v1.8.6: adopt pi 0.84.3 + mempalace 3.8.0, close the v1.8.5 doc/observability gaps

Three coupled pieces of work, all of which ride on the base rebuild that the
mempalace bump forces anyway.

DRIFT ADOPTED
- pi 0.84.2 -> 0.84.3. Its release notes carry a "Breaking Changes" line
  (GoogleThinkingLevel -> GoogleApiThinkingLevel). Audited before adopting:
  zero references across all four vendored companions (pi-fork,
  pi-observational-memory, pi-atelier, pi-studio), so it is inert for us. The
  reason to adopt is two skill-discovery fixes that land directly on v1.8.5's
  vendored-skill work: nested Markdown skills inside grouping directories were
  not discovered, and root README.md/AGENTS.md in skill dirs were reported as
  broken skills.
- mempalace core 3.7.1 -> 3.8.0. Additive/reliability only. Its sync fix
  (#2320/#2322) stops sync --apply deleting drawers whose source_file was
  unreachable *at that moment* -- which does NOT relax the standing landmine
  against sync on the shared palace, because that landmine is about paths
  permanently absent from whichever host runs the sync. Different failure
  shape; the caution stands.

DOCS -- three defects, one of them public
- DOCKER_HUB.md advertised "neovim (LazyVim defaults)". Nothing in the image
  installs LazyVim; the only nvim config is a 19-line sysinit.vim. CI PATCHes
  this file into the Docker Hub description on every release, so this was a
  false claim published to the world. Removed.
- agent-browser + Playwright + Chromium is the single largest addition in the
  image (~625 MB) and had zero mentions in README, DOCKER_HUB or THIRD_PARTY --
  it was documented only to agents, in the AGENTS.md managed block. Now
  documented to humans, including the Chromium licence dimension.
- typst and socat appeared in README prose but not in the "What's inside"
  inventory. Added.

OBSERVABILITY -- the three gaps v1.8.5 listed as still open
- build-manifest.json now records mempalace core, read from the live binary
  (ground truth, not the build ARG). Placed as a sibling of pi_version rather
  than inside components{}, because pi-devbox-version renders that map through
  [0:12] and would truncate a version string.
- smoke asserts the pi-observational-memory clone actually CONTAINS the ce9fc98
  auth fix, pinned to src/runtime.ts. Deliberately not a repo-wide grep: two of
  the three markers also live under tests/, so the repo-wide form stays green
  with the fix site reverted. That is the third false-green of this exact family
  in this repo (canary phrase in both snapshots; reconciler fixture using a
  non-owned name; now this) -- pin containment checks to the fix site.
- smoke asserts the feeder's pi@<device> agent default behaviourally. The
  earlier audit concluded this needed a --print-config added upstream; it does
  not. AGENT is assigned before arg parsing, so `bash -x mempalace-pi-session
  --help` observes the real resolution with no toolkit change. Two-sided:
  device set => pi@<device>, unset => must not be pi@*.
- pi-devbox-version now prints a palace: line with the same live-vs-baked drift
  detection pi already had. This matters more than it looks: mempalace is the
  one component that is both client (here) and server (synlig), so skew between
  them is a real failure mode. Degrades quietly on pre-v1.8.6 images.

Deferred deliberately: a native arm64 act_runner on tor-ms22 (the current
runner is on synlig, x86_64, so every arm64 layer ships QEMU-emulated).
Analysis and caveats filed to the palace rather than actioned here.

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -11,7 +11,175 @@ Pre-v1.0.0 tags followed the pi npm version (`v{pi_version}[letter]`).
 
