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Helmdeck — Release Plan ("What Ships When")

Forward-looking changelog. Each release maps 1:1 to a phase milestone (MILESTONES.md) and has hard exit criteria pulled from TASKS.md.

Agent sync checklist — every release​

Helmdeck ships its agent instructions as a native OpenClaw Skill at skills/helmdeck/SKILL.md, stamped with the helmdeck commit hash in its frontmatter (metadata.openclaw.helmdeckVersion). The stamp is how operators detect drift between their deployed agent and the latest release.

Every release — required:

  1. Update the pack count and decision tables in skills/helmdeck/SKILL.md if this release adds/removes packs, changes an error code, or revises a pattern (e.g. the repo.fetch signals table).
  2. Bump the helmdeckVersion stamp — scripts/configure-openclaw.sh regenerates this automatically from git rev-parse --short HEAD at install time, so you don't edit it by hand. Ensure the release commit lands on main before operators run the configure script, otherwise the stamp reflects a stale pointer.
  3. Call out new packs in the release notes under "Ships" with their full helmdeck__<name> MCP prefix, so operators (and agents reading the release notes post-fact) know what's new.
  4. Tell deployed operators to refresh: 
    cd /path/to/helmdeck && git pull
    ./scripts/configure-openclaw.sh            # reinstalls the versioned SKILL.md
    The script is idempotent; re-running it without other flags will only touch the skill, the JWT (if expiring), and the model pin.
  5. Document upstream regressions — if OpenClaw itself ships a breaking change between our tested versions and the current one, add a row to the table in docs/integrations/openclaw-upgrade-runbook.md pointing at the affected version range and the workaround.

Related:

v0.1.0 — Core Infrastructure (Week 4)​

Theme: "A browser session is one REST call away."

Milestone: v0.1 — Core Infrastructure (Phase 1) · Tasks: Phase 1

Ships​

  • Go control plane binary (Gin + chromedp + Docker SDK)
  • Browser sidecar image with Chromium, Marp, Tesseract, ffmpeg, xdotool, Xvfb, XFCE4, noVNC
  • Ephemeral session lifecycle: POST /api/v1/sessions … DELETE /api/v1/sessions/{id}
  • CDP REST endpoints: navigate, extract, screenshot, execute, interact
  • JWT bearer auth on every endpoint
  • Audit log (write-only at this stage)
  • Single-node Compose deployment (deploy/compose/compose.yaml)
  • make smoke end-to-end harness in CI

Does NOT ship​

  • AI gateway, packs, MCP, vault, UI, Kubernetes — all later

Audience​

Internal only. Tag a pre-release on GitHub.

v0.2.0 — AI Gateway & First Packs (Week 8)​

Theme: "Capability Packs are real, and weak models can drive them."

Milestone: v0.2 — AI Gateway & Pack Substrate (Phase 2) · Tasks: Phase 2

Ships​

  • OpenAI-compatible /v1/chat/completions and /v1/models
  • Provider adapters: Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Ollama, Deepseek
  • Encrypted key store with rotation API
  • Fallback routing rules (rate-limit / error / timeout triggers)
  • Pack Execution Engine with input/output schema validation
  • Typed error code enforcement (closed set per pack)
  • Pack registry with versioned dispatch
  • Three reference packs: browser.screenshot_url, web.scrape_spa, slides.render
  • Object store integration + signed-URL artifacts
  • A2A Agent Card at /.well-known/agent.json

Hard exit gate​

≥90% success rate on browser.screenshot_url and web.scrape_spa against MiniMax-M2.7 and Llama 3.2 7B. This is the defining metric of the platform — without it nothing else matters.

Audience​

Design partners. Public alpha tag.

v0.3.0 — Bridge & Client Integrations (Week 10)​

Theme: "Register one MCP server, get every helmdeck pack."

