preserves platform-specific skips and the available raw evidence is retained after failure. Emit report bytes with explicit platform-neutral line feeds, reject contradictory JUnit suite counts and non-exact environment records, and bind the raw environment-document digest. The release workflow requires an exact successful push run on the protected default branch, reconstructs all four reports from their raw environment and JUnit evidence, and attaches an attested deterministic platform-evidence ZIP with its own internal digest manifest. Configuring this matrix is not evidence that the unreleased source has passed it.

1.2.0 - 2026-09-01#

Public surface and integrations#

• Restructure the public first-view path around one bounded project description, one deterministic demonstration, one canonical maturity table, skeptical claim limits, contributor routes, and release/citation boundaries; align Pages and package metadata without changing normative or serialized-receipt semantics.
• Normalize the public architecture as a verification complex of named closure coordinates and cumulative numbered profiles; reserve VSTD-4 rung, candidate depth, verification order, compatibility level, and checker-cost tier for their distinct uses.
• Add experimental workflow profile 0.1 with deterministic canonicalization, strict validation, bounded work-allocation records, additive amendments and challenges, explicit unresolved horizons, and verdict-neutral platform events.
• Add a normalized GitHub adapter for issues, commits, workflow runs, artifacts, and pull requests. Successful workflows and merges retain verification_effect = NONE unless a separate native result is explicitly mapped through a bound VSTD receipt.
• Add vstd experiment validate and vstd experiment github-events as offline, verdict-neutral entry points. Repository artifacts are explicitly NOT_CHECKED with exit code 2 unless their root is supplied.
• Add a machine-readable schema, checked-in verdict-neutral specimen, generated experiment index, adversarial tests, and a runnable offline example.
• Add a generated CLI/API reference page and presentation gates that reject stale reference or experiment-index content.
• Clarify VSTD's role as a verification-domain language and interchange layer that preserves, rather than replaces or strengthens, native verifier results.
• Add the experimental SCITT adapter, rerunnable real-COSE specimen with ephemeral keys, explicit semantic boundary, and adversarial composition tests without claiming IETF review or payload truth from registration.
• Surface zero-identity/zero-knowledge (ZIZK) artifact-first TRUST as governing architecture, publish the bounded RISC Zero reference mechanism and exact recorded public proof artifacts, and keep only unfinished mechanisms experimental while preserving unresolved horizons and native-system authority.
• Bind the recorded RISC Zero proof to the image produced from the tracked guest and locked toolchain in the governed offline verifier, rather than accepting source/proof correspondence from a neighboring historical image identifier.
• Formally distinguish TRUST as mechanism-earned forward artifact support, ROT as typed time-indexed degradation of current admissibility, and RUST as an inverse-TRUST memetic causal backtrace toward recorded ancestor states. None is actor-tied trust or a scalar; reachability alone never infers guilt, responsibility, or causal localization.
• Present current reports, schemas, module descriptions, and examples under the full VSTD-1 and VSTD-2 numbered-profile identifiers; remove retired partial-profile object identifiers from active readers and add a regression preventing their return.
• Add normative artifact-control mechanism version 1 with exact-byte file/directory freezing, SHA-256 plus SHA3-256 artifact-derived identities, observable read-only guards, readable finite self-closing Ed25519 seals, external anchor checks, and copy-on-write thaw descendants. Sealing is not encryption and supplies no actor trust, semantic correctness, trusted time, or numbered VSTD profile result.
• Document multi-temporal realms, discrete and continuous coexistence, causal and problem-space partial orders, atemporal versus temporal capsules, explicit cross-realm mappings, and future constrained language-model transition verification without claiming continuous mediation, inference-law implementation, or textual truth.

