CHANGELOG.md

Changelog

Note: Versions 0.3.26 – 0.3.55 were released as git tags without changelog entries. Changelog resumes at 0.3.56 below.

0.5.1

Fixed

• Mac↔Windows peer connections over LAN. BonjourDiscovery now publishes an explicit host field with a normalized mDNS-valid hostname (.local suffix). On Windows, os.hostname() returns a bare NetBIOS name (e.g. xmesh-hp) with no domain suffix; bonjour-service previously advertised that verbatim as the SRV target. macOS mDNSResponder only resolves the .local. TLD, so the Mac could discover the Windows peer via mDNS browse but failed to open an outbound TCP connection — hostname resolution returned No Such Record. CMBs sent to Windows peers never arrived; no replies ever came back. (Same class of bug as the 0.3.72 cross-platform resolve fix; regression path was the host field being unset.)

  Fix is two-part:

  1. config.loadOrCreateIdentity() normalizes identity.hostname via the new normalizeMdnsHostname() helper — bare names get .local appended, FQDNs and already-.local names pass through. Existing identities with bare hostnames are auto-migrated on next load.
  2. BonjourDiscovery._startBonjourFallback() passes the normalized identity.hostname as the host field to bonjour.publish() so the SRV target matches.

  Affects all peers; Windows nodes must upgrade (their advertisement was broken). Mac nodes benefit from the explicit host: field for determinism even though os.hostname() happens to produce .local-suffixed output on macOS.

0.5.0

Added

• node.buildStartupPrimer({ maxCount, maxAgeMs }) — reconstitute an agent's remix memory as a human-readable primer, suitable for injection into the LLM context at session start. Operationalises MMP §4.2 O2 (rejoin-without-replay). A fresh agent session wakes with its prior cognitive state already loaded — zero first-turn sym_recall overhead. Returns { text, count, dropped, totalInStore }. Defaults: maxCount=20, maxAgeMs=86_400_000 (24h). Recency window applied first, then count cap. Empty store yields an empty primer.

  Intended use — call as the final step of plugin initialisation:

  const node = new SymNode({ name, ... });
  await node.start();
  // ... transport, tool surface, subscriptions ...
  const primer = node.buildStartupPrimer();
  mcpServer.instructions += '\n\n' + primer.text;

  Inherits to every plugin that depends on @sym-bot/sym. Consumers: @sym-bot/mesh-channel v0.3.0, @sym-bot/melotune-plugin v0.1.7.

0.3.82

Fixed

• Remix CMB key self-reference on first-observation (MMP §14). Pairs with the @sym-bot/core 0.3.36 fix. When neural SVAF admits an incoming CMB, _processNeuralSVAF now mints a fresh remix key via remixKey(fusedFields, incomingKey, this._node.name) and overwrites both fusedEntry.cmb.key and fusedEntry.key before remix-store. Previously the receiver preserved the sender's CMB key on the stored remix, producing lineage.parents=[remix.key] — a self-edge that broke DAG traversal. Fix guarantees remix key ≠ parent key by construction while keeping idempotent dedup for retries from the same sender to the same receiver. The heuristic SVAF path is fixed in @sym-bot/core 0.3.36.

Changed

• @sym-bot/core dep bumped to ^0.3.36 for remixKey + heuristic-SVAF fix.

0.3.81

Added

• MMP §5.8 mesh group membership. SymNode accepts opts.group (default "default") and opts.discoveryServiceType (default "_sym._tcp"); both are propagated into BonjourDiscovery for LAN-layer isolation. The handshake frame version is bumped 0.2.2 → 0.2.3 and carries the optional group field per §5.2. Matches the sym-swift SymNode(discoveryServiceType:) parameter so Node and Swift implementations align.
• MMP §4.4.4 targeted CMB send. SymNode.remember(fields, opts) now accepts opts.to (full peerId). When set, the CMB frame is emitted only to that connected peer; when omitted, behaviour is unchanged (broadcast to all peers). The local store write runs in both cases — lineage and §14.7 remix-guard invariants are enforced identically.
• peers() exposes peerId (full nodeId) alongside the truncated id display form, so external callers can resolve a peer by name to a full peerId without reaching into internal _peers state.
• tests/remember-targeted.test.js covering broadcast regression, targeted send to connected peer, targeted send to disconnected peer, and peers().peerId exposure.