 ---
 
-## Unreleased
+## v1.8.6 — 2026-08-25
+
+Patch release. Adopts the drift that accumulated in the ~2 days since v1.8.5
+(pi `0.84.3`, mempalace core `3.8.0`), then closes the documentation and
+observability gaps that v1.8.5 itself listed as "Still open". No component
+was adopted without an audit note recording *why* it is safe.
+
+All moving refs re-resolved immediately before tagging (2026-08-25T13:28Z):
+pi-toolkit `0e1369e6`, pi-extensions `20228878`, mempalace-toolkit `0fe64c48`
+and pi-observational-memory `ce9fc982` all unchanged since v1.8.5;
+pi-fork `f1ff8087` → `bf702b4c`; pi-atelier holds at `v0.8.2` (floor for
+pi ≥0.84 satisfied); pi-studio's CI-resolved newest tag has moved again to
+`v0.9.51`. Base rebuild is forced (Dockerfile.base changed), so the 16
+floating base-tooling ARGs re-roll — expect ~67 min as for v1.8.5.
+
+### Changed
+
+- **`mempalace` core `3.7.1` → `3.8.0`.** Released 2026-08-23T21:19Z, hours
+  after this project's own v1.8.5 tag the same day. Additive/reliability only
+  — reviewed for MCP tool-schema changes before bumping, as always: none.
+  `sync --apply` (PR #2320/#2322) no longer deletes a drawer solely because
+  its `source_file` was unreachable *at that moment* — it asks for
+  corroboration first. **This does not relax the standing landmine** against
+  running `mempalace_sync` / `mempalace_delete_by_source` beyond dry-run on
+  the shared central palace: that failure mode is paths *permanently* absent
+  from whichever host runs the sync, not transient unavailability, and 3.8.0
+  doesn't touch it. Server-side perf fix PR #2307 (long-running Chroma servers
+  no longer invalidate their own HNSW cache on their own writes) likewise does
+  not make `mempalace_reconnect` unnecessary — that tool covers *external*
+  writes bypassing the in-process client, a different scenario. Full reasoning
+  lives in the `Dockerfile.base` comment above `ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION`.
+  **Deployment note:** synlig's central palace currently serves `3.7.1`
+  server-side via `docker-compose.mempalace.yml` (which reuses this image) —
+  this client bump introduces version skew until that stack is separately
+  redeployed; sequence accordingly.
+
+- **`pi` `0.84.2` → `0.84.3`.** Published 2026-08-24T11:09Z. Release notes
+  carry one "Breaking Changes" line — `GoogleThinkingLevel` renamed to
+  `GoogleApiThinkingLevel` — checked against all four vendored packages
+  (`pi-fork`, `pi-observational-memory`, `pi-atelier`, `pi-studio`): zero
+  references, inert here. 0.84.3 also fixes two skill-discovery bugs that
+  land directly on this repo's own vendored-skill work: nested Markdown
+  skills inside `.agents/skills/` grouping directories not being discovered,
+  and root Markdown files (`README.md`/`AGENTS.md`) in skill directories being
+  wrongly reported as broken skills.
+
+### Added
+
+- **Browser automation is now documented to humans, not just to agents.**
+  `agent-browser` + Playwright + a headless Chromium (~625 MB — the single
+  largest addition in the image) previously had zero mentions in `README.md`,
+  `DOCKER_HUB.md` or `THIRD_PARTY.md`; it existed only in the agent-facing
+  `AGENTS.md` managed block. Added a `README.md` "Browser automation"
+  subsection, a `DOCKER_HUB.md` feature entry, and `THIRD_PARTY.md` license
+  rows for `agent-browser` (Apache-2.0), Playwright (Apache-2.0), and Chromium
+  (BSD-3-Clause for Chromium's own code plus a large set of bundled
+  third-party components under their own licenses; the binary here is not
+  compiled by this repo — it's Playwright's own "Chrome for Testing" download
+  via `playwright install --with-deps chromium`).
+- **`THIRD_PARTY.md` gains rows for `pi-atelier` (MIT) and `mempalace` core
+  (MIT per the GitHub repo; noted that the PyPI package's own metadata omits
+  a license classifier, so verify against the repo's `LICENSE` rather than
+  sdist/wheel metadata if clearance is needed from the artifact alone).**
+- **`typst` and `socat` added to `README.md`'s tooling inventory.** Both were
+  already used in prose (typst as pandoc's `--pdf-engine`, socat by
+  `studio-expose`) but missing from the "What's inside" lists, so the
+  inventory didn't match what the image actually ships.
+- **`mempalace` core version recorded in `/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json`.**
+  Previously absent — a published image couldn't answer "which palace version
+  shipped?", and a palace bug couldn't be correlated to an image version.
+  Derived from the live installed binary (matching the manifest's existing
+  ground-truth-not-build-args philosophy), degrading to `null` rather than
+  failing the build if the binary is missing or its output format changes.
+  Verified landed: new top-level `"mempalace_version"` key, sibling to
+  `pi_version` rather than a member of `components{}` (that map is rendered
+  truncated to 12 chars by `pi-devbox-version`, which would mangle a longer
+  version string).
+- **New smoke assertions**, all landed in `scripts/smoke-test.sh`: (1) the
+  `pi-observational-memory` clone is checked for the actual `ce9fc98`
+  auth-fix markers pinned to their fix site, `src/runtime.ts`
+  (`availability_recheck`, `providerCredentialConfigured`,
+  `hasConfiguredAuth`) — not merely clone existence, and deliberately not a
+  repo-wide grep: all three identifiers also appear under `tests/`, so a
+  repo-wide search would stay green even with the fix reverted in
