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Changelog

[0.3.4-rc.2] - 2026-06-06​

Begins the focused 0.3.4 trust and adoption cycle. Stable promotion requires a seven-day RC soak without a new P1/P2 issue.

Reliability & Safety​

  • Login and global rate limiting, LAN checks, and trusted-proxy checks now share one normalized client-IP resolver. Forwarded headers remain accepted only from trusted peers, proxied clients receive independent login buckets, and IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses are normalized consistently. (P2-33, RG-10)
  • Large library scans no longer stall the UI. The SQLite pool previously used a single shared connection, which serialized every request — including the per-request auth session lookup — behind the scan's writes; the pool now allows several connections. The scan also writes jobs in chunked transactions and reads file settings once per scan instead of once per file, and the jobs view coalesces SSE-driven refreshes into a throttled refetch.

Engine​

  • Disk-space guardrail: before starting a job, the engine checks free space on that job's output filesystem and holds queued jobs (they stay queued and retry) when it is below system.min_free_space_gb (default 10 GiB; set 0 to disable). The hold and reason show in the engine status badge, and an optional disk.space_low notification fires when the guardrail engages. The check fails open when free space cannot be determined. (AUTO-3)

Distribution​

  • GitHub releases now populate their body from the matching changelog section.
  • A post-publication Release Smoke workflow verifies version output, selftest, isolated server readiness, published Docker images, and Jellyfin plugin loading across available native runners.
  • The recommended Docker quick start now uses the stable latest image.

Jellyfin​

  • The plugin now targets Jellyfin 10.11.10 and is versioned 0.3.4.0.
  • The canonical package and Jellyfin plugin identifier is dev.bybrooklyn.alchemist.
  • RC and stable releases attach dev.bybrooklyn.alchemist_0.3.4.0.zip, MD5, and SHA-256 assets. Stable releases additionally update the dedicated Jellyfin repository feed; RC releases leave the stable feed unchanged.
  • Plugin tests cover scoped connection checks, dry-run enqueue behavior, real enqueue requests, event-stream access, path translation, completion event parsing, and containing-directory selection.

Docs​

  • Corrected the AV1 hardware-encode support matrix across the documentation. AV1 encode requires NVIDIA RTX 40 (Ada), AMD RDNA 3, or Intel Arc / Meteor Lake; no Apple Silicon has an AV1 hardware encoder, so macOS encodes AV1 on the CPU (SVT-AV1). HEVC and H.264 support were already accurate and unchanged.

[0.3.3] - 2026-06-03​

Promotes 0.3.3-rc.4 to stable.

Reliability & Safety​

  • Batch delete/restart now de-duplicates the requested ids and verifies every id is eligible (not active, archived, or missing) before mutating, so a partially-applicable batch can no longer half-commit — preventing orphaned resume sessions on delete and silent requeues on restart. (P2-34)
  • The system self-test now runs a real ffprobe → plan → encode pipeline, exposed both as POST /api/system/selftest and the new alchemist selftest CLI subcommand; the HTTP path is single-flighted and returns 429 SELFTEST_BUSY while one is already in progress. (P2-35)
  • The self-test "Write Temp" failure path now cleans up its temporary directory instead of leaking it. (RG-11)
  • Auth middleware now returns 500 AUTH_BACKEND_UNAVAILABLE when a session or API-token lookup fails at the database layer, instead of masking a backend outage as a 401.
  • The jobs table endpoint rejects unknown status filter tokens with 400 INVALID_JOB_STATUS_FILTER rather than silently ignoring them.
  • Gotify daily-summary delivery now posts to <server>/message.

Docs​

  • Force the patched qs 6.15.2 transitive resolution used by Docusaurus' webpack-dev-server tooling, keeping the release audit clean.

Known Issues​

  • Login rate limiting keys on the direct socket peer IP. Behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy this can rate-limit all clients together; configure trusted_proxies accordingly. Tracked as P2-33; fix planned for the next release.
  • IPv4-mapped IPv6 peers (::ffff:a.b.c.d) are not normalized in LAN / trusted-proxy classification, which can affect dual-stack hosts. Tracked as RG-10.