Claim boundaries and validation#

• Require thawed_artifact_status and vstd artifact status to verify an actual supplied, cleanly sealed parent and every recorded parent coordinate before returning THAWED_CLEAN or THAWED_DIRTY. Sidecar-only agreement is now NOT_ESTABLISHED; even a verified current match does not authenticate the historical copy operation or external parent continuity.
• Preserve final filesystem-entry identity during artifact creation: freeze refuses symbolic-link sources, and bundle, thaw-descendant, and sidecar outputs refuse every preexisting lexical entry, including dangling symbolic links, without claiming universal race-free filesystem security.
• Require authoritative freeze-manifest, payload, seals-container, and seal-envelope members to have ordinary lexical types; linked external or in-bundle targets cannot lend bytes to bundle closure, while verified outer read aliases and ordinary hard-link byte-and-path semantics remain explicitly distinct.
• Remove the live SimulacraBench rehearsal and its front-door promotion; the repository never contained or reproduced the submission, hosted image, hardware, or protected evaluation identified by that name.
• Correct generic-run wording: digest validation is an integrity check, external references remain unattested until dereferenced and verified, same-path output extraction is not independent verification, and unverified determinism is UNKNOWN.
• Publish a Pages guide index and enforce language, title, viewport, main-region, skip-link, image-alt, labelled-navigation, generated-reference, and local-link checks in CI.
• Preserve explicit ordered-list starting numbers in generated Pages so procedures split by code blocks retain their source step numbers instead of restarting at one.
• Require CodeQL security-extended Python analysis in the protected repository-check aggregate with only read access to content and write access to security results.
• Fail closed on malformed generic-run receipts, publish their exact schema, and dispatch VSTD-1 by its required receipt profile.
• Package every normative specification, verify byte identity, and smoke-test the built wheel outside the source checkout so installed specification bindings cannot silently become unavailable.
• Bind the bundled checker to VSTD-1, record actor and execution separation explicitly, and never infer independent actors from a historical field name, repeated runs, or matching results.
• Reject self-promoted independence even when every supplied status and digest agrees; the generic-run compatibility path never derives EVIDENCED from serialized references. The distinct VSTD-5 path reruns all seven separation propositions and does not upgrade the legacy generic-run fields.
• Require the real optional SCITT/COSE cryptographic example in the protected repository-check aggregate rather than allowing its dependency-gated tests to disappear from the base matrix.
• Close generic-run control structures while retaining the released refutation-extension map, make common receipt commands honor --json, and lock validate as an integrity/profile check rather than a claim verifier.

Graph and conformance semantics#

• Add a zero-dependency evidence execution core that resolves and rehashes exact evidence bytes, pins a registered mechanism implementation digest, enforces byte/item bounds, reruns the mechanism, and preserves PASS, FAIL, or UNKNOWN under explicit trust roots.
• Add an evidence-bound VSTD-4 path and replayable receipt form. Compatibility vstd4_depth remains a NOT_ESTABLISHED candidate; only exact passing VSTD-1/2/3 and fourteen-rung mechanisms plus an accepted kernel witness admit VSTD-5.
• Implement the VSTD-5 reference mechanism and receipt: seven evidence-bound separation dimensions, duplicate-witness/evidence refusal, exact admitted-certificate and corroboration binding, typed binding/identity/separation/corroboration errors, disagreement preservation, embedded evidence, and offline result recheck. Independence fails closed on any identity or separation defect without parsing error-message text. Witness identities and assertions serialize separately and in order, so duplicate, orphan, missing, and reused-identity error inputs remain replayable instead of collapsing during receipt construction. Keep permissive malformed-input assessment distinct from portable receipt admission: the builder now raises unless the strict schema and complete verdict-material evidence coverage hold, and the rechecker applies the same zero-dependency gate before replay. The rechecker also compares the complete carried VSTD-4 entry, and corroboration_class is mechanism-bound rather than relabelable metadata. This does not claim a real external witness or independent implementation; a positive observation with unresolved independence is overall UNKNOWN.
• Add evidence-bound Graph profile computation and replay. The compatibility graph_level path remains caller-supplied; the new path reruns every member, ancestor, and reached-edge rating mechanism bound to the exact Graph, members, collection, and claim before profile 1–5 can report ESTABLISHED. Profile zero remains NOT_ESTABLISHED.
• Add VSTD-GRAPH-ASSURANCE-1 and AssuranceLedger for hash-chained edge-local TRUST, ROT, RUST, challenge-ledger projection, additive conflict declaration/resolution, structural RUST concentration, explicit causal localization, and bounded artifact-relative BLAME/GUILT propositions. Each TRUST event binds one exact transformation, its inputs/output, the historical Graph, and prerequisite TRUST events; current eligibility recursively fails closed when any bound dependency degrades or conflicts. Duplicate paths remain set-valued, historical graph bytes remain immutable, and topology alone earns no causal or moral conclusion. BLAME establishes bounded responsibility or material contribution. GUILT is not BLAME in the opposite direction: it composes separately bound responsibility, exact scoped-obligation applicability, and same-obligation violation components, then binds their exact event digests. One compound mechanism may emit all three component evaluations in one invocation; an opaque combined pass or decorative obligation string remains NOT_ESTABLISHED. Localization binds one exact passing RUST event and descendant-deviation proposition. Neither result establishes actor morality, reputation, automatic legal liability, innocence, exoneration, obligation satisfaction, or absence of hidden contributors. Status-conflict resolution projects the selected state into current admissibility; arbitrary resolved predicates remain blocked. The current runtime has no general non-status admissibility-effect mechanism. RUST follows historically recorded contributing ancestry even when current lifecycle state excludes a route from TRUST. New construction, evidence-bound Graph establishment, and assurance propagation require globally disjoint artifact/transformation identifiers so an untyped subject_id cannot ambiguously name both; the frozen VSTD-DATA-0.1 reader retains its original two namespaces. Add complete offline event replay, current TRUST filtering, and deduplicated descendant reassessment discovery.