+  `src/runtime.ts` alone; (2) the manifest's new `mempalace_version` field is
+  asserted present, non-null, and equal to what `mempalace --version` reports
+  live, so the manifest can't silently drift from the installed package —
+  expected to fail against any pre-v1.8.6 image, by design; (3) a
+  behavioural check for the mempalace-toolkit feeder's `--agent` default
+  (see below — this one turned out to be possible after all).
+
+### Fixed
+
+- **A false claim was being published to Docker Hub on every release.**
+  `DOCKER_HUB.md` advertised "neovim (LazyVim defaults)". Nothing in this
+  repo installs LazyVim — the only nvim configuration is a 19-line
+  `sysinit.vim` that sets `termguicolors`. `update-description` pushes this
+  file verbatim (with `{{PI_VERSION}}` substituted) to the Hub description, so
+  the error was public, not internal. Corrected to describe what's actually
+  there.
+
+### Component audit for this release
+
+Checked against upstream 2026-08-25 (two days after v1.8.5's own audit):
+`mempalace` core moved `3.7.1` → `3.8.0` (see Changed, above — timing is
+notable: released *hours after* v1.8.5 tagged, so v1.8.5 could not have caught
+it no matter how carefully it was audited). `pi` moved `0.84.2` → `0.84.3`
+(see Changed). `pi-toolkit` `0e1369e6`, `pi-extensions` `20228878`,
+`pi-observational-memory` `ce9fc982`, and `pi-atelier` `v0.8.2` are all
+**unchanged** from v1.8.5 — in particular `pi-observational-memory` still sits
+exactly at the auth-fix commit with nothing landed upstream since, and
+`pi-atelier` is still the newest tag with the `≥0.7.1` floor for `pi ≥ 0.84`
+trivially satisfied. `pi-fork` has one upstream commit not adopted this
+release: `f1ff8087` → `bf702b4c`, a text-only rewording of the fork task
+preamble (no code-path change) — **left un-pulled** for this release since it
+is a moving ref CI resolves fresh at every build anyway; it will be adopted
+automatically on the next build regardless of this entry. `pi-studio` (studio
+variant) has drifted two tags upstream, `v0.9.48` (pinned at build time via
+CI's newest-semver-tag resolution) → `v0.9.51` at tag time, purely additive
+(watched PDF previews, opening PDFs directly in Studio, Studio header
+hide) — nothing to bump in this repo since studio-tag resolution happens in
+CI, not the Dockerfile, but note it **will** auto-adopt `v0.9.51` on the next
+studio-variant build. `mempalace-toolkit` unchanged — this release's manifest
+and pi-bump work in `Dockerfile.variant` stayed within that file's ownership
+and did not require a toolkit-side change.
+
+### Still open
+
+- **`MEMPALACE_VERSION` has no CI-side audit equivalent to `PI_VERSION`'s.**
+  `PI_VERSION` is verified published-on-npm and warns (never silently adopts)
+  on drift; `MEMPALACE_VERSION` is a literal Dockerfile string with zero
+  references in `.gitea/workflows/docker-publish.yml`. Flagged in v1.8.5's
+  audit as a gap; still a gap.
+- **`pi-devbox-version`'s human-readable output does not display
+  `mempalace_version`.** Its render path is a fixed sequence
+  (`release_tag`, `build_date`, `source_revision`, `pi`, then `components{}`)
+  and the new top-level field isn't in it — only `--json` mode (which `cat`s
+  the manifest directly) surfaces it today. One line in
+  `rootfs/usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version` would fix this; deferred since the
+  field's stated purpose (correlating a palace bug to an image) is already
+  served by `--json`, but worth doing in a follow-up if this becomes a
+  routine manual check.
+
+**Resolved during this release, not left open:** the feeder `--agent`
+default behavioural hook initially looked like it might need a
+mempalace-toolkit change (a `--print-config` flag that doesn't exist). It
+didn't — `mempalace-pi-session` assigns `AGENT` before argument parsing and
+`--help` exits 0 with no side effects, so `bash -x mempalace-pi-session
+--help` observes the real resolution (env interpolation and fallback)
+without needing a source change. The new smoke assertion exploits exactly
+that, checked both ways: with `MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE` set it must resolve to
+`pi@<device>`; with it unset it must NOT be `pi@*` (catches a regression to
+the old unconditional `$USER`/`mempalace` default).
+  `mempalace-toolkit` commit `c64ffa1` changed the feeder's `--agent` default
+  from `$USER` to `pi@<device>`, but there is still no way for smoke to assert
+  this default is actually in effect from this repo alone, since
+  `mempalace-toolkit` is a separate repo this release does not modify. If the
+  concurrent smoke-test work could not find an honest assertion from the
+  existing `/opt/mempalace-toolkit` surface (help text, `--self-test`), this
+  remains open pending a toolkit-side `--print-config`-style hook — a
+  toolkit-repo change, not a pi-devbox one.
+- **16 base-tooling `ARG *_VERSION=latest` pins remain unrecorded.** (Corrected
+  count — v1.8.5's entry said "~14"; the actual count from `Dockerfile.base`
+  is 16, plus 5 more that float with no ARG at all: `rustup-init`, AWS CLI v2,
+  Chromium-via-Playwright, Node's minor version via `setup_22.x`, and
+  `DEBIAN_VERSION=trixie-slim` itself.) None of these are recorded anywhere
+  once the build completes — not in the manifest, not in a label — so a
+  published image cannot answer "which nvim/uv/chromium shipped?" without
+  exec-ing in and asking the binary.
 
