Changelog

0.3.0rc1 — 2026-09-21

Time-aware verbatim records, explicit corrections, truthful write outcomes, and a six-tool MCP surface with fast zero-LLM recall. Public install/startup safeguards are retained. MCP names change; see upgrade notes. Historical benchmark scores are not evidence for the redesigned default path.

Unreleased

• Pin supersession fail-open, cache reload, annotation, and ephemera filtering contracts with server-free unit tests.
• Clarify the benchmark case-file roles, disposable-server requirement, and quickstart service use in contributor documentation.
• Add read-only fidelis recent and fidelis get CLI commands with bounded options, correction metadata, raw JSON output, and explicit failures.
• Add five server-free worked examples under examples/real-world/ (correction chain, retraction/ephemera read filter, write-gate screening, MCP client config, benchmark hardset hit@5), re-verified by tests/test_real_world_examples.py.

v0.2.0

• Start the local HTTP service and MCP stdio surface without a reachable Ollama instance. Health and protocol-discovery requests remain available; memory-backed operations report a degraded/unavailable store until the local embedding service is reachable.
• Make fidelis init refuse existing service-label and port collisions by default, preserve existing service environment settings during re-init, and offer explicit port and label overrides for intentional coexistence.
• Honor FIDELIS_PORT on both the HTTP server and MCP client, preventing a configured non-default port from splitting the client and server.
• Add a portable Claude plugin root that pins the released package and exposes the existing read-only MCP tool surface.
• Coordinate package, runtime, MCP/plugin manifests, citation, current install instructions, container metadata, and release tests at 0.2.0. The version-specific Zenodo identifier is intentionally omitted until an archive for this release exists.

v0.1.0 — 2026-09-13

• Promote Fidelis Memory from the 0.0.x sequence to its first minor release. The supported product contract is local-first, verbatim memory retrieval for Codex, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI, and OpenClaw on the currently gate-tested macOS and Ubuntu paths.
• Coordinate package, Python, citation, CodeMeta, MCP Registry, Gemini extension, installation-documentation, and public-install-test versions at 0.1.0.
• Add a public user-fit matrix, a release-readiness record with explicit acceptance criteria, and an outcome-gated 0.2.0 roadmap.
• Replace the manually maintained passing-test-count badge with the live GitHub Actions status badge so release documentation cannot advertise an obsolete count.
• Preserve the historical v0.1.0 and v0.2.0 changelog entries under the clearly labeled cogito-ergo predecessor-package section so they cannot be mistaken for current Fidelis package releases.

v0.0.97 — 2026-09-12

• Release the Gemini CLI extension: v0.0.96 was tagged before gemini-extension.json landed, so the bare-URL install resolved the latest GitHub release and failed with "Configuration file not found". v0.0.97 is the first tag and release archive that carry the manifest.

• Pin the user_id namespace boundary in tests and document that it is not an identity; add glama.json for the Glama registry ownership claim.

• Package Fidelis as a native Gemini CLI extension: gemini-extension.json at the repository root launches the MCP Registry package (uvx --from fidelis-memory==0.0.97 fidelis mcp serve) and GEMINI.md tells the model when to call fidelis_orient and fidelis_recall. gemini extensions install https://github.com/hermes-labs-ai/fidelis registers the server without a manual pip install. tests/test_gemini_extension.py binds the manifest to server.json and pyproject.toml so a release bump cannot leave it on an older wheel.

v0.0.96 — 2026-09-10

• The bundled MCP server now answers the base-protocol ping request with an empty result instead of -32601 method not found. Gemini CLI's gemini mcp list pings after connecting, so a healthy Fidelis server — tools listed, tools working — was reported as Disconnected. No tool, lifecycle, or transport behaviour changed; unknown methods are still refused.

• Add fidelis mcp install --client gemini and fidelis mcp uninstall --client gemini, which register the bundled stdio MCP server through Gemini CLI's native gemini mcp add / gemini mcp remove (v0.1.19+). --scope user (default) targets ~/.gemini/settings.json, --scope project targets ./.gemini/settings.json. Gemini owns the write because it reads that file as JSON-with-comments and round-trips a user's comments; Fidelis only reads it back, to check ownership before replacing or removing an entry and to prove what the run changed. gemini mcp add overwrites a same-named entry unasked and gemini mcp remove exits 0 for an absent name, so a silent no-op or an unexpected entry is reported as a failure rather than as success.

