release: adopt pi 0.84.4 + pi-atelier v0.10.0, and fix the doc claim the pi bump invalidates

pi 0.84.3 -> 0.84.4 (no Breaking Changes / Removed heading in that section,
grepped). Adopted for three fixes that land on machinery this fleet runs:
#6879 (large tool results crossing the auto-compaction threshold were sent to
the provider before compacting), #8345 (a resumed session corrupted its next
appended entry when the JSONL lacked a trailing newline -- that file is the
memory feeder's input; measured 49/49 clean here beforehand), and #8537
(triggerTurn:false messages sent mid-run were inserted between a tool call and
its result). The mempalace mailbox is outside #8537's precondition: it delivers
at agent_settled with deliverAs:"steer" and no triggerTurn, and 0.84.4 leaves
the documented steer semantics unchanged.

pi-atelier v0.8.2 -> v0.10.0: two minor releases, both UI-only, no BREAKING
notice. v0.9.0 raises its minimum pi to 0.84.0 and, unlike the
0.7.1-under-pi-0.84 startup-hang precedent, encodes it in peerDependencies
(>=0.84.0). Satisfied by PI_VERSION=0.84.4. Both executable floors compare with
sort -V, so 0.10.0 >= 0.7.1 evaluates correctly.

docs/observational-memory.md: pi's own compaction.md gained one paragraph in
0.84.4 -- autoCompact is now also checked mid-run, after a tool batch's results
are appended. Our text said compaction is checked only when pi goes idle and so
"never interrupts a turn"; that was only ever true of the OM trigger. The
section now states both entry points into session_before_compact and the
diagram carries the second edge (mermaid checker re-run: 6 blocks, 44 labels,
0 soft-wrapped, no cut glyphs at 1280px and 800px).

README: the version-pin table had been wrong since v1.8.6 -- 93f986e moved
ARG PI_VERSION to 0.84.3 and MEMPALACE_VERSION to 3.8.0 and neither table row,
so it advertised pi 0.84.2 / mempalace 3.7.1. Corrected, plus the
--expected-version example that would now fail against a 0.84.4 image.

CHANGELOG: Unreleased retitled v1.8.12 (2026-08-31) with the audits above and a
dependency-audit table -- every other component measured SAME (skillset
snapshot --check OK at a12fe5e, 0 commits since baked).

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -11,7 +11,94 @@ Pre-v1.0.0 tags followed the pi npm version (`v{pi_version}[letter]`).
 