 ### Documentation
 

DOCKER_HUB.md

@@ -65,12 +65,19 @@ The entrypoint deploys/registers all of these on first container start. Re-runni
 ### Document and image tooling
 
 - **pandoc** — universal Markdown↔HTML/Org/RST/etc. conversion. Useful well beyond pi: agent-driven doc exports, format conversion, etc.
+- **Typst** — markup-based typesetting, used as pandoc's `--pdf-engine`
 - **graphviz** (`dot`) — diagram rendering pipelines
 - **imagemagick** (`magick`) — image conversion / resizing
 
+### Browser automation
+
+- **agent-browser** — CLI for driving a real browser (open pages, click/fill/`eval`, snapshot the DOM, screenshots) so agents can verify front-end work instead of guessing
+- **Playwright** + a headless **Chromium** are pre-installed and pinned together; `AGENT_BROWSER_EXECUTABLE_PATH` is preset to the baked browser, so `agent-browser open <url>` works out of the box with no setup
+- **socat** — TCP bridge used to expose the pi-studio server outside the container's loopback
+
 ### Modern CLI tooling
 
-- **Editor**: neovim (LazyVim defaults), tmux (configured for 0-indexed sessions)
+- **Editor**: neovim (system-wide `termguicolors` default; bring your own config/plugins), tmux (configured for 0-indexed sessions)
 - **Search/nav**: ripgrep, fd, fzf, zoxide
 - **Display**: bat, eza, htop, tree
 - **Data**: jq, yq

Dockerfile.base

@@ -396,7 +396,44 @@ ARG INSTALL_MEMPALACE=true
 # (refuse the write) rather than fail open. Neither affects the container's
 # normal MCP-server-plus-CLI-feeder pattern, which already serialised on the
 # same lock under 3.6.0.
-ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION=3.7.1
+#
+# 3.8.0 (2026-08-23, PyPI, released hours after this project's own v1.8.5 tag
+# the same day) is additive/reliability only — reviewed for MCP tool-schema
+# changes before bumping, as always: there are NONE. Two PRs matter:
+#   - PR #2320/#2322: `sync --apply` no longer deletes a drawer solely because
+#     its source_file was unreachable AT THAT MOMENT — it now asks for
+#     corroboration first. This fixes losing a whole mined project to one
+#     `sync --apply` while its volume happened to be unmounted.
+#     IMPORTANT — do not over-read this fix: it addresses TRANSIENT
+#     unreachability, not the standing landmine (documented in the operator's
+#     global AGENTS.md) against running `mempalace_sync` / `mempalace_delete_by_source`
+#     beyond dry-run on the SHARED central palace. On that palace most
+#     source_file paths are PERMANENTLY absent from whichever host runs the
+#     sync — a different machine's paths simply do not exist here, ever, not
+#     merely "right now". That is a different failure shape than #2320/#2322
+#     fixes. The landmine still stands; this bump does not relax it.
+#   - PR #2307: long-running Chroma servers no longer invalidate their own
+#     HNSW cache on their own writes (server-side perf fix). This does NOT
+#     make `mempalace_reconnect` unnecessary — that tool exists for EXTERNAL
+#     writes bypassing the in-process client (e.g. direct sqlite backfills,
+#     CLI commands against a running server), a different scenario #2307
+#     does not touch.
+#
+# Known gap, carried forward (flagged in prior release notes, not fixed here):
+# unlike PI_VERSION, which CI's resolve-versions job verifies is published and
+# warns — never silently adopts — on npm drift, MEMPALACE_VERSION has NO
+# equivalent CI-side audit (confirmed: zero references to MEMPALACE_VERSION in
+# .gitea/workflows/docker-publish.yml). This is a literal Dockerfile string
+# with no automated freshness or publish check.
+#
+# Deployment sequencing note for whoever ships this bump: synlig (the shared
+# central palace host) currently serves mempalace 3.7.1 SERVER-SIDE via
+# docker-compose.mempalace.yml, which reuses this same devbox image. Bumping
+# this ARG changes only the CLIENT version baked into pi-devbox images: it
+# introduces client/server skew until synlig's compose stack is separately
+# rebuilt/redeployed with the new pin. Not something to code around here —
+# just sequence the redeploy.
+ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION=3.8.0
 ENV UV_TOOL_DIR=/opt/uv-tools
 ENV UV_TOOL_BIN_DIR=/usr/local/bin
 RUN if [ "${INSTALL_MEMPALACE}" = "true" ]; then \