Milestone: v0.3 — MCP Bridge & Client Integrations (Phase 3) · Tasks: Phase 3

Ships​

  • MCP registry with stdio/SSE/WebSocket transports
  • Built-in MCP server auto-derived from the pack catalog
  • helmdeck-mcp bridge binary distributed via:
    • Homebrew tap tosin2013/helmdeck
    • Scoop bucket tosin2013/helmdeck
    • npm @helmdeck/mcp-bridge (with npx postinstall)
    • OCI image ghcr.io/tosin2013/helmdeck-mcp
    • GitHub Releases (cosigned)
  • CI smoke matrix verifying browser.screenshot_url from Claude Code, Claude Desktop, OpenClaw, Gemini CLI

Audience​

Public beta. First "helmdeck works with my agent" demo video.

v0.4.0 — Desktop & Vision (Week 13)​

Theme: "Beyond the DOM."

Milestone: v0.4 — Desktop & Vision (Phase 4) · Tasks: Phase 4

Ships​

  • Desktop Actions REST API (xdotool/scrot)
  • desktop.run_app_and_screenshot, doc.ocr
  • Vision-mode endpoint POST /api/v1/sessions/{id}/vision/act
  • Reference vision packs: vision.click_anywhere, vision.extract_visible_text, vision.fill_form_by_label
  • noVNC live viewer endpoint

Audience​

Public beta continues.

v0.5.0 — Vault & Repo Packs (Week 16)​

Theme: "Agents stop holding secrets."

Milestone: v0.5 — Vault, Repo Packs & Hardening (Phase 5) · also covers v0.5.5 — Code Edit Loop · Tasks: Phase 5, Phase 5.5

Ships​

  • AES-256-GCM Credential Vault with placeholder-token injection
  • Vault types: login, session cookies, API keys, OAuth (with refresh), SSH/git
  • CDP cookie injection at session start
  • HTTP gateway intercept-and-substitute for outbound agent traffic
  • repo.fetch and repo.push (closes the canonical 2026-04-06 git-SSH failure)
  • web.login_and_fetch, web.fill_form, slides.video (vault-dependent packs)
  • NetworkPolicy egress allowlist + metadata IP / RFC 1918 block
  • Sandbox baseline: non-root, drop-all-caps, seccomp
  • OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic conventions on every span
  • Trivy CRITICAL gate in CI

Audience​

Production design partners. Hardening RC.

v0.6.0 — Management UI (Week 20)​

Theme: "Operators close the weak-model gap themselves."

Milestone: v0.6 — Management UI (Phase 6) · Tasks: Phase 6

Ships​

  • React/Tailwind/shadcn UI embedded in Go binary
  • All read-only panels: Dashboard, Sessions, AI Providers, MCP Registry, Capability Packs, Security Policies, Credential Vault, Audit Logs, Connect Clients
  • Model Success Rates section on the AI Providers panel (per-(provider, model) rollup over a configurable window, backed by the new provider_calls aggregation table written by every gateway dispatch)
  • "Connect" panel emitting per-client MCP config snippets for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, OpenClaw, Gemini CLI, and Hermes Agent

Deferred from v0.6.0​

  • Pack Authoring (T608) — moved to v1.x (Phase 8) and clustered with T801 (WASM Executor). The pack registry is in-process today and has no publish surface; building one requires either landing a sandboxed code runtime first (WASM) or a composite-pack JSON runtime. Neither is on the v0.6.0 critical path. Operators observe and dispatch packs in v0.6.0; they author them in v1.x.

Audience​

Public beta — full self-service for everything except authoring custom packs.

v0.8.0 — MCP Server Hosting & Pack Evolution (Phase 6.5) — ✅ Shipped 2026-04-12​

Theme: "Host third-party agent infrastructure instead of rebuilding it."