[0.3.3-rc.4] - 2026-05-19​

Performance & Reliability​

  • Stats top-reason trends now use dedicated indexes on decisions(created_at, action) and job_failure_explanations(updated_at) (schema 16), preventing full table scans on the Statistics page that could leave it loading indefinitely on large libraries.
  • The Statistics page now uses Promise.allSettled so a slow or failed endpoint never freezes the whole view; partial results render alongside a visible error state.
  • The media analyzer now emits a typed factual report with deterministic labels and optional metrics for BPP density, remux-like density, heavy/lossless audio, image/styled subtitles, HDR/color metadata, Dolby Vision side data, interlacing, VFR hints, and missing metadata warnings. This is analyzer-only evidence for future explanations and Library Intelligence; planner decisions are unchanged.
  • Analyzer metadata now records source chapter counts, and finalization logs a non-fatal job warning if the promoted output has fewer chapters than the source.

Frontend Platform​

  • Frontend dependencies were refreshed for the Astro 6 / React 19 / Tailwind 4 generation. Tailwind now uses the official Vite plugin, Vite is allowed to resolve to Astro 6's required major version, and Recharts tooltip typings were updated for Recharts 3.
  • Docs dependencies now force the patched ws 8.20.1 transitive resolution used by Docusaurus' webpack tooling, keeping the release audit clean.

UX & UI​

  • Selected color profile persists across all pages and survives navigation. A first-paint script reads a localStorage cache, and a global ThemeBootstrap island syncs the server preference and writes it back to the cache.
  • About dialog motion now matches the System modal and animates out of the About button position when triggered from the header.
  • AboutDialog titleCase now tolerates missing channel/install-type/verification fields instead of crashing on undefined.
  • Jobs now support first-pass keyboard shortcuts: / focuses job search, ? opens the shortcut reference, and Esc closes it without intercepting text-entry fields.
  • Jobs search now matches decision and failure explanation text in addition to file paths, making skip/failure reasons discoverable from the table search box.
  • The mobile Dashboard now prioritizes an Active Now panel with active job progress and hides the desktop stats strip on narrow screens.
  • The Dashboard now includes a queue-wide ETA panel backed by recent completed encode samples and the current concurrency limit.
  • Statistics now includes a Storage reclaimed panel that keeps the raw saved bytes visible and adds an approximate 4 GB movie equivalent.
  • Dense job timestamps now use a shared relative-time display with exact local and UTC timestamps available on hover/focus.
  • Job rows now expose the existing action menu on right-click, including a Copy input path action for power-user workflows.
  • File Settings now shows a conservative Impact panel that summarizes staged output naming, output root, replace-policy, and delete-source changes before save.
  • Failure explanations now use a reusable FFmpeg stderr classifier for common disk-full, NVENC resource, pixel-format, corrupt-input, and encoder-parameter signatures.

Operations​

  • Schema migration coverage now asserts schema 16 and verifies the trend indexes against the v0.2.5 upgrade fixture.
  • Dashboard e2e coverage was refreshed for the About dialog payload shape and hardened version selectors.
  • Database backup restore planning now has a dry-run validation endpoint that inspects uploaded .db.gz snapshots without mutating the live database.
  • Direct binary users can run --install or --install-directory <PATH> to copy the current executable into a target install directory.
  • The raw config editor now has a no-persistence validation endpoint and UI preview with redacted summary counts and high-risk warnings.
  • Watch Folders plan preview is covered end-to-end and exposes an accessible preview action per folder.

Source-Device Engine Mode​

  • Source-device tracking (PERF-2, schema 14) now drives the Balanced engine mode: a second concurrent job is never claimed from the same physical disk while one is in flight.

Incremental Scan​

  • Incremental scan (PERF-3, schema 15) records watch_dirs.last_scanned_at and a media_probe_cache.file_id identity hint so unchanged files skip re-analysis when path, size, mtime, and inode/volume index all match.

Data Safety​

  • POST /api/jobs/clear-history?status=… now rejects or refuses to delete when the filter parses to no recognized values; previously a mistyped query parameter could wipe the entire jobs table.

[0.3.2-rc.2] - 2026-04-29​

Integrations & Automation​

  • Native update checks now support stable, RC, and nightly channels with signed release manifests, direct-binary install eligibility, drain-before-install behavior, and package-manager guidance for Docker/Homebrew/AUR/Windows/source installs.