• Add fidelis mcp install --client openclaw and fidelis mcp uninstall --client openclaw. OpenClaw keeps outbound MCP servers under mcp.servers in a JSON5 config (~/.openclaw/openclaw.json, or $OPENCLAW_CONFIG_PATH), so Fidelis neither rewrites that file nor parses it — a strict-JSON rewrite would drop the user's comments and trailing commas, and a strict-JSON read of the same file cannot say what is in it at all. Both directions are delegated to OpenClaw's own CLI with $OPENCLAW_CONFIG_PATH pinned: writes to the documented openclaw mcp add / openclaw mcp unset, and every ownership check and read-back to openclaw mcp show fidelis --json, falling back to openclaw mcp list --json to tell "no such server" apart from "could not be read". Install and uninstall refuse to touch an mcp.servers.fidelis entry that does not name the bundled server unless --force is passed, and never shell out to write before refusing. Success is never inferred from an exit code: a change the CLI reports as successful but that the read-back does not prove exits non-zero, and a state OpenClaw cannot report is treated as unknown — never as "no entry there", and never as a success, even under --force. The openclaw binary is required, because it owns the write and is the only reader that can be trusted with a JSON5 config.

• The Gemini CLI and GitHub Copilot CLI ownership check no longer crashes on a hostile string in a hand-edited config: an embedded NUL (\u0000 is valid JSON) or an unresolvable ~user in the entry's arguments used to escape install and uninstall as a traceback instead of the ownership refusal. Such an entry is now treated as foreign, and left alone unless --force is passed, the way OpenClaw entries already were.

• OpenClaw ownership no longer matches on any string anywhere in an entry — only on command naming a Python interpreter (this process's own, by exact path, or a plausible name like pypy3 elsewhere) paired with exactly one argument naming the bundled script, the one shape openclaw mcp add actually writes. A foreign server that merely references the script path in env, a header, a URL, or an unrelated argument is no longer recognized as Fidelis's own and installed over or removed without --force. Install also verifies the read-back entry's command, argument, and enabled state match what was requested, not just that it belongs to Fidelis — a stale entry from a prior install (wrong interpreter, left disabled) could otherwise read back as "ours" even when openclaw mcp add silently left it untouched. Diagnostics for a refused or unexpected entry now show only its launch-shaped fields (never argument values, env, or headers), so a credential on the entry is never echoed to stderr.

• Add fidelis mcp install --client copilot and fidelis mcp uninstall --client copilot, which register the bundled stdio MCP server in GitHub Copilot CLI's documented mcp-config.json (~/.copilot or $COPILOT_HOME) with atomic writes, backups, and ownership checks that preserve unrelated entries. The copilot binary is not required at configuration time. fidelis mcp uninstall --force removes an entry that does not look like ours, for the case where the ownership check is wrong.

• Atomic config rewrites now keep the destination file's permission bits, and a config Fidelis creates is 0600. Previously every rewrite reset an mcp-config.json or settings.local.json to the umask default, widening a file that can hold MCP env secrets.

• Config backups no longer overwrite each other when two mutations land in the same second, so an install immediately followed by an uninstall keeps both restore points.

v0.0.95 — 2026-09-02

• Add a portable fidelis mcp serve entry point and official MCP Registry metadata for uvx-based installation.
• Add the PyPI README ownership marker required for the io.github.hermes-labs-ai/fidelis-memory registry namespace.

v0.0.94 — 2026-09-02

• Add supported Codex MCP installation and removal through the shared codex mcp configuration, with exact ownership checks that preserve unrelated entries.
• Add fidelis_orient, a deterministic MCP tool that selects a bounded evidence lane, returns retrieved records without rephrasing them, and abstains when a turn lacks a known referent or historical-context cue.
• Add citation and CodeMeta metadata and align the agent-facing llms.txt retrieval headline with the shipped zero-LLM benchmark evidence.

v0.0.93 — 2026-08-05

• Publish the Hermes Labs distribution to PyPI as fidelis-memory.
• Make Fidelis Memory the user-facing product name across package metadata and primary documentation, while preserving the fidelis repository, import, and CLI names for compatibility.
• Replace the GitHub-source install path in primary documentation with the version-pinned PyPI installation command.

v0.0.92 — 2026-08-04

• Preserve /add input verbatim when the extraction model returns no facts, expose the degraded fallback through HTTP and CLI, and apply the same no-silent-loss rule during queued-write replay.
• Correct every current install surface to use tagged GitHub source; the PyPI project named fidelis is unrelated to Hermes Labs Fidelis.
• Align public package status with v0.0.91 and remove a dead benchmark link.
• Narrow local-data and compliance wording to the demonstrated boundary.
• Default mem0 telemetry off for direct server launches so SIGTERM completes cleanly, while preserving explicit opt-in; document the remaining Chroma settings and extend CI coverage through Python 3.14.
• Remove cross-project proof language from current Fidelis presentation.
• Add a regression test for the public installation contract.

fidelis era

v0.0.91 — 2026-06-18 (public release)

• Public open-source release on GitHub + Zenodo DOI.
• Repo hygiene only: relativized benchmark paths, removed run-log artifacts, refreshed module naming, added Zenodo metadata. No API changes vs v0.0.9.

v0.0.5 — 2026-04-24 (first release as fidelis, renamed from cogito-ergo)

Package rename: cogito-ergo → fidelis. Version reset for the new PyPI package. The old cogito-ergo PyPI entries (0.0.8 and 0.3.0) remain published but are now deprecated pointers to this package. Note: a prior cogito-ergo v0.0.5 also exists in the changelog below — these are different packages; the version numbers do not collide on PyPI.