0.3.80

Added

• frame-handler.js moved from @sym-bot/core. FrameHandler is protocol plumbing — frame routing, store writes, event emission — and belongs in the protocol/node package. Imports now resolve to the local copy; @sym-bot/core retains a backward-compat re-export.
• Echo loop prevention (MMP Section 14). _handleMemoryShare() now checks whether incoming CMB lineage parents exist as local keys in the memory store. If so, the CMB is a derivative of our own broadcast and is silently dropped — preventing ping-pong between same-app peers.
• MemoryStore.hasLocalKey(key) — returns true if a CMB key exists in local (non-peer) entries. Used by the echo loop guard.

Changed

• Bump @sym-bot/core dependency to ^0.3.35.

0.3.78

Changed

• Bump @sym-bot/core to 0.3.33. Migrates @xenova/transformers → @huggingface/transformers@^4.0.1. Eliminates deprecated prebuild-install and the EBUSY DLL lock on Windows.

0.3.77

Fixed

• Clear socket timeout after TCP connect. _connectToPeer set a 10-second socket.setTimeout as a connect timeout but never cleared it after success. The timeout kept firing on the CONNECTED socket, killing any LAN connection idle for >10 seconds. Connections now stay open indefinitely after establishment.

0.3.76

Fixed

• Fresh mDNS re-browse on reconnect timer. The 15s reconnect timer now restarts the bonjour-service browser (fresh mDNS query) instead of retrying stale cached addresses/ports.
• On-demand reconnect on send failure. node.send() triggers an immediate discovery.reconnect() when delivery returns 0 peers, instead of waiting for the next 15s timer tick.

0.3.75

Added

• LAN reconnect timer. Discovered peers are cached. Every 15 seconds, peer-found is re-emitted for cached peers not currently connected. Handles TCP drops without requiring a process restart.

0.3.74

Fixed

• Removed leader-election gate from bonjour discovery. Both sides now emit peer-found and attempt to connect. The old gate (only the lower nodeId initiates) was fragile: stale bonjour cache on the initiator side → no connection, because the other side was gated.

0.3.73

Fixed

• Prefer IPv4 in bonjour-service discovery. service.addresses from bonjour-service can include IPv6 link-local (fe80::...) which requires a scope ID for TCP. Now picks the first IPv4 address.

0.3.72

Fixed

• Cross-platform LAN discovery: use bonjour-service instead of native dns-sd binary. The macOS dns-sd -L resolve step uses unicast DNS-SD queries that fail to resolve services advertised by Windows' Bonjour implementation. Browse (multicast) works, but resolve (unicast) returns empty — so Mac discovers Windows peers but can't get their port, and the TCP connection never happens. The bonjour-service npm package uses multicast for both browse AND resolve, which works cross-platform. Verified Mac↔Windows on the same wifi (2026-04-09). The dns-sd binary code path remains in lib/discovery.js as dead code for reference but is no longer called.

0.3.71

Fixed

• windowsHide: true added to all 10 child_process spawn sites so Windows agents (especially the four Centro pm2 agents) no longer flood the desktop with cmd.exe popup windows on every git query, python resolution, port lookup, etc. Sites: 7 in lib/platform.js (resolvePython × 2, resolveClaudeCLI, findProcessByPort × 2, findProcessByName × 2, safeExec defaults) and 3 in lib/discovery.js (dns-sd -R register, dns-sd -B browse, dns-sd -L resolve). lib/llm-cli.js already had it. No-op on macOS/Linux. Catalogued by claude-code-win during the 2026-04-09 cross-machine round-trip session.

0.3.70

Fixed

• Identity lockfile prevents two SymNode processes from claiming the same nodeId on the same host. ~/.sym/nodes/<name>/lock.pid is acquired in the constructor and released in stop(). Cross-process duplicates throw EIDENTITYLOCK; same-PID re-acquisition (tests, hot-reload) is allowed; stale locks (dead PID) are reclaimed automatically. Catches the sym-daemon + MCP server collision that silently broke real-time push on Windows. See cliHostMode-vs-MCP bug from 2026-04-09 round-trip test.
• node.send() now returns the actual delivered count. Previously returned undefined; sym-mesh-channel had to read peers().length separately, which could disagree with reality (peers in _peers with broken transports). _broadcastToPeers() now wraps each transport.send() in try/catch and counts successes. Backwards compatible — existing callers ignoring the return value continue to work.