• Preserve incompatible Graph assertions as evidence-linked conflict records and label rating-derived Graph profile numbers as CALLER_SUPPLIED candidates with conformance NOT_ESTABLISHED.
• Classify the current VSTD-4 candidate-depth calculation as a structural result over caller-supplied rung references with conformance NOT_ESTABLISHED; reject that candidate at the VSTD-5 entry gate even when its candidate depth is 14.
• Label compatibility Graph 2–5 candidates consistently while separately presenting the implemented evidence-bound reference paths. Bind complete challenge-ledger state into an additive current Graph view without mutating history.

Release and maintainer controls#

• Mark 1.2.0 metadata as an unreleased release candidate, omit any fabricated release date, and require the exact tagged checkout to have TIME.md set to Status: CLEAR.
• Move the immutable-release setting check before tag creation in the documented release sequence and enforce it again in the tag workflow, so a disabled setting stops publication rather than producing a mutable release.
• Make package/reference status identify VSTD-5 as the highest exposed project specification with an evidence-bound reference mechanism, without claiming a real independent witness, and require finalized release metadata in the tag workflow.
• Publish the architecture ownership map linking normative documents, runtime validators, schemas, and conformance tests.
• Document the five-As human traversal over existing receipt, Graph, hardware, certificate, reproduction, and SCITT machinery without adding a serialized receipt format; reject duplicate Graph identifiers and reproduction-fidelity states inferred from declarations, matching verdicts, or mismatching runs.
• Restore the three non-overlapping operating controls: AGENTS.md for automated work, HUMANS.md for human five-As reasoning, and TIME.md for current repository contradictions. Development may record OPEN; the exact tagged checkout must be CLEAR before publication.
• Replace the developmental profile-numbered generic-run container with required neutral assessment_context; preserve its mechanism, bound, commitment, and refutation coordinates without carrying a VSTD-4 conformance field.

1.1.3 - 2026-08-22#

• Canonicalize source ZIP timestamps in UTC and remove host ZIP metadata, so the same Git coordinate produces byte-identical source archives on Windows and Linux.
• Canonicalize generated wheel and source-distribution newlines, archive member order, modes, timestamps, and ownership. Rebuild wheel RECORD after normalization and use compression-independent ZIP members plus a stable ustar/gzip container.
• Normalize common HTTPS and SSH spellings of the Git origin before recording the public repository coordinate in a release manifest.
• Require CI to build the complete release artifact set independently on Windows and Linux and fail the conformance gate unless every resulting byte is identical.
• Record that v1.1.2 remained a signed, tested, and attested GitHub-only release: its protected PyPI deployment was cancelled after cross-platform build differences were detected, before any Python distribution was uploaded.