Milestone: v0.8 — MCP Server Hosting & Pack Evolution (Phase 6.5) ✅ Tasks: Phase 6.5 — see docs/TASKS.md

Ships (36 packs total at the v0.8.0 cutover)​

  • Playwright MCP bundled in the browser sidecar (T807a) — auto-attached to the running Chromium via CDP; one browser, one cookie jar, shared state with chromedp packs.
  • Firecrawl as an optional compose overlay (T807b) — compose.firecrawl.yml; new web.scrape pack returns clean markdown.
  • Docling as an optional compose overlay (T807c) — compose.docling.yml; new doc.parse pack supersedes doc.ocr for layout/tables.
  • Native computer-use tool routing (T807f, supersedes T807d) — Anthropic / OpenAI / Gemini schemas wired through the gateway; eight new desktop REST primitives; vision.StepNative cross-provider executor; EventComputerUse audit + replay.
  • web.test (T807e) — natural-language browser testing via Playwright MCP accessibility tree; egress-guarded mid-test navigations.
  • research.deep (T622) — Firecrawl-backed research composite (search + per-source scrape + LLM synthesis with inline citations).
  • repo.fetch context envelope + repo.map (T622a) — agents orient on the first turn without chaining fs.list/fs.read; ctags-derived structural symbol map under a token budget.
  • content.ground (T623) — link grounding for blog posts; verbatim-substring patching skips hallucinated claims.
  • slides.narrate (T406, moved from Phase 4) — narrated MP4 from Marp decks via ElevenLabs TTS + ffmpeg + LLM-generated YouTube metadata.
  • Provider-adapter community contributions — Groq (PR #45) and Mistral (PR #47) adapters land alongside (T202a).

Hard exit gate (met)​

scripts/validate-phase-6-5.sh passes against a fresh stack including the Firecrawl + Docling overlays; native computer-use round-trip works against at least one frontier provider; 36 packs total.

Audience​

Public beta continues. Tag v0.8.0 (shipped 2026-04-12). Sets up Phase 7 (Kubernetes & GA) as the next gate.

v0.9.0 — Polish + plumbing (Phase 6.5+) — ✅ Shipped 2026-05-07​

Theme: "Tighten what shipped before adding more."

Milestone: Continuation of v0.8 / Phase 6.5 — no new milestone created. Aggregates 70 commits of post-v0.8.0 hardening.

Ships​

No new packs. No API changes. The 36-pack catalog from v0.8.0 stays the surface area. Operationally: a real install fix, public docs site at helmdeck.dev, two community-contributed AI provider adapters (Groq, Mistral), gitleaks secret scanning, the planning-doc cross-references that were documented-but-not-implemented at v0.8.0, and the priority-label taxonomy (priority/P0..P3) on every issue.

See the full per-section breakdown in CHANGELOG.md v0.9.0.

Audience​

Existing v0.8.0 operators. A direct upgrade — git pull && make install picks up everything (the install fix is the highest-value change for fresh deploys; existing deploys can ignore it).

v0.10.0 — Pack authoring + Test Runner (planned)​

Theme: "Anyone with Python or Node can ship a helmdeck pack."

Milestone: new milestone, slotted between v0.8 and v1.0. Phase number TBD (likely Phase 6.7 or a renamed Phase 7-pre).

Ships (planned)​

  • T606a — Pack Test Runner UI tab on the Capability Packs panel. Form derived from input schema, dispatches POST /api/v1/packs/{name}, renders typed output + artifact links inline. Closes the gap that left every per-pack reference page saying "no UI today".
  • T811 — command handler type. Subprocess packs in any language (stdin JSON / stdout JSON protocol) with the same egress guard + audit logging as built-in Go packs. Removes the "you must contribute Go" barrier.
  • Pack authoring tutorial series — a full build-your-first-pack.md tutorial + how-to recipes for the three common shapes (REST API wrap, CLI wrap, webhook receiver). Worked-example pack picked from the candidate-pack research. The other candidates ship as pack-candidate issues for community contribution.
  • docs/explanation/pack-architecture.md — the why behind the schema + handler split, vault placeholder system, error-code closed set, and MCP tool exposure under the hood.

Hard exit gate​

A non-maintainer can follow the tutorial against a fresh make install and ship a working pack against an external service in under 60 minutes.

Audience​

Community contributors. Sets up the marketplace in v0.11.0.

v0.11.0 — Marketplace beta (planned)​

Theme: "Discover and install community packs."