Migration

SymNode now acquires a lockfile on construction. Hosts MUST wire SIGTERM/SIGINT to call node.stop() so the lockfile is cleaned up — otherwise stale locks accumulate (they're auto-reclaimed on next startup, but cleaner shutdown is better). sym-mesh-channel v0.1.3+ already does this.

If two of your processes legitimately need different identities, set SYM_NODE_NAME to distinct values per process. If they're fighting for the same identity by mistake (e.g. inherited shell env), the lockfile error message will tell you which PID holds the existing claim.

0.3.69

Fixed

• Excluded *.bak, *.swp, .DS_Store from published tarball via .npmignore. 0.3.68 accidentally shipped local backup files. Same code as 0.3.68; deprecate 0.3.68.

0.3.68

Fixed

• RelayConnection no longer silently reconnects on close code 4004 ("Replaced by new connection"). Logs FATAL, sets a hard-stop flag, fires the new identity-collision event, and exits the close handler. Breaks the duplicate-identity ping-pong loop. See d6a17f6.

Added

• identity-collision event on SymNode — { nodeId, name, code }. Optional listener; default behavior is loud-log + stop reconnecting. Hosts wanting hard-exit semantics should listen and call process.exit() themselves.

Why

Two processes holding the same nodeId would enter a 1s ping-pong loop on the relay, flooding peer-left/peer-joined events. MMP principle: identity is bound to a keypair, so two simultaneous holders is an error condition — refuse loudly instead of silently retrying.

0.3.67

Added

• sym observe --standalone — daemon-less one-shot CMB emission. Spins up a fresh SymNode inside the CLI process, reads relay credentials from ~/.sym/relay.env, emits one CMB, and disconnects. Works even when sym-daemon is not running — the daemon becomes an optimisation, not a requirement. Auto-enabled as a graceful fallback whenever the daemon is down, so existing sym observe commands no longer fail with "sym-daemon is not running."
• sym observe --name <id> — set the mesh identity for standalone-mode emissions. Defaults to sym-cli. Identity is stable across invocations via the cached SymIdentity keypair in ~/.sym/nodes/<name>/, so repeated calls with the same name resolve to the same nodeId. Claude Code users should pass --name claude-code-mac (or claude-code-win / claude-code-linux) so their CMBs are attributable on the mesh grid.
• sym observe --parents <key1,key2> — comma-separated parent CMB keys for remix lineage. Using this flag implies --standalone (the daemon IPC remember handler does not accept lineage parents). Makes it trivial to emit resolution CMBs that close upstream tickets on the Review Board via the SVAF lineage graph.

Why

Before this release, sym observe required sym-daemon to be running — any user who had stopped the daemon (or never started it) hit a hard failure. This was the main friction for Claude Code sessions that want to participate in the mesh as real peers without running a persistent background daemon. The daemon-less path makes the entire mesh emission surface usable out of the box after npm install -g @sym-bot/sym.

Migration

No breaking changes. Existing sym observe '<json>' calls continue to work unchanged when the daemon is running (same IPC fast path). When the daemon is down, the CLI now falls back to standalone mode instead of failing.

0.3.66

Changed (MMP v0.2.2 spec conformance)

• state-sync frame is now deprecated. CfC hidden states never cross the wire under SVAF (Xu, 2026, Symbolic-Vector Attention Fusion for Collective Intelligence, arXiv:2604.03955, §3.4). Cognitive coupling propagates as CMBs at SVAF Layer 4 only; the per-agent CfC at Layer 6 stays private to each agent.
• _reencodeAndBroadcast() updates the local CfC only; no state-sync broadcast.
• updateContext(text) updates the local CfC only; no state-sync broadcast.
• The per-handshake state-sync send is removed. Handshake exchanges identity, version, and lifecycle role only; cognitive bootstrap happens via the anchor CMB exchange that follows.
• Coordinated with @sym-bot/core 0.3.32, which silently drops inbound state-sync frames at the frame-handler with a deprecation log.
• The wire format is preserved (the state-sync frame type is still parseable for backward compatibility with v0.2.0 / v0.2.1 peers); only the send paths are removed.

Migration

If you previously listened for coupling-decision events driven by state-sync, switch to events emitted by the CMB pipeline (memoryReceived, cmbAccepted) and read (valence, arousal) from cmb.fields.mood. The mood field is delivered across domain boundaries even when SVAF rejects the rest of the CMB (MMP §9.3 protocol guarantee R5).