Performance & Startup​

  • Hardware detection cache: successful hardware probes are persisted by OS, architecture, FFmpeg/FFprobe versions, hardware settings, and cache schema version so repeat boots can reuse a valid detection result immediately.
  • Hardware detection now refreshes runtime state and the probe log after background detection completes, avoiding a blocking startup path while still updating the UI when hardware changes.
  • Database migration coverage now verifies schema version 13, including the hardware_detection_cache table, ARR token scope storage, and the media_probe_cache table against the v0.2.5 upgrade fixture.

Conversion & Jobs​

  • Convert preview now returns a structured source/output/estimate summary alongside the generated FFmpeg command so the UI can explain the planned operation before queueing it.
  • Job queue stress coverage now verifies a large queued set can be claimed without duplicate IDs or skipped rows.
  • Failure coverage now checks FFmpeg process crashes surface as job failures with logs and no leftover output artifact.

API & Documentation​

  • Additional settings, schedule, metrics, readiness, SSE, and ARR webhook failure paths now use the structured { error: { code, message } } API envelope.
  • Documentation was refreshed for the current 0.3.2 state: hardware caching, schema version 13, notification quiet hours, ARR ingress, Convert preview summaries, runtime backup, and engine lifecycle semantics.
  • Comparison and open-source docs now make the GPLv3/no-paid-tier/no-license-key positioning explicit and contrast it with official competitor pricing, license, server/node, worker, and flow/plugin documentation.

[0.3.2-rc.1] - 2026-04-24​

Integrations & Automation​

  • ARR webhook ingress: Sonarr/Radarr Download webhooks can now enqueue imported media through POST /api/webhooks/arr.
  • ARR-only API tokens: new arr_webhook token scope limits webhook credentials to the ARR ingress route.
  • ARR path translations: optional system.arr_path_translations maps container paths to Alchemist-visible host paths before enqueue.
  • Quiet hours for notifications: notification settings now expose local start/end quiet-hour controls and suppress non-failure events during the window.

Performance & Reliability​

  • FFprobe result cache: analyzer results are cached by input path, mtime, size, and ffprobe version to avoid repeated probes for unchanged media.
  • Database migration coverage now verifies schema version 12, ARR token scope storage, and the media_probe_cache table against the v0.2.5 upgrade fixture.

API & Security​

  • API error schema v1: high-traffic auth, middleware, settings, system, jobs, and ARR webhook paths now return structured { error: { code, message } } responses.
  • API-token docs and OpenAPI now include the arr_webhook access level.

UX & Documentation​

  • Setup sidebar now shows the full disabled app navigation during first-run setup, including Intelligence and Convert.
  • Astro content collections now back the first help-content surface, with Quality settings linking to a VMAF quality-gate help page.
  • Configuration, database schema, web-interface, and API docs were updated for ARR webhooks, quiet hours, and probe caching.

[0.3.1] - 2026-04-21​

Consolidates the 0.3.1-rc.1 through 0.3.1-rc.5 release candidates and the post-rc.5 audit remediation work.

Reliability & Stability​

  • Segment-based encode resume: interrupted jobs persist resume sessions and completed segments so restart continues without discarding work.
  • Notification target reads/writes preserve the additive migration path, tolerate legacy shapes, and avoid duplicate-delete projection bugs.
  • Daily summary delivery retries safely after transient failures and avoids duplicate sends across restart by persisting the last successful day.
  • Completed-job detail fails closed on database errors instead of returning partial 200 OK; encode stat duration fallback uses encoded output, not source.
  • One-click SQLite backup: runtime settings can now download a consistent gzip-compressed database snapshot via SQLite's online backup path.
  • Login now returns server errors for real database failures; duplicate notification/schedule rows no longer disappear together from a single delete.

Jobs & UX​

  • Manual enqueue: the jobs UI supports enqueueing a single absolute file path through the same backend dedupe and output rules as library scans.
  • Queued-job visibility: job detail exposes queue position and processor blocked reasons.
  • Attempt-history surfacing: job detail shows encode attempt history with outcome, timing, and captured failure summary.
  • File-history grouping: attempt history is now grouped into distinct runs so retries, reruns, and requeues remain legible in the detail modal.
  • JobManager refactor ships with dedicated controller/dialog helpers and tighter SSE reconciliation so filtered tables and open modals stay aligned with backend truth.
  • Intelligence actions: remux recommendations and duplicate candidates are actionable directly from the Intelligence page.
  • Shift-range selection: holding Shift while clicking job checkboxes selects the full range between the anchor row and the clicked row.