Ships (planned)​

  • T810 — Pack marketplace registry model. index.yaml catalog schema, helmdeck-pack.yaml manifest, cosign trust verification, HELMDECK_MARKETPLACE_URL env var, catalog refresh endpoint.
  • T812 — helmdeck pack install/uninstall CLI commands + POST /api/v1/marketplace/install REST endpoint. Hot-load (no restart).
  • T813 — Marketplace UI panel at /marketplace. Browse-by-category, search, pack detail, install/uninstall, trust badges (Core / Signed / Unsigned).
  • T814 — Community marketplace repo (tosin2013/helmdeck-marketplace) seeded with the worked-example pack from v0.10 + initial catalog from accepted pack-candidate issues.

Audience​

Operators looking for "an existing pack for X" before writing one. Designed to land before K8s so community surface area precedes enterprise surface area.

v1.0.0-rc1 — Kubernetes preview (planned)​

Theme: "Helm install works; production hardening pending."

Ships (planned)​

  • T701 client-go SessionRuntime backend.
  • T702 Helm chart charts/baas-platform/.
  • T703 PostgreSQL StatefulSet sub-chart (Bitnami) with database.external.enabled toggle.
  • T704 Session pod template (seccomp, restartPolicy: Never, memory-backed /dev/shm).

Operators can install on GKE/EKS but production-hardening items (NetworkPolicy, isolation tiers, TLS, audit) are not gates.

v1.0.0 — Kubernetes & GA (Week 22)​

Theme: "Production."

Milestone: v1.0 — Kubernetes & GA (Phase 7) · Tasks: Phase 7

Ships​

  • client-go SessionRuntime backend
  • Helm chart charts/baas-platform/ with all toggles
  • Two-namespace layout (baas-system / baas-sessions) + scoped RBAC
  • Session pod template (seccomp, restartPolicy: Never, memory-backed /dev/shm)
  • NetworkPolicies (ingress + egress)
  • KEDA ScaledObject on baas_queued_session_requests + utilization
  • browser-pool-warmup Deployment for cold-start elimination
  • isolation.level: standard (Docker) / enhanced (gVisor) / maximum (Firecracker via RuntimeClass)
  • cert-manager + Ingress-NGINX TLS termination
  • OTel Collector DaemonSet
  • External Secrets Operator integration
  • Argo CD reference manifest in deploy/gitops/

Hard exit gates​

  • Helm install on a fresh GKE or EKS cluster passes the same smoke matrix as Compose
  • Load test: 100 concurrent sessions, 24h soak, ≤150 MB control plane footprint, ≤5 s recovery
  • gVisor tier passes the smoke matrix
  • External security audit clean

Audience​

General availability. Tag v1.0.0. Announce.

v1.x — Post-GA Innovation Tracks​

Released as feature-gated minors as they stabilize. No hard sequence.

VersionHeadline featureADR
v1.1WASM Executor for sandboxed third-party packs012, 024
v1.2Four-tier Memory API (Working/Episodic/Semantic/Procedural)029
v1.3Procedural→Pack promotion UI024, 029
v1.4WebRTC live session streaming028
v1.5WebMCP detection and preferential routing027
v1.6Pre-packaged Chrome DevTools MCP / Playwright MCP entries006
v1.7Firecracker production hardening (bare-metal node guidance)011
v1.xLightpanda alternate browser engine001

Versioning policy​

  • Pre-1.0: every minor may break compatibility; document in release notes.
  • 1.0 onward: SemVer. Breaking pack-schema changes require a new pack version under /api/v1/packs/{name}/v{n} (ADR 024); the previous version stays callable for at least one full minor cycle.
  • Bridge ↔ control plane: version-pinned. The bridge logs a deprecation warning when older than the platform's minimum recommended (ADR 030).

Distribution channels at GA​

ArtifactChannel
Control plane imageghcr.io/tosin2013/helmdeck:vX.Y.Z
Browser sidecar imageghcr.io/tosin2013/helmdeck-sidecar:vX.Y.Z
Helm chartoci://ghcr.io/tosin2013/charts/baas-platform
helmdeck-mcp bridgeHomebrew, Scoop, npm, OCI, GH Releases
Compose stackdeploy/compose/compose.yaml in repo