bigpowers — Release History

101 releases in 41 days. 33 epics delivered, 13 queued. 3 generations of software engineering thought, synthesized into executable agent discipline.

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Metric	Value
First release	v1.0.0 — 2026-05-23
Current version	v2.58.1 — 2026-07-03
Total releases	101
Release cadence	2.5/day (fully automated via semantic-release)
Epics delivered	33
Active epics	1 (e37 Golden Story Suite)
Backlog epics	12
Backlog gaps	28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46

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May 23 – June 10, 2026 · v1.0.0 → v1.x series

The launch. 38 spec-driven lifecycle skills covering the full arc: discover → elaborate → plan → build (TDD) → verify → release. Not a collection of tips — a methodology.

• Conventional Commits enforcement from day one. Every commit is feat/fix/docs, every merge triggers semantic-release. No manual version bumps.
• Agent workflow mandates baked into CLAUDE.md: agents cannot write code directly. Every task flows through a skill.
• Cursor + Gemini CLI + pi support generated automatically from a single source of truth (SKILL.md files).
• Karpathy behavioral mandates (write/select/compress/isolate) enforced from the start — token discipline isn’t an afterthought, it’s architecture.
• Clean Code heuristics, Superpowers gates, testing mandates — each hardened with Gherkin .feature files and npm run compliance scoring.

~25 releases in this phase. Each one a structural hardening, not a feature toss.

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June 11–22 · v2.0.0 → v2.28.0

The major architecture change. Flat file structure couldn’t scale — every new epic meant another loose markdown file in the root.

• v2.0.0 (June 11) — BREAKING. Capsule-directory architecture. Each epic gets its own directory with epic.yaml, numbered story specs, and a decoupled -tasks.yaml. ADR split (epic-local decisions stay with the epic, global decisions go to specs/adr/). Bug registry with structured naming (BUG-NNN-slug.md). Verification ledger. State lock file. 50/50 SDD adequacy score against a 22-method comparison.
• v2.10.0 (June 20) — CI verification and dry-run integrated into the skill system. Skills validate themselves.
• v2.20.0 (June 21) — Quality gates shipped. Audit-code gate, F.I.R.S.T. test rubric enforcement, universal checkpoint pattern across all workflow skills.
• v2.28.0 (June 22) — Machine-runnable skill catalog CI gate. Every SKILL.md’s verify commands are now checked automatically on every push.

The system now builds itself. Skills create skills. Epics execute in 8 steps per story. The methodology is self-referential — bigpowers is built with bigpowers.

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June 22–29 · v2.29.0 → v2.43.x

Production-grade infrastructure. The methodology was correct; now the pipeline had to be unbreakable.

• v2.29.0 (June 26) — Migrate-spec methodology complete. ID tracking, trace output, mandatory handoff, adversarial review. Absorbs learnings from migrating GSD, spec-kit, and BMAD projects.
• v2.30.0 (June 26) — Security-review integrated into all 9 workflow skills. Every PR gets a data-flow analysis before merge.
• v2.42.0 (June 29) — Standardized _LATEST.md naming. 7 skills updated. Predictable file names for CI pipelines.
• v2.44.0 (July 2) — Repository restructuring. 72 skill sources moved under skills/ directory. Root directory goes from ~96 entries to ~20. Clean landing page.

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July 2–3 · v2.45.0 → v2.58.1

The quality infrastructure phase. This is where bigpowers proved it could measure and improve itself.

• G-04 sync-pipeline self-test: Every sync-skills.sh run validates its own output. Deterministic gate.
• Compliance CI gate: npm run compliance must pass ≥ 94% before any merge. Hard stop.
• Golden suite runner: Machine-runnable quality orchestration with baseline snapshots and size-change detection.
• Pre-merge mandate: No PR lands without compliance + sync + golden suite passing.
• Evolve-skill regression gate: Every skill change re-runs benchmarks to prove it’s an improvement.

• Spike passed: DeepSeek v4 running via gh-aw Claude engine confirmed viable. G-01 golden story now lives in CI — a real agent runs a real skill on every push and proves it works.

• Git-derived effort: Hand-arithmetic cycle times replaced with commit-partition analysis. No self-reported wall-clock. Every number traceable to a git event.
• OKF provenance gate: Metrics bundles include aggregation tags and provenance pointers. Gate on the pipeline, not the value.

• Four strategies named and tooled: write (token-efficient code), select (only relevant context), compress (reduce without losing structure), isolate (partitioned worktrees).
• effort: heavy|light frontmatter on every skill. Agents can budget context before loading.

• Deterministic spec-to-code matrix: trace-stories.sh maps every story ID to implementing code. Three-tier confidence: tagged (high), heuristic (medium), inferred (low).
• Blind-spot detector: Heuristic analysis catches stories with no code match.
• CI/CD integration: Matrix runs on every push. 9 stories shipped in a single day — the fastest-moving epic in project history.

• Waiver subsystem: Deterministic scoring with explicit waiver exclusion. Every gate is auditable.
• G-07 negative-path self-test: Step scripts tested against deliberate failures. The golden suite now covers both “it works” and “it correctly fails.”

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The 13 gaps in the epic sequence are the roadmap. Every number below represents a queued epic, ordered by the project owner’s priority.

Gap	Epic	BCP	Train	Focus
28	Docs Website	13	v2.6x	Astro Starlight site, generated from repo sources
32	Historical References	20	v2.6x	9 reference docs (Beck, Fowler, Evans, DORA…)
33	Sync Pipeline Refactor	13	v2.6x	Parse→IR→Render architecture, OKF target
35	BCP Plus Counting	18	v2.7x	13-dimension complexity sizing, AI-assisted
36	Doc Deduplication	10	v2.7x	Provenance pointers, single source of truth
37	Golden Stories	13	v2.7x	🔄 Active — agent-driven CI gate
39	Semantic Context Bridge	20	v2.7x	Knowledge graph, agent locks, drift detection
41	Public Receipts	10	v2.7x	Live quality evidence page
42	Showcase Repo	10	v2.7x	Worked example — answers “why adopt this?”
43	MCP Semantic Server	13	v2.7x	TypeScript entity-relation graph
44	Spec Version Migration	14	v2.7x	Auto-upgrade stale specs
45	OKF Completion	8	v2.8x	Wikis, verification reports, viz graph
46	Risk-Based Verification	10	v2.8x	TEA-inspired test depth (P0–P3)

Train	Epics	BCP	Status
v2.5x Trust & Signal	e40, e34	28	✅ Done
v2.6x Docs & Pipeline	e28, e32, e33	46	Next
v2.7x/v3.0 Headline	e35, e36, e37, e39, e41, e42, e43, e44	111	After
v2.8x Polish	e45, e46	18	Later

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• 101 releases in 41 days with zero manual version bumps. Semantic-release from Conventional Commits.
• 33 epics delivered through the same 8-step build cycle the methodology prescribes for users. bigpowers is its own first customer.
• Quality is machine-enforced, not human-asserted. Compliance scores, golden suites, sync-pipeline self-tests, traceability matrices, negative-path tests — all deterministic. No “trust me.”
• Metrics are git-derived, not self-reported. Every cycle time, effort number, and lead time traces to a commit. No hand arithmetic.
• The stack is a chronological layer cake. Clean Code (2008) → Deep Modules (2018) → Agent Orchestration (2023) → Spec-Driven Development (2024) → AI-Native Code Hygiene (2026). Each wave resolves tensions from the last. Nothing is random.

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“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, but integrity is the ultimate requirement.”

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verify: git tag --sort=-creatordate | wc -l should match the total releases count above (101 as of 2026-07-03).