Notifications​

  • Native ntfy target support: configure server URL, topic, and optional access token directly from notification settings instead of routing through a generic webhook.

Conversion Workflow​

  • Single-file upload/convert workflow with configurable upload size cap (conversion_upload_limit_gb, default 8 GB).
  • Converted-download retention is configurable (conversion_download_retention_hours, default 1, range 1-24).

Security & Audit Remediation​

  • Backend database layer split from a single db.rs into the src/db/ submodule (config, conversion, events, jobs, mod, stats, system, types) to reduce the blast radius of schema or query changes.
  • Additional audit findings addressed across src/server/ handlers.
  • Satisfy newer GitHub clippy lints and CI clippy strictness (-D clippy::unwrap_used, -D clippy::expect_used).

Documentation​

  • Full docs SEO overhaul: frontmatter (title/description/keywords), JSON-LD SoftwareApplication schema, sitemap, robots.txt, and OG social card.
  • New pages: Alchemist for Jellyfin, Open Source, AV1 transcoding, Migrating from Tdarr, and alternatives hub with Alchemist vs Tdarr / Alchemist vs FileFlows comparisons.
  • New troubleshooting subpages: NVENC not detected, VAAPI not detected, Jellyfin direct-play failing.
  • Updated configuration-reference, database-schema, architecture, and web-interface docs to match the current codebase.

[0.3.1-rc.5] - 2026-04-16​

Reliability & Stability​

  • Segment-based encode resume — interrupted encode jobs now persist resume sessions and completed segments so restart and recovery flows can continue without discarding all completed work.
  • Notification target compatibility hardening — notification target reads/writes now preserve the additive migration path, tolerate legacy shapes, and avoid duplicate-delete projection bugs in settings management.
  • Daily summary reliability — summary delivery now retries safely after transient failures and avoids duplicate sends across restart boundaries by persisting the last successful day.
  • Job-detail correctness — completed-job detail loading now fails closed on database errors instead of returning partial 200 OK payloads, and encode stat duration fallback uses the encoded output rather than the source file.
  • Auth and settings safety — login now returns server errors for real database failures, and duplicate notification/schedule rows no longer disappear together from a single delete action.

Jobs & UX​

  • Manual enqueue flow — the jobs UI now supports enqueueing a single absolute file path through the same backend dedupe and output rules used by library scans.
  • Queued-job visibility — job detail now exposes queue position and processor blocked reasons so operators can see why a queued job is not starting.
  • Attempt-history surfacing — job detail now shows encode attempt history directly in the modal, including outcome, timing, and captured failure summary.
  • Jobs UI follow-through — the JobManager refactor now ships with dedicated controller/dialog helpers and tighter SSE reconciliation so filtered tables and open detail modals stay aligned with backend truth.
  • Intelligence actions — remux recommendations and duplicate candidates are now actionable directly from the Intelligence page.

[0.3.1-rc.3] - 2026-04-12​

New Features​

Job Management Refactor​

  • Componentized Job Manager — extracted monolithic JobManager.tsx into a modular suite under web/src/components/jobs/, including dedicated components for the toolbar, table, and detail modal.
  • Enhanced Job Detail Modal — rebuilt the job detail view with better loading states, smoother transitions, and improved information hierarchy for analysis, decisions, and failure reasons.
  • Job SSE Hook — unified job-related Server-Sent Events logic into a custom useJobSSE hook for better state management and reduced re-renders.

Themes & UX​

  • Midnight OLED+ — enhanced the midnight theme with true-black surfaces and suppressed decorative gradients to maximize OLED power savings.
  • Improved Toasts — toast notifications now feature a high-quality backdrop blur and refined border styling for better visibility against busy backgrounds.

Reliability & Observability​

  • Engine Lifecycle Specs — added a comprehensive Playwright suite for validating engine transitions (Running -> Draining -> Paused -> Stopped).
  • Planner & Lifecycle Docs — added detailed technical documentation for the transcoding planner logic and engine state machine.
  • Encode Attempt Tracking — added a database migration to track individual encode attempts, laying the groundwork for more granular retry statistics.

