Qiongli R3M Lite Alpha.1 Release Candidate Execution Plan

Status: release-candidate core complete; Alpha.1 publication blocked by R3N desktop closure and recorded external gates

Date: July 15, 2026

Rebaseline: R3M evidence remains accepted, but the displayed-window review found five Alpha.1 product blockers. R3N now owns global-settings editing, Skills destination selection, MCP self-test, source-session client discovery, and cross-platform desktop packaging. R3M no longer completes R3 by itself.

Goal: Assemble, install, and accept one current-target dependency-free Lite Alpha.1 release candidate without placing signing private keys in the product, repository, logs, or candidate.

Architecture: qiongli-platform verifies one release-signed candidate and returns target-specific portable and PluginBundle capabilities; the canonical application composes the accepted payload, plugin, activation, and desktop services; release automation records exact artifacts and evidence but cannot publish without explicit maintainer authority.

Files

Path	Change
packages/qiongli-native/crates/qiongli-platform/src/release_candidate.rs	Strict candidate construction, signing preimage, and verification
packages/qiongli-native/crates/qiongli-platform/src/native_release.rs	Internal reuse of the accepted release-key verifier
packages/qiongli-native/apps/qiongli/src/	Candidate-backed install, diagnose, remove, and UI composition
native integration tests	Candidate tamper, target, lifecycle, and isolated-runtime evidence
.github/workflows/ and release tooling	Current-target candidate build and non-publishing acceptance
native README, roadmap, and release notes	Exact claims, limitations, and observed receipts

Task 1 — Freeze R3M

• [x] Audit R3H-R3L, current release dry-run automation, client bundle composers, activation coordinator, and ignored real-client gates.
• [x] Freeze a three-file candidate set and one signed canonical candidate descriptor.
• [x] Keep private keys behind an external signing boundary and require an explicit final publication decision.
• [x] Commit the design checkpoint on the rolling branch.

Task 2 — Add The Signed Candidate

• [x] Add bounded canonical candidate, client target, status, notes descriptor, detached signature, and fixed errors.
• [x] Require the nested portable release plus exact Codex and Claude Code PluginBundle grants.
• [x] Enforce generation, time, channel, target, source, notes, binary, pack, mode, and target-scope closure.
• [x] Return a private verified token containing only the requested target's accepted capabilities.
• [x] Add canonicalization, tamper, role, replay, swap, omission, redaction, and bound tests.

Task 3 — Materialize Local Integrations

• [x] Compose or replay the R3I native payload from the verified candidate.
• [x] Compose and verify the fixed R3D or R3E plugin source from the installed target-native binary.
• [x] Preview and apply the R3L registration using the exact three approvals.
• [x] Verify after every fresh mutation and compensate only fresh committed steps in reverse order.
• [x] Preserve client-owned cache, enablement, registry, settings, and trust as explicit outstanding host actions.

Task 4 — Expose The Product Journey

• [x] Add closed candidate preview/apply/verify/remove CLI grammar and versioned redacted output.
• [x] Create only fixed owner-private Qiongli roots derived from the current user boundary; accept no model/MCP-selected path.
• [x] Connect the same prepared target sessions to the native desktop manager.
• [x] Keep wrong digest, partial approval, stale candidate, drift, and recovery states fail closed.
• [x] Make remove receipt-backed and independent of expired release inputs.

Task 5 — Prove The Candidate

• [x] Build an authority-injected current-target test candidate with distinct ephemeral release and launch-grant keys.
• [x] Run CLI, embedded skills, UI startup preflight, and Lite MCP outside the checkout with an empty PATH.
• [x] Run isolated Codex and Claude Code apply/diagnose/remove and rollback journeys without reading normal user state.
• [x] Label the real-client, displayed-window, and production-signing gates as not-run with explicit external-boundary reasons; execute them only when the required host and maintainer authority are provided.
• [x] Assert no runtime dependency on Rust, Python, Node, Cargo, npm, or pip.