Headline: zero-LLM is the default retrieval tier. The repositioning reflects what the benchmark numbers actually show — the zero-LLM path is the production moat (83.2% R@1 at $0, fully local); the LLM tiers are benchmark-tuned and held as experimental until calibration is fixed.

Rename details

• PyPI package: cogito-ergo → fidelis
• Import name: from cogito → from fidelis
• CLI: cogito ... → fidelis ..., cogito-server → fidelis-server
• Data paths kept as ~/.cogito/ for backward-compat with existing deployments
• Env vars kept as COGITO_* for backward-compat
• ChromaDB collection names kept as cogito_memory to avoid data loss

Default change (breaking for callers relying on default tier)

• recall_hybrid() default tier flipped from filter to zero_llm. Callers that relied on the filter default must pass tier="filter" explicitly. Affects: fidelis recall-hybrid CLI, POST /recall_hybrid, recall_hybrid(...) Python API.

Features

• New since parameter on /recall and fidelis recall --since — ISO-8601 timestamp filter applied after Stage 2.

Observability & reliability

• New fidelis.telemetry module: escalation-rate log + rate() summariser. Makes the 80%-vs-10% calibration miss measurable at runtime. Crash-safe.
• degrade.replay_queue corrupt-file branch now covered by tests.

Tests

• tests/test_zero_llm_regression.py — 4 tests pin zero-LLM default: no filter/flagship invocation, works without LLM config, matches explicit-tier output, handles empty corpus.
• tests/test_telemetry.py — 5 tests for the new observability module.
• tests/test_verify_guard.py — regression pin for the documented verify-guard-inactive bug; xfail until fixed.
• tests/test_graceful_degrade_corruption.py — replay_queue corruption.
• Test baseline: 61 → 72 passing + 2 defensive skips.

Benchmarks (for reference, not default-path claims)

• recall_hybrid at tier="flagship" hits 96.4% R@1 on LongMemEval_S (470 questions, runP-v35, 2026-04-18). Escalates on ~80% of queries under current calibration vs 10% intended — known limitation documented in STATUS.md and docs/RELEASE-SCOPE.md. Do not use the 96.4% number as a cost-model baseline.
• Zero-LLM per-category R@1 (now the default): single-session-assistant 100%, knowledge-update 96%, single-session-user 95%, multi-session 83%, single-session-preference 67%, temporal-reasoning 66%.

Docs

• README repositioned: zero-LLM leads, LLM tiers labeled experimental, per-category table published.
• docs/THRESHOLD-AUDIT.md — pins prod vs bench escalation constants.
• docs/RELEASE-SCOPE.md — in-scope / held-for-later with unlock criteria.

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cogito-ergo era (predecessor package, retained for history)

v0.3.0 — 2026-04-16

• New recall_hybrid path: BM25 + dense + RRF with tiered LLM escalation. Port of the architecture that reached 93.4% R@1 on LongMemEval_S (up from the 56% mem0 baseline). Superseded by v0.3.1 (96.4%).
• New POST /recall_hybrid HTTP endpoint and fidelis recall-hybrid CLI.
• New tiers: zero_llm (no LLM, fastest), filter (cheap rerank, default), flagship (stronger model, 4x larger snippets).
• New env vars: COGITO_FLAGSHIP_ENDPOINT, COGITO_FLAGSHIP_TOKEN, COGITO_FLAGSHIP_MODEL, COGITO_FLAGSHIP_TIMEOUT_MS, COGITO_HYBRID_COSINE_WEIGHT. Optional [hybrid] extra for bm25s.
• Existing /recall and /recall_b behavior is unchanged. The hybrid path is strictly opt-in.

v0.2.0 — 2026-03-28

• Dual-pipeline recall: zero-LLM recall_b (RRF multi-query) feeds recall (integer-pointer LLM filter)
• Snapshot layer for high-fidelity context injection
• Combined eval harness (bench/)
• Technical extraction prompt baked into default config (no external prompt file needed)
• Qwen3/qwen3.5 support via native Ollama /api/chat with think:false

v0.0.5 — 2026-03-28

• Fixed benchmark attribution: qwen3.5:2b filter model (not claude-haiku-4-5)
• Added Hermes Labs PyPI metadata (author, homepage, keywords)
• Added agents.md for AI agent discoverability
• Updated llms.txt with full API shapes and integration notes
• Added "Built by Hermes Labs" ecosystem section to README

v0.1.0 — 2026-03

• Initial two-stage integer-pointer recall pipeline
• mem0 + ChromaDB vector store backend
• HTTP server with /recall, /add, /snapshot endpoints
• fidelis calibrate for vocab map generation