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STAGE 0.5.4

Released: 2026-07-22

STAGE 0.5.4 completes the correction prompted by the failed detached visual- rehearsal experiment. It keeps the 0.5 Practitioner Kernel and the supported artifact schemas unchanged.

Why This Patch Exists​

The visual experiment exposed two related mistakes. First, useful visual work was being routed toward screenshots, videos, contact sheets, and a parallel review product even when the owner could inspect the real game directly. Second, optional mapping guidance still depended on scripts and schemas that a normal plugin installation did not contain.

The corrected default is direct: inspect the smallest real engine or game route containing the production consumer. Persist a gallery, capture, map, or validator only for a named user and recurring job. Installed procedures must also be executable from the installed package, or state their narrower verification boundary honestly.

Changes​

  • Decouple project maps from the optional visual-review skill and from any requirement to manufacture a visual operation.
  • Make diagnosis-only requests a hard authority boundary while still allowing explicitly authorized, reversible instrumentation.
  • Remove residual packaged-review and baseline advice from current failure guidance.
  • Mark the Lanternworks Almanac as historical project-feature evidence rather than a reusable STAGE recipe.
  • Remove hidden references from the installed mapping skill to STAGE maintainer scripts, schemas, and templates that are not shipped in the plugin.
  • Validate the physical package boundary so future skill edits cannot silently reintroduce those dependencies.

Practitioner Impact​

Ordinary visible work remains part of stage-deliver-change. The optional stage-visual-review skill is only for a deliberately bounded native visual diagnosis. It leaves the actual game or editor view ready for human judgment; it does not create a review package.

stage-map-project remains explicit-only. It validates syntax, declared shape, and local paths from the available environment. Formal schema validation runs when the project or an available STAGE checkout already owns that operation; otherwise the skill reports the limitation instead of fetching hidden tooling or claiming a pass it did not perform.

Compatibility​

The plugin package version is 0.5.4; SPEC.md is method version 0.5. Project-map and case-study artifact versions 0.1 and 0.3 remain supported. No game-project migration is required.

Verification​

The release is checked through:

  • the complete STAGE release gate;
  • direct Codex plugin and all skill-package validators;
  • repository-local project-map and Markdown-link validation;
  • package self-containment and size checks; and
  • a fresh local plugin installation reporting version 0.5.4.

Limitations​

The visual correction is grounded primarily in same-owner use and an explicit owner rejection of the detached workflow. It does not claim that screenshots, video, galleries, or regression systems are generally useless. It requires their real consumer and supported claim to be named before STAGE treats them as earned infrastructure.

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