Hardware & Performance​

  • Concurrency & Speed Optimizations — internal refinements to the executor and processor to improve hardware utilization and address reported speed issues on certain platforms.
  • Backlog Grooming — updated TODO.md with a focus on validating AMF and VAAPI AV1 hardware encoders.

[0.3.1-rc.1] - 2026-04-08​

New Features​

Conversion & Library Workflows​

  • Experimental Conversion / Remux page — upload a single file, inspect streams, preview the generated FFmpeg command, run a remux/transcode job through Alchemist, and download the result when complete.
  • Expanded Library Intelligence — duplicate detection now sits alongside storage-focused recommendation sections for remux-only opportunities, wasteful audio layouts, and commentary/descriptive-track cleanup candidates.

Authentication & Automation​

  • Named API tokens — create bearer tokens from Settings with read_only or full_access access classes. Tokens are only shown once at creation time and stored server-side as hashes.
  • OpenAPI contract — hand-maintained OpenAPI spec added alongside expanded human API docs for auth, token management, and update-check behavior.

Notifications​

  • Provider-specific notification targets — notification settings now use provider-specific configuration payloads instead of the old shared endpoint/token shape.
  • Provider expansion — Discord webhook, Discord bot, Gotify, generic webhook, Telegram, and SMTP email targets are supported.
  • Richer event model — notification events now distinguish queue/start/completion/failure plus scan completion, engine idle, and daily summary delivery.
  • Daily summary scheduling — notifications include a global daily_summary_time_local setting and per-target opt-in for digest delivery.

Deployment & Distribution​

  • Windows update check — the About dialog now checks GitHub Releases for the latest stable version and links directly to the release download page when an update is available.
  • Distribution metadata generation — in-repo Homebrew and AUR packaging templates plus workflow rendering were added as the foundation for package-manager distribution.

Documentation​

  • Config path clarity — docs now consistently describe ~/.config/alchemist/config.toml as the default host-side config location on Linux/macOS, while Docker examples still use /app/config/config.toml inside the container.
  • Backlog realignment — the backlog was rewritten around current repo reality, marking large newly implemented surfaces as “Implemented / In Progress” and keeping the roadmap automation-first.

[0.3.0] - 2026-04-06​

Security​

  • Fixed a critical bug where a config parse failure on a configured instance would re-enable unauthenticated setup endpoints (filesystem browse, settings bundle) for any network client.
  • Session cookies are no longer marked Secure by default, which was breaking login over plain HTTP/LAN. Opt in with ALCHEMIST_COOKIE_SECURE=true for reverse-proxy deployments.
  • /api/fs/* filesystem browsing is now restricted to loopback connections only during the initial setup flow.
  • Proxy header handling hardened with explicit trust configuration for reverse-proxy deployments.

New Features​

Library & Encoding​

  • Per-library profiles — each watch folder gets its own transcoding profile. Four built-in presets (Space Saver, Quality First, Balanced, Streaming) are ready to use or customize.
  • Container remuxing — files already in the target codec but wrapped in MP4/MOV are remuxed to MKV losslessly, skipping a full re-encode.
  • Subtitle sidecar extraction — text-based subtitle tracks (SRT, ASS, VTT) can be extracted as separate files alongside the output rather than muxed in.
  • Stream rules — strip audio tracks by title keyword (e.g. commentary tracks), filter by language code, or keep only the default audio track.
  • VMAF quality gating — encodes scoring below a configurable threshold are rejected and the source is preserved.
  • Library Intelligence — duplicate detection surfaces files with matching stems across the library.
  • Library Doctor — health scanning detects corrupt or broken files directly from System Settings.
  • Mirrored output root — write transcoded files to a separate directory tree that mirrors the source structure, rather than alongside the source.

Job Management​

  • Skipped tab — dedicated tab for skipped jobs with structured skip reasons.
  • Archived tab — cleared completed jobs are preserved in an Archived tab rather than disappearing permanently.
  • Sort controls — sort the job list by last updated, date added, file name, or file size.
  • Per-job priority — promote individual jobs up the queue from the job detail panel.
  • Retry countdown — failed jobs waiting to retry show "Retrying in 47m", updated live every 30 seconds.
  • Structured skip and failure explanations — skip reasons and failure summaries are stored as structured payloads with a code, plain-English summary, measured values, and operator guidance; surfaced in the job detail panel before the raw FFmpeg log.