1.1.2 - 2026-08-22#

• Rename the import package verifiable to verifier and the distribution verifiable-standard to verifier-standard, so no published name reuses the ordinary-English adjective or the maintainer's former project name. The vstd, verifier, and verifiable command names all continue to work; verifiable is a command name only and no longer names an import package.
• Derive the release source-archive name from the manifest during verification, so manifests published through v1.1.1 that bind verifiable-standard-<release>.zip remain verifiable without republishing.
• Record the import-package, distribution, and archive renames in WIRE_IDENTIFIERS.md. No receipt serialized receipt identifier, schema $id, or canonical digest changes.
• Attribute the specifications, distribution metadata, and governance decision rights to TimeLordRaps. The legal name remains the copyright holder in NOTICE.
• Add a normalized, byte-reproducible Python source distribution beside the reproducible wheel; verify their name, version, import package, and frozen console-script set before release.
• Publish only the tested wheel and source distribution through PyPI Trusted Publishing after explicit approval in the protected pypi environment. The GitHub release keeps the full source ZIP and external byte manifest as the public provenance coordinate.
• Document that the unrelated PyPI project named verifier shares the same import name and must not be co-installed; this is an ecosystem collision boundary, not a claim to that distribution coordinate.

• Rename the VSTD-2 section 7 lifecycle term VERIFIABLE to GEOMETRY_INSPECTABLE and record in WIRE_IDENTIFIERS.md that the section 7 vocabulary is prose-only, so no status token reuses the maintainer's name and no serialized receipt value changes.
• Label the reference emulator's synthetic accelerator descriptor vendor as EMULATED instead of the maintainer's name, so fabricated hardware evidence cannot read as maintainer attestation.
• Remove maintainer-scoped phrasing from normative specification prose: conformance is defined by the documents, and the independent auditor role is named by the standard rather than by the maintainer.

• Correct the SimulacraBench synthetic specimen additively: unobserved private artifacts now remain IDENTIFIED, and the public challenge stops at CHALLENGED without a maintainer-authored adjudication.
• Require content-bound observed bytes before deriving AVAILABLE or PORTABLE; locator and retention declarations alone no longer elevate availability.
• Expand the public presentation gate to reject drive-qualified paths, private locator schemes, deployment fields, local model artifact filenames, business operations identifiers, common secret shapes, and email addresses.

1.1.1 - 2026-08-22#

• Replace the overview's generic maturity badges with the exact status of every object and Graph numbered profile, so the presentation cannot imply evidence or implementation maturity that the specifications do not establish.
• Enforce those visual labels in the presentation gate and publish canonical receipt schemas at their declared GitHub Pages $id routes.
• Add contributor guardrails for the live schema routes, the Python 3.10 floor, and the immediate-publication consequences of edits to Pages content.

1.1.0 - 2026-08-22#

• Add vstd demo, a deterministic four-scenario adversarial demonstration that rejects a proof grounded to the wrong artifact, preserves a checked UNKNOWN, rejects verification-cost inflation, and exposes a revoked transitive ancestor.
• Publish the replayable demo specimens, a newcomer quickstart, a public technical roadmap, an ecosystem boundary map, and a focused project overview site.
• Make vstd the canonical cross-platform command while retaining verifier and verifiable as compatibility aliases. This avoids collision with Windows Driver Verifier without breaking previously issued command references.
• Replace the unused adopter-migration document name with an implementation compatibility note; no external adoption or adopter migration is implied.
• Add automated checks for documentation links, version agreement, public-boundary language, packaged demo behavior, and checked-in specimen determinism.
• Add repository-level instructions that keep automated contributors inside VSTD's fail-closed claim, dependency, compatibility, and public/private boundaries.

1.0.1 - 2026-08-22#

• State explicitly that each VSTD closure coordinate requires its own evidence: Refutability does not supply, entail, upgrade, or repair prerequisite coordinates.
• Replace unsupported Tarski, generic NP-certificate, CNF-equals-3-SAT, and physical-world co-NP claims with bounded statements tied to implemented formal languages and declared observation surfaces.
• Replace adopter-migration framing with an exact current wire-dispatch registry; no external adoption is claimed.
• Generate source releases from exact public Git objects and publish a separate manifest binding the resolvable ref, commit, archive digest, file set, and member bytes. Line-ending equivalence is not accepted as byte identity.
• Add a side-effect-free manifest plan command and make unsandboxed execution visible at the CLI and README boundary without pretending declared-path checks sandbox the subprocess.
• Test the advertised Python 3.10 through 3.13 range, add release-integrity and installed-wheel jobs, and expose one required conformance gate for branch protection.
• Add an owner-dispatched release workflow for an existing tag that refuses a non-default-branch dispatch or a tag outside protected history, requires the protected conformance check and an owner-confirmed immutable-release preflight, rebuilds and smoke-tests exact artifacts, records tag signature status without relabeling it, and creates GitHub/Sigstore attestations for every uploaded asset.
• Add structured ambiguity, counterexample, and implementation feedback surfaces plus public conduct and pull-request consequence checks.