Dockerfile.variant

@@ -56,7 +56,22 @@ ARG USER_NAME=developer
 # current when it was first populated (shipped the same bytes for pi-devbox
 # v0.74.0..v0.75.5; discovered + fixed in v0.75.5b, 2026-05-23). The `latest`
 # branch below is kept only for a deliberate local `docker build` override.
-ARG PI_VERSION=0.84.2
+#
+# AUDITED AT 0.84.3 (2026-08-25, was 0.84.2): upstream's notes carry a
+# "Breaking Changes" heading — `GoogleThinkingLevel` renamed to
+# `GoogleApiThinkingLevel`. INERT FOR THIS IMAGE: all four vendored companions
+# (/opt/pi-fork, /opt/pi-observational-memory, /opt/pi-atelier, /opt/pi-studio)
+# were grepped for that symbol and reference it ZERO times, so nothing here
+# couples to the renamed type. Recorded because the heading will look alarming
+# to the next reader doing step 1 above — the audit is done, don't redo it.
+# Adopted for two fixes that land squarely on this repo's own vendored-skill
+# wiring (see devbox-skill-reconcile, v1.8.5): nested Markdown skills inside
+# `.agents/skills/<group>/` directories were not discovered, and root Markdown
+# files such as README.md / AGENTS.md inside a skill dir were reported as
+# broken skills unless they declared valid skill frontmatter.
+# pi-atelier needs no companion bump: v0.8.2 clears the >=0.7.1 floor that
+# pi >= 0.84 requires (see PI_ATELIER_REF below).
+ARG PI_VERSION=0.84.3
 ARG PI_TOOLKIT_REF=main
 ARG PI_EXTENSIONS_REF=main
 # Repo URLs default to the canonical gitea origin but are overridable so a
@@ -297,6 +312,19 @@ RUN set -e; \
     mkdir -p /etc/pi-devbox; \
     rev() { git -C "$1" rev-parse HEAD 2>/dev/null || echo "unknown"; }; \
     PI_V="$(pi --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r\n')"; \
+    # mempalace CORE (the PyPI package behind the MCP tools) is installed in
+    # Dockerfile.base via `uv tool install`, so no /opt clone reveals it and
+    # until v1.8.6 the manifest could not answer "which palace shipped here?" —
+    # a palace bug could not be correlated to an image, which is precisely the
+    # correlation this file exists to provide. Read from the INSTALLED BINARY,
+    # not from ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION, per the ground-truth rule above: that is
+    # what catches an install which resolved to something other than the pin.
+    # `mempalace --version` prints "MemPalace 3.7.1" — NAME-PREFIXED, unlike
+    # pi's bare "0.84.2" — hence the $NF pick rather than a straight read. The
+    # leading-digit test then rejects usage/error text (a renamed flag prints a
+    # usage block) and degrades to JSON null, so this can never fail the build.
+    MP_V="$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r' | awk '{print $NF}')"; \
+    case "$MP_V" in [0-9]*) MP_CORE="\"${MP_V}\"" ;; *) MP_CORE='null' ;; esac; \
     STUDIO_REV='null'; \
     if [ -d /opt/pi-studio/.git ]; then STUDIO_REV="\"$(rev /opt/pi-studio)\""; fi; \
     { \
@@ -305,6 +333,10 @@ RUN set -e; \
       echo "  \"build_date\": \"${BUILD_DATE}\","; \
       echo "  \"source_revision\": \"${SOURCE_REVISION}\","; \
       echo "  \"pi_version\": \"${PI_V}\","; \
+      # Sibling of pi_version, NOT a member of components{}: that map holds git
+      # SHAs and `pi-devbox-version` renders it with .value[0:12], which would
+      # silently truncate a longer version string.
+      echo "  \"mempalace_version\": ${MP_CORE},"; \
       echo "  \"components\": {"; \
       echo "    \"pi-toolkit\": \"$(rev /opt/pi-toolkit)\","; \
       echo "    \"pi-extensions\": \"$(rev /opt/pi-extensions)\","; \