0.3.65

Fixed

• sym-daemon default node name is now platform-scoped (sym-daemon-mac / sym-daemon-win / sym-daemon-linux) instead of the hardcoded sym-daemon-win. The hardcoded fallback caused Mac daemons to identify as sym-daemon-win, leading to identity collisions and stale ~/.sym/nodes/ directories on cross-platform development machines.

0.3.64

Fixed

• Bumped @sym-bot/core to ^0.3.31 to restore cmb-accepted event emission in cliHostMode. Without this bump, bin/sym-daemon.js's cmb-accepted listener never fires under cliHostMode, silently disabling sym sub IPC subscribers and the daemon→hosted-agent fanout path.

0.3.63

Changed (BREAKING)

• sym-daemon now uses cliHostMode: true (renamed from relayMode). Daemon no longer stores forwarded CMBs — eliminates ~5x duplication on multi-agent hosts.
• sym recall is now federated: scans ~/.sym/nodes/*/meshmem/ directly, deduped by CMB key, sorted by recency. Works without the daemon. New --node <name> flag scopes the scan.
• Requires @sym-bot/core@^0.3.31 (originally shipped against 0.3.30; 0.3.30 had a regression — see sym-core CHANGELOG).

0.3.61

Fixed

• High-quality CMBs were silently buried, never promoted to the Review Board, because of two compounding bugs:
  1. lib/llm-reason.js appended a hardcoded "Return a JSON object with 7 CAT7 fields" suffix to every prompt, with no mention of _meta. This overrode any _meta.founderAction instructions the agent's role definition (SKILL.md) tried to convey, so the model emitted just the 7 fields and the founderAction signal was lost. Suffix now requests the optional _meta tag explicitly: _meta:{founderAction, urgency, reason} and instructs the model to set it per role rules.
  2. lib/mesh-agent.js detectFounderAction (the fallback when _meta is missing) only scanned intent + issue and only matched a hedge-paraphrase vocabulary list (prioritize, monitor, competitive, etc.). Disciplined extraction prompts produce CMBs with concrete verbs like fetch, flag, draft, endorser, arxiv, cite, respond, submit — none of which were in the list, so high-quality CMBs failed to promote. Now scans intent + issue + commitment + mood.text (wider field surface) and the keyword list is expanded with concrete-action verbs, research vocabulary, and stakes-signalling affect words.

Verified: a real research-win arxiv CMB ("Fetch full PDF today. Check author list for endorser candidates...") now correctly promotes via the keyword fallback path. Going forward, disciplined agents using the _meta schema in their prompt suffix will set founderAction explicitly and bypass the keyword fallback entirely.

0.3.59

Fixed

• Windows terminal popups in CLI provider (lib/llm-cli.js) — claude resolved to a .cmd shim that opened visible cmd.exe windows on every spawn. Now uses platform.resolveClaudeCLI() to get the node binary + cli.js path directly, plus windowsHide: true on the spawn options.
• Per-agent env vars not loaded at module-load time (lib/mesh-agent.js) — agents read SYM_RESEARCH_PROVIDER, SYM_COO_MODEL, etc. at top-of-file constants before the MeshAgent constructor runs. Added a top-level loadRelayEnv() IIFE that loads ~/.sym/relay.env when mesh-agent.js is first required, so per-agent env overrides resolve correctly.

0.3.58

Added

• Claude Code CLI provider (provider: 'cli'). Spawns claude -p --output-format json as a subprocess instead of hitting an HTTP API. Gives every agent the full Claude Code tool surface — Read, Write, Bash, Grep, WebFetch, Skill, etc. — and auto-loads CLAUDE.md / .claude/settings.json / project skills from the agent's working directory. Uses local Claude Code auth (no API key needed). Per-call options: model (opus/sonnet/haiku alias or full id), addDirs, allowedTools, permissionMode (default bypassPermissions), maxBudget (passed as --max-budget-usd), timeoutMs. Selectable via provider: 'cli' per call or SYM_LLM_PROVIDER=cli globally. See lib/llm-cli.js.
• This is the path for the existing addDirs parameter that HTTP providers were silently ignoring — agents that already passed addDirs: [...] get directory access for free as soon as they switch provider.