Engine Control​

  • Engine runtime modes — Background (1 job), Balanced (half CPU count, capped at 4), and Throughput (half CPU count, uncapped). Manual concurrency and thread overrides available in the Advanced panel.
  • Drain mode — stop accepting new jobs while letting active encodes finish cleanly.
  • Boot auto-analysis — ffprobe runs on all queued jobs at startup so skip/transcode decisions are pre-computed before the engine starts.

UI Redesign​

  • Removed page h1 headers; replaced the old header block with a thin engine control strip showing the status dot, Start/Pause/Stop, mode pills, About, and Logout in one row.
  • Dashboard restructured around a compact stat row, savings summary card, and a larger Recent Activity panel.
  • Log viewer groups entries by job into collapsible sections; system-level log lines render inline between groups.
  • Setup wizard rebuilt inside the main app shell with a grayed sidebar, 2px solar progress line, and a welcome step (logo + tagline + Get Started) before the admin account form.
  • Library selection redesigned around a flat recommendation list with Add buttons, selected-folder chips, and a Browse/manual path option; the old preview panel was removed.
  • Statistics page uses recharts AreaChart for savings over time and BarChart for codec breakdown, replacing custom CSS bars.
  • Hardware settings merged into the Transcoding tab. Notifications and Automation merged into one tab.
  • Mobile layout: hamburger sidebar overlay, jobs table collapses date/priority columns below md breakpoint, stat cards use a 2×2 grid on small screens.
  • Font updated from Space Grotesk to DM Sans; sidebar active state uses a left accent bar; border radius scale tightened throughout.
  • Design system token compliance pass across all settings components: toggle switches, form labels, and text-on-color elements now use helios tokens exclusively.
  • Analyzing job rows show an indeterminate shimmer instead of a static 0.0% label.
  • Poll-based job state updates no longer overwrite terminal states that arrived via SSE.

Reliability & Stability​

  • Exponential retry backoff for failed jobs: 5 / 15 / 60 / 360 minute delays by attempt count.
  • Orphaned temp file cleanup on startup: interrupted encodes and subtitle sidecar temp files no longer accumulate on disk.
  • Fixed infinite analysis loop: jobs with an existing decision row are excluded from analysis batches, preventing transcodable jobs from being re-analyzed on every pass.
  • Boot analysis processes jobs in batches of 100 from offset 0, fixing a pagination bug where transcodable jobs shifted out of later pages after earlier jobs were decided.
  • Engine no longer auto-pauses when the queue empties; it stays Running and picks up new files as the watcher delivers them.
  • Analysis semaphore serializes all analysis passes; watcher-triggered passes are dropped (not queued) when a pass is already running.
  • Job stall detection added to surface encodes that stop making progress.
  • Ctrl+C / SIGTERM exits cleanly after graceful shutdown. Background tasks no longer prevent process exit.
  • Log table pruning: configurable retention period (default 30 days) prevents unbounded log growth.
  • Auth session cleanup: expired sessions pruned on startup and every 24 hours.
  • Resource endpoint caching: /api/system/resources cached 500ms to prevent redundant OS probes from multiple open tabs.
  • Drop guard added to in_flight_jobs counter so it decrements correctly even on panic.
  • Completed job detail no longer re-runs ffprobe on the source file; encode_stats is the authoritative source for post-encode metadata.

Hardware & Encoding​

  • Apple VideoToolbox — encode commands now include -allow_sw 1 (software fallback) and format=yuv420p (required pixel format), fixing all VideoToolbox encodes on macOS. HEVC output tagged as hvc1 for Apple device compatibility.
  • Intel Arc — VAAPI-first detection with i915/xe driver; QSV retained as last-resort fallback only.
  • Audio planning — lossless codecs (TrueHD, MLP, DTS-HD, FLAC, PCM) trigger transcoding; standard Atmos/EAC3 at any bitrate now copies through without re-encoding.
  • libopus fallback — audio transcoding for MKV now checks for libopus availability at runtime and falls back to AAC when it is absent (common on macOS FFmpeg builds).
  • FFmpeg encode failures write the full error (last 20 lines of stderr) to the job log; failure explanations in the UI include VideoToolbox-specific patterns (vt_compression, mediaserverd, no capable devices).