README.md

@@ -70,9 +70,27 @@ so `TERM=xterm-kitty` is understood. Override either in your own
 ### Document and image tooling
 
 - `pandoc` — universal Markdown↔HTML/Org/RST/etc. converter
+- `typst` — markup-based typesetting, wired up as pandoc's `--pdf-engine` (see
+  [Generating a PDF with pandoc + typst](#generating-a-pdf-with-pandoc--typst))
 - `graphviz` — `dot` rendering for diagram pipelines
 - `imagemagick` — image conversion / resizing (invoked as `magick`)
 
+### Browser automation
+
+- `agent-browser` — CLI for driving a real headless browser: open pages,
+  click/fill/`eval`, snapshot the DOM, take screenshots. Useful whenever a task
+  involves a web UI or verifying how a page actually renders (live DOM, WebGL,
+  layout, popup positioning) instead of guessing from source.
+- `playwright` + a pre-installed headless **Chromium** back it.
+  `AGENT_BROWSER_EXECUTABLE_PATH` is preset to the baked browser via a stable
+  `/usr/local/bin/agent-chrome` symlink (insulated from Playwright's
+  per-version/arch install directory), so `agent-browser open <url>` works
+  out of the box with no setup. Run `agent-browser skills get core --full`
+  for the command set and workflow patterns.
+- `socat` — TCP bridge used by `studio-expose` to reach pi-studio's
+  loopback-bound server from outside the container (see
+  [Using pi-studio](#using-pi-studio--studio-variant))
+
 ### Language toolchains
 