1.0.0 - 2026-08-22#

• Redesign specification numbers as cumulative numbered profiles: VSTD-1 through VSTD-5 on the object axis and VSTD-Graph-1 through VSTD-Graph-5 on the collection axis.
• Establish integer numbered-profile specification paths while release history remains available in the corresponding Git tags.
• Add the fourteen-rung VSTD-4 structural calculation and compute its candidate depth by iterated satisfiability rather than copying a declared depth. Version 1.2.0 clarifies that its caller-supplied references do not establish VSTD-4 conformance.
• Add the VSTD4-GDC-1 grounded decision-certificate format, independent bounded checker, Horn/unit-propagation tier, width-bounded and general-resolution tiers, and evidence-bearing UNKNOWN results on exhaustion.
• Add machine-readable refutation surfaces, precommitment envelopes, availability assessment, append-only challenge adjudication, monotonic degradation, and refutability closure.
• Preserve the historical graph_level compatibility calculation from membership, provenance closure, status, and caller-supplied edge ratings, with a certificate explaining the next unreachable candidate Graph profile. Version 1.2.0 labels conformance NOT_ESTABLISHED.
• Replace fabricated conflict evidence, literal trust-boundary claims, and decorative policy certificates with checked evidence and fail-closed divergence.
• Publish a draft VSTD-5 witness-corroboration interface. No independent witness implementation or interoperability claim is included.
• Move profile-specific documentation under docs/ and publish schemas with stable compatibility filenames and paths.

0.2.0 - 2026-08-21#

• Implement VSTD-3.0 Universal Accelerator Accountability without changing earlier receipt semantics.
• Add strict deterministic VSTD 3 types and JSON Schemas, plus a data-driven registry covering 37 accelerator/supporting-device profiles.
• Add the virtual firmware accountability state machine, nonce-bound test attestation, typed compute accounting, authenticated continuity, reset epochs, and local/file anchor interfaces.
• Add partition/topology and enrolled-fleet verification with physical/logical double-counting protection.
• Add generic, NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Google/AWS/Microsoft provider fixture boundaries. Opaque vendor evidence is preserved without invented verification.
• Compose device, firmware, execution, accounting, continuity, and provider evidence into the existing provenance hypergraph and blast-radius implementation.
• Add hardware, continuity, fleet, evidence, and claims CLI command families with JSON and explicit PASS/FAIL/UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED results.
• Add adversarial, epistemic, canonicalization, schema, provenance, adapter, CLI, and backward-compatibility tests.
• Publish a VSTD 3 threat model, vendor integration kit, migration guide, primary-source references, and claim-by-claim plain-language translations.

0.1.0 - 2026-08-21#

• Publish the initial claim-mechanics, provenance-graph, and experimental verification-geometry surfaces.
• Publish zero-required-dependency receipt, provenance, geometry, and policy primitives.
• Publish an optional logits-level constraint kernel with atomic dependency profiles.
• Add a target-neutral public CLI for generic-run and stored VSTD-DATA receipts.
• Fail closed on malformed provenance graphs, inflated coverage metrics, dangling references, and omitted artifact status.
• Clarify that digest, license, and policy fields bind recorded declarations rather than proving real-world truth or complete lineage.
• Add a non-normative predictive-AI and competition-evaluation integration profile.
• Add a plain-language claim translation guide stating why each bounded claim can or cannot be made and what evidence it requires.
• Explicitly exclude private operational material and target-specific adapters.
• Release the specification, documentation, and reference implementation under the Apache License 2.0 with a repository NOTICE file.