 ---
 
-## Unreleased
+## v1.8.12 — 2026-08-31
+
+**`pi` `0.84.3` → `0.84.4`, and `pi-atelier` `v0.8.2` → `v0.10.0`.** Both audited
+by the routine in `Dockerfile.variant` rather than adopted on sight, and the
+audit notes live next to the pins where the next reader will meet them.
+
+**pi 0.84.4 (published 2026-08-28) carries no `Breaking Changes` and no
+`Removed` heading** — checked by grepping the section, 0 matches, which is worth
+stating because 0.84.3 *did* have one. It was adopted for three fixes that land
+on machinery this fleet runs every day, not for the feature list:
+
+- **#6879** — a large tool result crossing the auto-compaction threshold used to
+  be sent to the provider *before* compaction. Pi now compacts between tool
+  execution and the next assistant response inside the same run. That is the
+  shape of nearly every session on these boxes, where a single `event_list` or
+  palace search returns hundreds of KB.
+- **#8345** — a resumed session corrupted its next appended entry when the JSONL
+  file lacked a trailing newline. That file is the memory feeder's *input*, so
+  the failure would have surfaced as unexplained gaps in `wing_conversations`
+  rather than as an error. Measured on tor-ms22 before bumping: 49/49
+  transcripts end in a newline and 0 lines fail `json.loads` — this corpus was
+  never bitten, and we now know that rather than hope it.
+- **#8537** — extension messages sent with `triggerTurn: false` *while the agent
+  is running* were inserted between a tool call and its result, so
+  order-validating providers rejected the replayed history. **The mempalace
+  mailbox is outside that precondition**: it delivers at `agent_settled`, when
+  no inference is in flight, with `{deliverAs: "steer"}` and deliberately no
+  `triggerTurn`. 0.84.4 also leaves the documented steer semantics untouched
+  ("delivered after the current assistant turn finishes executing its tool
+  calls, before the next LLM call"), so RFC 003 §7.11 stands as written. Recorded
+  because this fix is precisely what would make a *mid-run* delivery safe, which
+  is the only reason we would ever change that call.
+
+Also new and relevant, though nothing here uses them yet: `ui_prompt_start` /
+`ui_prompt_end` extension events (the `docs/extensions.md` diff is add-only — no
+steer or `triggerTurn` semantics moved), and an RPC `clear_queue` that returns
+and removes queued steering messages. The second one can discard an
+already-delivered but unconsumed mailbox steer; that is survivable because the
+mailbox re-delivers on `MEMPALACE_MAILBOX_RESURFACE_MS` (default 3600000), and it
+is written down here so a future "the mailbox lost a message" report has a
+candidate cause. The three new `PI_HYPERLINKS` / `PI_IMAGE_PROTOCOL` /
+`PI_TRUE_COLOR` environment variables were grepped against this whole repo: no
+collisions with anything the image sets.
+
+**The bump moved one documented mechanism, so `docs/observational-memory.md` §3
+moved with it.** Pi's own `docs/compaction.md` gained exactly one paragraph in
+0.84.4: the `autoCompact` threshold is now *also* checked mid-run, after a tool
+batch's results are appended and before the next assistant response, skipped only
+when that batch ends the run and no queued message needs another response. Our
+doc said compaction is "checked when pi goes idle, so it never interrupts a
+turn". That was only ever true of observational-memory's **own** trigger
+(`compaction-trigger.ts` hooks `agent_settled`); read as a statement about pi it
+is now false. `session_before_compact` (`compaction-hook.ts`) therefore has
+**two** entry points and the second can fire inside a turn — harmless for the
+ledger fold, which makes no model call, but a doc that ships a false promise
+about when a hook runs is worse than one that admits two paths. The §3 mermaid
+diagram gained the second edge, and the whole file re-passes the bundled mermaid
+checker (6 blocks, 44 labels, 0 soft-wrapped, no cut glyphs at 1280px and
+800px).
+
+**pi-atelier `v0.8.2` → `v0.10.0` is two minor releases and both are UI-only** —
+Sidebar kept calm during an active Turn, composer frame and Status Rail polish,
+fullscreen-copy-safe Sidebar, Windows path normalisation, Workspace Pulse
+deferred until pi trusts the project. Neither release carries a BREAKING notice.
+The coupling that matters runs the *opposite* way to this pin's hard-earned
+floor: v0.9.0 renders the Sidebar as a separate split-layout child and therefore
+"raises the minimum supported Pi version to 0.84.0", and — unlike the
+0.7.1-under-pi-0.84 startup-hang precedent, which its metadata never encoded —
+this time `peerDependencies` says so (`>=0.84.0`, up from `>=0.80.7`). Satisfied
+with room to spare by `PI_VERSION=0.84.4`. It also pairs deliberately with a
+0.84.4 feature: atelier keeps Sidebar content out of the fullscreen transcript
+selection while pi adds `fullscreenCopyOnSelect` and Ctrl+X for the selection
+itself. Both executable floors (`scripts/smoke-test.sh`,
+`scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh`) compare with `sort -V`, so `0.10.0 >= 0.7.1`
+is evaluated correctly — verified by running the comparison, because the string
+form of that test reads `0.10.0` as *older* than `0.7.1`.
+
+**While bumping the pins, the README's own pin table turned out to have been
+wrong since v1.8.6.** It advertised pi `0.84.2` and mempalace `3.7.1` in the very
+table whose purpose is to tell a reader what is pinned and where. Both rows went
+stale in the *same* commit — `93f986e` (v1.8.6, "adopt pi 0.84.3 + mempalace
+3.8.0") moved both `ARG`s and neither table row; the rows themselves date from
+`29b6209` (v1.8.0) and `2ebf00d` (v1.8.4). Only atelier's row was still true.
+All three corrected now, and the `--expected-version 0.84.3` example in the
+recreate-sanity section updated too, since that one is a copy-pasteable command
+that would now fail against a 0.84.4 image. Worth noting how it survived two
+releases: nothing checks prose against the `ARG`s, so this table has to be
+remembered by hand on every pin bump, and once it was not.
 