 - `python3` + `python3-venv` + `python3-pip` (system Python)
@@ -787,8 +805,9 @@ docker inspect --format '{{json .Config.Labels}}' joakimp/pi-devbox:latest | jq
 `org.opencontainers.image.{version,revision,created}` plus
 `se.jordbo.pi-devbox.*-ref` record the intended pi version and companion
 refs. The on-disk `/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json` records **ground
-truth** — the actual checked-out commit of each `/opt` clone and the live
-`pi --version` — so a tag is reconstructable after CI logs rotate:
+truth** — the actual checked-out commit of each `/opt` clone, the live
+`pi --version`, and (from v1.8.6) the live `mempalace --version` of the
+installed palace core — so a tag is reconstructable after CI logs rotate:
 
 ```bash
 docker run --rm --entrypoint= joakimp/pi-devbox:latest cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json

THIRD_PARTY.md

@@ -18,8 +18,23 @@ for OS packages, the per-package copyright files inside the image at
 | pi-fork | github.com/elpapi42/pi-fork | MIT |
 | pi-observational-memory | github.com/elpapi42/pi-observational-memory | MIT |
 | pi-studio *(`-studio` variant only)* | github.com/omaclaren/pi-studio | MIT |
+| pi-atelier | github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier | MIT |
 | pi-toolkit, pi-extensions, mempalace-toolkit | authored by the maintainer (Joakim Persson) | MIT |
 
+## MemPalace (AI memory)
+
+| Component | Upstream | License |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| mempalace (core, MCP server) | github.com/MemPalace/mempalace (PyPI: `mempalace`) | MIT — the GitHub repo declares MIT; the PyPI package's own metadata omits a license classifier, so if you need clearance from the package artifact alone, verify against the repo's `LICENSE` file rather than the sdist/wheel metadata |
+
+## Browser automation
+
+| Component | Upstream | License |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| agent-browser | github.com/vercel-labs/agent-browser (npm: `agent-browser`) | Apache-2.0 |
+| Playwright | github.com/microsoft/playwright (npm: `playwright`) | Apache-2.0 |
+| Chromium | chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src | BSD-3-Clause for Chromium's own code, plus a large set of bundled third-party components each under their own license (see Chromium's own `LICENSE`/`about:credits`). The binary in this image is **not compiled here** — it is the build Playwright downloads for its pinned version ("Chrome for Testing"), installed via `playwright install --with-deps chromium` at `/usr/local/share/ms-playwright/`. Treat Playwright's own distribution terms for that build as authoritative over any summary here. |
+
 ## Tooling baked into the base image
 
 | Component | Upstream | License (best effort) |

rootfs/usr/local/bin/pi-devbox-version

@@ -55,6 +55,10 @@ release_tag=$(jq -r '.release_tag' "$MANIFEST")
 build_date=$(jq -r '.build_date' "$MANIFEST")
 source_rev=$(jq -r '.source_revision' "$MANIFEST")
 pi_version_baked=$(jq -r '.pi_version' "$MANIFEST")
+# `// empty` matters: images built before v1.8.6 have no such field, and
+# `jq -r` renders a JSON null as the 4-char string "null" — which would
+# print as a bogus version rather than being treated as absent.
+mp_version_baked=$(jq -r '.mempalace_version // empty' "$MANIFEST")
 
 if [ "$MODE" = "quiet" ]; then
   printf '%s (%s)\n' "$release_tag" "${source_rev:0:7}"
@@ -71,6 +75,16 @@ if command -v pi >/dev/null 2>&1; then
   pi_version_live=$(pi --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d '\r\n')
 fi
 
+# Same check for the palace, which matters more than it looks: mempalace is
+# the one component that is BOTH client (here) and server (synlig runs this
+# same image), so a skew between the two is a real failure mode rather than
+# cosmetic. `mempalace --version` prints "MemPalace 3.8.0" — name-prefixed,
+# unlike pi's bare "0.84.3" — hence $NF rather than reading the whole line.
+mp_version_live=""
+if command -v mempalace >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+  mp_version_live=$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | awk '{print $NF}' | tr -d '\r\n')
+fi
+
 printf 'pi-devbox %s\n' "$release_tag"
 printf '  built:  %s  (source %s)\n' "$build_date" "${source_rev:0:12}"
 if [ -n "$pi_version_live" ] && [ "$pi_version_live" != "$pi_version_baked" ]; then
@@ -79,5 +93,15 @@ else
   printf '  pi:     %s\n' "${pi_version_live:-$pi_version_baked}"
 fi
 
+# Printed only when known, so this degrades quietly on pre-v1.8.6 images
+# instead of showing an empty or "null" palace line.
+if [ -n "$mp_version_live" ] || [ -n "$mp_version_baked" ]; then
+  if [ -n "$mp_version_live" ] && [ -n "$mp_version_baked" ] && [ "$mp_version_live" != "$mp_version_baked" ]; then
+    printf '  palace: %s  \033[33m(baked as %s — drift detected)\033[0m\n' "$mp_version_live" "$mp_version_baked"
+  else
+    printf '  palace: %s\n' "${mp_version_live:-$mp_version_baked}"
+  fi
+fi
+
 printf '  components:\n'
 jq -r '.components | to_entries[] | select(.value != null) | "    \(.key): \(.value[0:12])"' "$MANIFEST"

scripts/smoke-test.sh

@@ -151,6 +151,33 @@ run "pi stage follows MEMPALACE_PALACE_PATH" '
         mempalace-pi-session --dry-run --reason smoke --sessions-dir "$(mktemp -d)" 2>&1) || true