Backend Architecture​

  • Upgraded from Rust 2021 to Rust 2024 edition, MSRV set to 1.85.
  • sqlx upgraded to 0.8 with runtime-tokio-rustls; rand upgraded to 0.9.
  • Removed async-trait; all traits use native async fn. trait-variant added for object-safe Arc<dyn ExecutionObserver>.
  • server.rs split into focused submodules: auth, jobs, scan, settings, stats, system, sse, middleware, wizard.
  • ffprobe execution moved to tokio::process::Command with a 120-second timeout.
  • Typed broadcast channels separate high-volume events (progress, logs) from low-volume system events (config, status).
  • Poisoned cancellation lock recovery added to the orchestrator; oversized FFmpeg stderr lines truncated before logging.
  • Invalid notification event JSON and invalid schedule day JSON now log a warning rather than silently disabling the target or treating it as empty.
  • Database connection pool capped; OOM protection added to analysis batch queries via LIMIT/OFFSET pagination.

Database​

  • decisions table extended with reason_code and reason_payload_json for structured skip reason storage.
  • job_failure_explanations table added for structured failure explanations, with legacy_summary fallback for pre-0.3 rows.
  • Index on decisions(reason_code) and job_failure_explanations(code) for fast filtering.
  • All databases from v0.2.5 onwards upgrade automatically; no manual migration required.

CI/CD & Tooling​

  • Nightly workflow: runs on every push to master after checks pass, builds all platforms, publishes ghcr.io/bybrooklyn/alchemist:nightly with {VERSION}-nightly+{short-sha} versioning.
  • Shared reusable build.yml workflow so nightly and release builds use identical pipelines.
  • actionlint added to just release-check.
  • E2E reliability suite (just test-e2e) runs in CI after the frontend check passes.
  • Windows contributor workflow documented and validated: just install-w, just dev, just check.
  • just release-check covers fmt, clippy (-D warnings -D clippy::unwrap_used -D clippy::expect_used), tests, actionlint, web verify, docs build, E2E, and backend build in sequence.
  • Release binaries ship as .tar.gz (Linux/macOS) and .exe (Windows), each with a SHA256 checksum. Multi-arch Docker images published for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.

[v0.2.9] - 2026-03-06​

  • Runtime reliability pass: watcher/scanner hardening, resilient event consumers, config reload improvements, and live hardware refresh.
  • Admin UX refresh across dashboard, settings, setup, logs, jobs, charts, and system status with stronger error handling and feedback.
  • Frontend workflow standardized on Bun, Playwright reliability coverage added under web-e2e, and deploy/docs/container updates shipped together.

[v0.2.8] - 2026-01-12​

  • Setup wizard auth fixes, scheduler time validation, and watcher reliability improvements.
  • DB stability pass (WAL, FK enforcement, indexes, session cleanup, legacy watch_dirs compatibility).
  • Build pipeline updates (rustls for reqwest, cross-platform build script, WiX workflow fix).
  • Documentation and design philosophy updates.
  • More themes!!

[v0.2.5] - 2026-01-11​

Fixes​

  • Dashboard Crash: Fixed a critical bug where the dashboard would render as a blank screen if GPU utilization was null. Added strict null checks before toFixed() calls in ResourceMonitor.tsx.
  • Animation Glitch: Resolved an issue where the "Engine Status" button would fly in from the top-left corner on page navigation. Implemented unique layoutId generation using useId() to maintain the morph animation while preventing cross-page artifacts.
  • Migration Checksum: Fixed a startup error caused by a modified migration file. Reverted the original migration to restore checksum integrity and created a new migration for the version bump.

Improvements​

  • Resource Monitor Layout: Repositioned the GPU Usage section to appear between "Active Jobs" and "Uptime" for better logical flow.
  • Animation Timing: Adjusted staggered animation delays in the Resource Monitor to match the new layout order.

Documentation​

  • Codebase Overview: Added codebase_overview.md explaining the monolith architecture (Rust + API + Frontend) and directory structure.
  • Migration Policy: Updated MIGRATIONS.md to explicitly forbid modifying existing migration files to prevent checksum errors.
  • Walkthrough: Updated walkthrough.md with detailed debugging logs and verification steps for all recent changes.

Infrastructure​

  • Version Bump: Updated project version to 0.2.5 in Cargo.toml, web/package.json, and VERSION.
  • Database: Established 0.2.5 as the new minimum compatible version schema baseline.