Observed local evidence uses the current-target macOS aarch64 portable archive with exact implementation source commit 8d5a4233fed7fcf0858555a22d702b3fe542eee4. The extracted product completed the entire acceptance journey outside the checkout with an empty runtime PATH. The evidence records successful candidate-file closure, embedded skills, UI preflight, Lite MCP, both isolated client lifecycles, wrong/partial approval rejection, fresh-step compensation, and unrelated-state preservation. It also records publication_allowed: false; this is development evidence, not production-signing or public-release authority. Exact-head Linux evidence is delegated to Native CI.

Task 6 — Accept Or Block Publication

• [x] Run format, locked workspace check, strict Clippy, complete native tests, focused Lite compatibility, Windows check/Clippy, and frozen boundary.
• [x] Commit and push cohesive R3M checkpoints to rolling Draft PR #63.
• [x] Require exact-head Native CI and Cloudflare Pages to pass.
• [x] Bind and review the exact release notes and current-target artifacts.
• [x] Record any external signing, real-client, UI, or clean-machine blocker; do not create a tag or public release without explicit maintainer authority.

Local Task 6 development gates pass: native formatting, the frozen 2.x boundary, locked all-target/all-feature host and Windows MSVC checks, strict host and Windows Clippy, the two focused candidate tests, and the complete macOS empty-PATH candidate journey.

Exact implementation-head Native CI run 29401898602 passed 8d5a4233: boundary in 5s, focused Lite in 36s, Linux candidate acceptance in 7m14s, Windows in 8m56s, Linux in 9m49s, and macOS in 11m34s. Cloudflare Pages passed the same head. The CI acceptance record binds clean PR merge candidate c98817cf, records the exact Linux x86-64 three-file set, and keeps publication_allowed: false.

The exact local and CI digests plus the publication ledger are recorded in tooling/release/acceptance/v2.0.0-alpha.1-r3m-readiness.md. Production authority/signatures, the final accepted 2.x source, a maintainer-selected production target set, real-client evidence, displayed-window/accessibility evidence, independent semantic review, and explicit tag/release authorization remain blocking external gates. PR #63 therefore remains Draft and no tag or public release has been created.

Required Development Commands

cargo fmt --manifest-path packages/qiongli-native/Cargo.toml --all -- --check
cargo check --manifest-path packages/qiongli-native/Cargo.toml --workspace --all-targets --all-features --locked
cargo clippy --manifest-path packages/qiongli-native/Cargo.toml --workspace --all-targets --all-features --locked -- -D warnings
cargo test --manifest-path packages/qiongli-native/Cargo.toml --workspace --all-targets --all-features --locked
cargo test --manifest-path packages/qiongli-lite-mcp/Cargo.toml --locked \
  --test mcp_protocol --test mcp_server --test provider_http \
  --test providers --test search_orchestration \
  --test literature_planning_mcp --test searchplan --test zotero_export \
  --test zotero_companion --test orchestrator_preview
cargo check --manifest-path packages/qiongli-native/Cargo.toml --workspace --all-targets --all-features --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc --locked
cargo clippy --manifest-path packages/qiongli-native/Cargo.toml --workspace --all-targets --all-features --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc --locked -- -D warnings
./scripts/check_2x_native_change_boundary.sh --base-ref origin/2.x

Full legacy Python and Node suites remain outside this native batch. Release automation may use build tools, but every advertised installed-product path is tested with no user language-runtime dependency.

Completion Definition

R3M is complete only when the exact signed current-target candidate supports the advertised CLI, UI, Lite MCP, Codex local, and Claude Code local journeys from isolated extracted bytes; managed apply, diagnose, remove, rollback, and unrelated-state preservation pass; exact release limitations are bound and reviewed; and every required external gate is recorded. Completion originally permitted an explicit Alpha.1 publication decision but does not do so after the R3N rebaseline.

The R3M implementation side of this definition is complete at 8d5a4233. The overall Alpha.1 implementation is not complete until R3N passes on a newer exact head. Publication remains blocked by R3N plus the external gates in the readiness receipt; R3M completion does not convert test signatures into release authority.