   echo "$out" | grep -q "stage=/tmp/alt/.mempalace/pi-stage/"
 '
+# The feeder's --agent default is WHO a drawer is attributed to. mempalace core
+# records neither the machine nor the harness on a write, and one shared bearer
+# token means the server cannot tell clients apart, so toolkit c64ffa1 changed
+# this default from $USER to pi@$MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE — the one string that makes
+# a write attributable to both. Nothing ever PRINTED the resolved value (the
+# banner shows mode= and stage= only), so an image built from a pre-c64ffa1
+# toolkit ref would ship unattributed writes with every check still green.
+#
+# `--help` assigns AGENT (script top) before it parses args, then exits 0 with
+# no side effects — so `bash -x` observes the REAL resolution, env interpolation
+# and fallback included, rather than grepping the source for a literal line that
+# any reformat would break. Two-sided on purpose: device set => pi@<device>;
+# device UNSET => must not be pi@anything. The second half is what fails against
+# the old unconditional $USER default, which ignored the device entirely.
+#
+# Probes the PATH entry (a symlink into the /opt clone) rather than that clone
+# path directly: this is the invocation the systemd/launchd timers and
+# entrypoint-user.sh actually use, so it is the default that reaches the palace.
+run "feeder resolves --agent to pi@<device> (drawer attribution)" '
+  f=$(command -v mempalace-pi-session) || { echo "feeder not on PATH" >&2; exit 1; }
+  with=$(MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE=smoke-device bash -x $f --help 2>&1 | sed -n "s/^+* *AGENT=//p" | tail -n1)
+  without=$(env -u MEMPALACE_PI_DEVICE bash -x $f --help 2>&1 | sed -n "s/^+* *AGENT=//p" | tail -n1)
+  echo "resolved with-device=[$with] without-device=[$without]" >&2
+  [ "$with" = "pi@smoke-device" ] || exit 1
+  case "$without" in pi@*) exit 1 ;; esac
+  echo ok
+'
 # Regression guard for the pi transcript exporter. If pi ever changes its
 # session JSONL shape, the exporter stops recognising sessions and the palace
 # silently gets nothing (or, worse, raw JSON chunked as prose). Feed it a
@@ -263,6 +290,26 @@ run "pi-fork clone + node_modules" \
     "test -f /opt/pi-fork/package.json && test -d /opt/pi-fork/node_modules"
 run "pi-observational-memory clone + node_modules" \
     "test -f /opt/pi-observational-memory/package.json && test -d /opt/pi-observational-memory/node_modules"
+# ...and that the clone carries the AUTH FIX, not merely that it exists. om's
+# pre-flight hasUsableAuth() check silently disabled `recall` for ~8 weeks once
+# pi moved to request-time SigV4 signing and stopped exposing a static Bedrock
+# key; upstream fixed it in ce9fc98, adopted in v1.8.4. PI_OBSMEM_REF tracks
+# master, so an upstream revert or force-push would ship a dead `recall` with
+# the clone assertion above still green — the exact gap flagged as open in the
+# v1.8.5 changelog.
+#
+# Pin the markers to src/runtime.ts, the fix SITE, rather than grepping the
+# repo: two of these three strings also appear under tests/, so a repo-wide
+# grep stays green with runtime.ts itself reverted. That is a false green of the
+# same family as the old skill-snapshot canary.
+run "pi-observational-memory carries the ce9fc98 auth fix (recall stays alive)" '
+  f=/opt/pi-observational-memory/src/runtime.ts
+  test -f "$f" || { echo "fix site missing: $f" >&2; exit 1; }
+  for m in availability_recheck providerCredentialConfigured hasConfiguredAuth; do
+    grep -q "$m" "$f" || { echo "marker absent from runtime.ts: $m" >&2; exit 1; }
+  done
+  echo ok
+'
 # pi-atelier: deliberately NO node_modules assertion, unlike its siblings —
 # it declares zero runtime dependencies (only peerDeps, satisfied by the baked
 # pi) and has no build step, so Dockerfile.variant skips `npm install` for it.
@@ -307,6 +354,20 @@ run_expect "manifest records pi-atelier" \
     "cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json" '"pi-atelier"'
 run_expect "manifest records pi_version" \
     "cat /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json" '"pi_version"'
+# mempalace CORE was absent from the manifest through v1.8.5: the toolkit SHA
+# was recorded but the palace version behind the MCP tools was not, so a palace
+# bug could not be correlated to an image version. Assert the field exists AND
+# equals the installed binary — recording it from ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION instead
+# would look identical here yet drift silently the first time an install
+# resolved to something other than the pin, which is the whole reason this file
+# is built from ground truth. `// empty` matters: jq -r prints the 4-char
+# string "null" for a JSON null, which would satisfy a naive -n test.
+run "manifest mempalace_version matches the installed core" '
+  m=$(jq -r ".mempalace_version // empty" /etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json)
+  b=$(mempalace --version 2>/dev/null | head -n1 | tr -d "\r"); b=${b##* }
+  echo "manifest=[$m] installed=[$b]" >&2
+  [ -n "$m" ] && [ "$m" = "$b" ]
+'
 # Every component must be a resolved commit (or null for pi-studio in the
 # non-studio variant) — 'unknown' means a clone silently failed to resolve.
 run "manifest has no unresolved ('unknown') components" \