 **`credential-incident-response` gained the section its own guidance had been
 missing, and §2 gained a precondition it should always have carried.** Docs only;
@@ -190,6 +277,40 @@ while `~/.bashrc` carries the image's), so the skel file is re-seeded on every
 recreate. A `$HOME/.bash_aliases` that is bind-mounted from the host is still
 never overwritten, which is the existing contract.
 
+### Dependency audit (2026-08-31)
+
+Every component checked against upstream by direct command, not assumed:
+
+| Component | Baked in v1.8.11 | Upstream now | Action |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **pi** | `0.84.3` (pinned) | **`0.84.4`** is npm latest | bumped + audited (above) |
+| **pi-atelier** | `v0.8.2` (pinned) | **`v0.10.0`** highest tag | bumped + audited (above) |
+| mempalace | `3.8.0` (pinned) | `3.8.0` is PyPI latest | none |
+| skillset (mempalace fallback snapshot) | `a12fe5e` | `a12fe5e` == `origin/main`, 0 commits since | none — `--check` reports OK, no NOTICE |
+| mempalace-toolkit | `21023e7` | `21023e7` | none |
+| pi-toolkit | `0e1369e` | `0e1369e` | none |
+| pi-extensions | `2022887` | `2022887` | none |
+| pi-fork | `bf702b4` | `bf702b4` | none |
+| pi-observational-memory | `ce9fc98` | `ce9fc98` (v3.0.4, peerDeps `*` → no pi floor to clear) | none |
+| pi-studio (studio variant) | `3328b3d` | `3328b3d` | none |
+| floating `*_VERSION=latest` tools (16) | — | 14 already at latest; `git-lfs` `3.7.1`→`3.8.0` (feature, no breaking section), `uv` `0.12.6`→`0.12.7` (patch) | adopted implicitly by the rebuild; named here per this repo's floating-ref rule |
+| node | major pin `22`, installed `v22.23.2` | `v22.23.2` is the newest 22.x | none — a newer LTS *line* (24.x) exists and is deliberately not tracked |
+
+Two method notes, because both would have produced a confident wrong answer:
+
+- **An annotated tag's `ls-remote` SHA is the tag object, not the commit.**
+  `refs/tags/v0.8.2` is `6e07bf85` while `refs/tags/v0.8.2^{}` is `159f34cf` —
+  the value actually baked. Comparing the un-dereferenced form reported
+  `pi-atelier` as *drifted from its own pin*, which would have been a false
+  integrity alarm about the one component whose pin is load-bearing. Always
+  deref with `^{}` before calling a pin broken.
+- **`git ls-remote --tags | sort -V | tail` is not a "latest release" proxy.**
+  `typst/typst` carries date-style tags (`v23-03-28`) and `mikefarah/yq` carries
+  `vTestA`/`vTestB`; both sort *after* the real releases. `Dockerfile.base`
+  itself resolves `latest` by reading the `Location` of
+  `curl -sI …/releases/latest`, so replaying that exact step is both
+  noise-immune and the same source of truth the build will see.
+
 ---
 