Changed

• lib/llm-reason.js getProviderConfig and invoke updated to dispatch cli / anthropic / openai. CLI provider skips the API-key check (uses local Claude Code auth) and skips withRetry (subprocess errors aren't typically transient).

0.3.57

Changed

• MemoryStore._cmbKey now delegates to @sym-bot/core cmbKey() instead of re-implementing the SHA256-truncate logic. Eliminates duplicated CMB key code that had drifted multiple times. Single source of truth lives in sym-core/lib/cmb-encoder.js. The raw-content fallback path remains a direct SHA256 (distinct input space, cannot collide with the field-keyed path).
• @sym-bot/core dependency bumped to ^0.3.29 to pick up the new cmbKey export and the FNV-1a context encoder fix. The encoder fix restores cross-SDK n-gram embedding parity with sym-core-swift for the first time — see @sym-bot/core 0.3.29 changelog for the wire-impact details.

0.3.56

Changed

• CMB content key algorithm: MD5 → SHA256 (truncated to 32 hex chars). MemoryStore._cmbKey() now uses crypto.createHash('sha256').digest('hex').slice(0, 32) for both the field-text and raw-content code paths. This duplicated CMB-key logic (separate from @sym-bot/core cmb-encoder.js) is now back in sync. Wire-breaking with respect to dedup against pre-0.3.56 stored CMBs. Coordinated with @sym-bot/core 0.3.28 and sym-core-swift 0.3.6.
• @sym-bot/core dependency bumped to ^0.3.28.

Fixed

• Removed accidental self-dependency @sym-bot/sym: ^0.3.43 from package.json dependencies. The package now declares only its real runtime deps (@sym-bot/core, bonjour-service, ws).

0.3.25

Changed

• sym-core 0.2.0 — semantic encoder for SVAF evaluation. Paraphrase similarity: 0.31 (n-gram) → 0.69 (semantic). Per-field evaluation quality bounded by encoder quality, not model capacity.

0.3.24

Added

• Catchup via mesh broadcast. Daemon broadcasts "catchup" message to all peers. MeshAgent listens for it and triggers immediate domain poll. Replaces the old hosted-agent-only catchup path.

0.3.23

Added

• Handshake: version and extensions fields per MMP v0.2.1 Section 5.2. Handshake now sends version: "0.2.1" and extensions: [].
• Error frame support per MMP v0.2.1 Section 7.2. sendError(peerId, code, message, detail) sends protocol-level error frames. Codes 1xxx close connection; 2xxx informational.

Parity

• 100% feature parity with sym-swift (Swift SDK). Both SDKs implement all 10 frame types, handshake with version/extensions/e2ePublicKey, error frames, multi-transport per peer, SVAF per-field evaluation, MD5 content-addressable CMB keys, lineage, remix guard, and metrics.

0.3.22

Changed

• MeshAgent: every agent is a standalone peer node (MMP v0.2.1). Removed hosted/daemon mode. Every MeshAgent creates its own SymNode with own identity, transport, coupling engine, and memory store. Coupling is per-node — agents that share another node's identity cannot have independent SVAF weights.
• sym recall --json — new flag returns full entry objects (source, peerId, CMB fields, lineage) as JSON. Enables sym.day to get real source data from daemon memory.

Tests

• 119 tests (was 100). MeshAgent test updated for standalone-only constructor.

0.3.21

Added

• MeshAgent — protocol-level agent lifecycle class. Agents provide fetchDomain(), reason(), remix(). Protocol handles event-driven remix, canRemix() gate, fingerprint dedup, lineage, silence. No LLM code in SDK.
• sym metrics — new CLI command exposing protocol-level metrics (CMBs, peers, LLM cost, uptime)
• --json flag for sym status, sym peers, sym metrics — structured output for programmatic consumers

Fixed

• Remix guard: remember() with parents now resets hasNewDomainData. Previously a remix counted as new domain data, allowing infinite remix chains from a single observation.
• Startup race: relay disconnect handlers directly deleted peers, bypassing multi-transport failover (Section 4.6/5.5). Now only closes the relay transport — Bonjour survives.
• Undefined variables in _handleRelayPeerLeft (peers, peer) — leftover from refactoring.

Changed

• IPC socket moved from /tmp/sym.sock to ~/.sym/daemon.sock per spec Section 4.5. SYM_SOCKET env var still overrides.

Tests

• 100 tests (was 83). Added: remix guard reset, MeshAgent validation, CLI --json, socket path.