Anvil Serving 0.35.1 release readiness

Date: 2026-08-24

Candidate version: 0.35.1

Starting source revision: 4d6c628573cc31215a96b4191cb6d279d19d9e1f

Scope: source package, capability-meta-router documentation, and public local-image defaults

Deployment state: not-deployed; no route, model assignment, promotion, container, controller, client catalog, or fleet state changed

This release publishes inference-owned model metadata behind stable capability aliases and names the resulting product contract: Anvil Serving is a capability meta-router implemented as a thin direct gateway. The caller selects a stable capability alias, operator configuration maps it to exactly one tier, and that tier's already-selected single-model inference service may own bounded mutable facts about what it serves.

The term does not restore the removed intent router. There is no prompt classifier, candidate ranking, quality-profile selection, semantic fallback, cloud escalation, response-verification retry, or hidden substitute model.

Product and architecture decision

The documentation and ADR pass establishes one authority model:

Authority	Owns
Caller	Requested capability alias and payload
Operator configuration	Alias-to-tier mapping, endpoint, dialect, auth reference, readiness contract, and router safety policy
Selected inference service	Allowlisted mutable served-model facts only when metadata_source = "upstream"
Router	Authentication, closed alias resolution, metadata validation, admission, translation, streaming relay, and metadata-only decisions
Evaluation and promotion	Qualification evidence and human-gated exposure changes

Route selection precedes metadata resolution. Missing, ambiguous, malformed, or conflicting required upstream metadata makes the selected tier unavailable; it cannot introduce a second candidate or change the endpoint.

ADR-0039 records the category and invariants. It complements rather than supersedes ADR-0028's thin direct gateway. ADR-0038 remains the concrete metadata-authority mechanism.

Version and artifact closure

The candidate version is synchronized across:

• pyproject.toml and anvil_serving.__version__;
• the README source badge and changelog;
• the Dockerfile build example and OCI version argument;
• the public router and voice Compose defaults; and
• the byte-synchronized packaged scaffold copies used by anvil-serving init.

The Compose tag names a locally built source image. No container-registry artifact is published by this release, and no live image is rebuilt or deployed as part of package publication.

Verification record

The following checks ran in the isolated release worktree on the staged candidate:

Surface	Command or method	Result
Editable version refresh	editable dev install from the candidate tree	installed anvil-serving 0.35.1; corrected the expected stale 0.35.0 console metadata before version assertions
Focused CLI regression	pytest tests/test_cli.py -q	281 passed
Scaffold and lifecycle regression	focused init, router-management, and CLI tests	350 passed
Full Python regression	python -m pytest tests/ -q	final staged candidate: 4,145 passed and 9 skipped in 162.10 seconds
Python lint	repository-wide Ruff check	passed
Documentation render	strict MkDocs build	passed
Markdown links	tracked Markdown link checker	387 tracked Markdown files passed after the release finding was staged
CLI documentation audit	docs, skills, and full scopes	121 docs files, 19 skill files, and 731 full-scope files; zero violations; inventory, generated references, and navigation current
Scaffold synchronization	packaged-scaffold sync check	public examples and packaged copies are byte-identical
Patch hygiene	staged diff check	passed
Semantic secret hygiene	scanner self-test plus tracked snapshot	self-test passed; 1,865 tracked files scanned with zero findings
Signature secret hygiene	pinned Gitleaks against the staged patch	51.08 KB scanned with zero findings; the full-history scan exited cleanly with only existing allowlisted historical fixture/evidence matches
Distribution build	isolated python -m build	built anvil_serving-0.35.1-py3-none-any.whl and anvil_serving-0.35.1.tar.gz
Distribution metadata	Twine check	wheel and sdist passed
Isolated wheel install	clean wheel smoke	installed wheel reported 0.35.1, loaded package data, and ran anvil-serving router run --help

The first Markdown-link run reported the two new pages as missing because the repository checker intentionally considers only tracked files. Staging the pages and rerunning produced the passing tracked-snapshot result above. This was not a broken link in the candidate.

Adversarial review

The documentation diff was reviewed against three failure classes:

1. Selection ambiguity: every meta-router definition says one alias maps to one tier and that metadata resolution cannot revisit route selection.
2. Policy-authority leakage: inference services may report only allowlisted served-configuration facts; tool, media, output, readiness, and concurrency policy remains router-owned.
3. Release/deployment conflation: the changelog, local-image guidance, and this finding distinguish source/package publication from container build and live fleet deployment.

No runtime selection algorithm, dependency, route mutation, or promotion was introduced by the documentation reframe.

Release disposition

The authorized closure is published_not_deployed:

1. merge only the reviewed PR head after current-head CI passes;
2. verify the merge revision on main;
3. create the v0.35.1 GitHub Release from that exact revision;
4. let the trusted-publisher workflow build and publish from the tag;
5. verify PyPI serves 0.35.1 and a clean install resolves that version; and
6. leave the current live router, controller, serves, clients, and routes untouched.

If the merge, tag, GitHub Release, trusted-publisher workflow, PyPI index, or clean published-package smoke fails, publication remains incomplete. Live deployment requires a separate authorization and the complete controller, router, parity, route, client, and safety gates.