 ## v1.8.11 — 2026-08-27

Dockerfile.variant

@@ -57,6 +57,32 @@ ARG USER_NAME=developer
 # 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.
 #
+# AUDITED AT 0.84.4 (2026-08-31, was 0.84.3): NO "Breaking Changes" and no
+# "Removed" heading in the 0.84.4 section (grepped, 0 matches) — unlike 0.84.3,
+# whose heading is described in the paragraph below and stays audited. Adopted
+# for three fixes that land on machinery this fleet actually runs:
+#   - #6879 large tool results crossing the auto-compaction threshold were sent
+#     to the provider BEFORE compacting; pi now compacts between tool execution
+#     and the next assistant response in the same run. This is the shape of
+#     nearly every session here (multi-hundred-KB logstream/palace tool output).
+#   - #8345 a resumed session corrupted its next appended entry when the JSONL
+#     lacked a trailing newline. That file is the memory feeder's own input.
+#     Measured on tor-ms22 before the bump: 49/49 transcripts end in a newline,
+#     0 lines fail json.loads — the bug had not bitten this corpus.
+#   - #8537 extension messages sent with `triggerTurn: false` WHILE THE AGENT IS
+#     RUNNING were inserted between a tool call and its result, so
+#     order-validating providers rejected the replayed history. The mempalace
+#     mailbox is outside that precondition — it delivers at `agent_settled`
+#     (idle) with `{deliverAs:"steer"}` and deliberately no `triggerTurn` — and
+#     0.84.4 leaves the documented steer semantics unchanged, so RFC 003 §7.11
+#     still holds. Recorded because the fix is what would make a future mid-run
+#     delivery safe, which is the only reason we would ever change that call.
+# One doc consequence, fixed in this same release: pi's own docs/compaction.md
+# gained exactly one paragraph — the autoCompact threshold is now ALSO checked
+# mid-run, after a tool batch's results are appended. See
+# docs/observational-memory.md §3, which had said compaction is only checked
+# when pi goes idle.
+#
 # 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
@@ -69,9 +95,7 @@ ARG USER_NAME=developer
 # `.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
+ARG PI_VERSION=0.84.4
-# 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
@@ -101,15 +125,31 @@ ARG PI_OBSMEM_REF=master
 # pin and PI_VERSION together, checking atelier's CHANGELOG for the pi
 # version it claims to track.
 #
+# AUDITED AT v0.10.0 (2026-08-31, was v0.8.2 — two minor releases): no
+# BREAKING notice in either release, and both are UI-only (Sidebar calm during
+# an active Turn, composer frame + Status Rail, fullscreen-copy-safe Sidebar,
+# Windows path normalisation, Workspace Pulse deferred until pi trusts the
+# project). The one coupling that matters runs the OPPOSITE way to the floor
+# above: v0.9.0 renders the Sidebar as a separate split-layout child and
+# therefore "raises the minimum supported Pi version to 0.84.0", which its
+# peerDependencies do encode this time (`>=0.84.0`, up from `>=0.80.7`).
+# Satisfied with room to spare by PI_VERSION 0.84.4 above — and note that both
+# executable floors (scripts/smoke-test.sh, scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh)
+# compare with `sort -V`, so 0.10.0 >= 0.7.1 is evaluated correctly rather than
+# as the string comparison that would read 0.10.0 as older than 0.7.1.
+# Pairs deliberately with pi 0.84.4's own fullscreen selection-copy controls:
+# atelier keeps Sidebar content out of the transcript selection, pi adds
+# `fullscreenCopyOnSelect` + Ctrl+X for the selection itself.
+#
 # No `npm install` step, unlike pi-fork/pi-observational-memory/pi-studio:
 # pi-atelier declares ZERO runtime dependencies (only peerDeps, satisfied by
 # the baked pi) and has no build step — pi loads its TypeScript directly from
 # the /opt checkout. Adding an install here would be a no-op that only costs
 # build time.
 ARG PI_ATELIER_REPO=https://github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier.git
-ARG PI_ATELIER_REF=v0.8.2
+ARG PI_ATELIER_REF=v0.10.0
 # Human-readable tag PI_ATELIER_REF was resolved from; recorded as a label.
-ARG PI_ATELIER_VERSION=v0.8.2
+ARG PI_ATELIER_VERSION=v0.10.0
 
 RUN set -e && \
     # git_fetch_ref: clone-equivalent helper that accepts EITHER a branch name

README.md

@@ -1093,7 +1093,7 @@ persisted volumes survived, and pi runtime wiring is intact:
 ```bash
 ./scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh                              # auto-detects variant
 ./scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh --expected-image-version 1.8.9  # assert the pi-devbox release tag
-./scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh --expected-version 0.84.3        # assert the pi coding agent version
+./scripts/recreate-sanity-check.sh --expected-version 0.84.4        # assert the pi coding agent version
 ```
 
 Those are **two different versions**, and the flags are not interchangeable:
@@ -1132,9 +1132,9 @@ resolved to `latest` at build time:
 
 | Component | Pin | Where |
 |---|---|---|
-| pi | `0.84.2` | `ARG PI_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
+| pi | `0.84.4` | `ARG PI_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
-| pi-atelier | `v0.8.2` | `ARG PI_ATELIER_REF` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
+| pi-atelier | `v0.10.0` | `ARG PI_ATELIER_REF` — `Dockerfile.variant` |
-| mempalace | `3.7.1` | `ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.base` |
+| mempalace | `3.8.0` | `ARG MEMPALACE_VERSION` — `Dockerfile.base` |
 
 The objective is **not** to freeze versions. Bumping is routine — usually one
 line plus a changelog note. The objective is that adopting a new upstream

docs/observational-memory.md

@@ -21,8 +21,9 @@ palace, see
 > Verified on pi-devbox **v1.8.9** (`release_tag v1.8.9`, source `aac4a1c`),
 > which bakes pi-observational-memory **v3.0.4** at commit `ce9fc98` — the value
 > in `/etc/pi-devbox/build-manifest.json` → `components.pi-observational-memory`.
-> Every number below was read from that tree, from pi 0.84.3's own docs, or from
+> Every number below was read from that tree, from pi's own docs, or from the
-> the live container.
+> live container. The pi-side mechanics were first read at pi **0.84.3** and
+> re-checked at **0.84.4** (v1.8.12), which moved one of them — see §3.
 
 ---
 
@@ -93,6 +94,7 @@ flowchart TD
     S(["agent_settled"]) --> C{"81k tokens<br/>since compacting?"}
     C -- yes --> CP["ctx.compact()"]
     CP --> H(["session_before_compact"])
+    A(["pi autoCompact<br/>idle, or mid-run<br/>after a tool batch"]) --> H
     H --> F["fold the ledger<br/>no model call"]
     F --> VIS["compacted memory"]
 ```
@@ -105,10 +107,16 @@ flowchart TD
   a *successful same-turn* reflection **and** an active pool above
   `observationsPoolTargetTokens` [10000]. Not a third worker on a third
   threshold.
-- **compaction** — `compactAfterTokens` [81000], checked when pi goes idle, so it
+- **compaction** — `compactAfterTokens` [81000], checked at `agent_settled`, so
-  never interrupts a turn. Pi will also compact on its own when the context is
+  *this* trigger never interrupts a turn. Pi will also compact on its own when
-  nearly full (`contextTokens > contextWindow - reserveTokens`, `reserveTokens`
+  the context is nearly full (`contextTokens > contextWindow - reserveTokens`,
-  [16384]).
+  `reserveTokens` [16384]), and **from pi 0.84.4 that check also runs mid-run** —
+  after a tool batch's results are appended, before the next assistant response,
+  skipped only when the batch ends the run and no queued message needs another
+  response. So `session_before_compact` has **two** entry points and the second
+  one can fire *inside* a turn. Harmless for the fold itself, which makes no
+  model call, but worth stating plainly: "never interrupts a turn" was only ever
+  true of the observational-memory trigger, and reads as a promise about pi's.
 
 ## 4. What compaction actually does to your context