Release Notes

v0.8.0

Type: Dungeon Editor Milestone — Rendering Parity + Workbench UX + Save Safety Status: In development Date: pending Release SHA: pending

This is the Dungeon Editor milestone. More dungeon objects now draw from their USDASM routines, the Workbench keeps the room canvas stable, guarded dungeon, message, and palette writes check more before touching the ROM, and release packages gained per-platform layout and install checks. Many of those checks refuse work that 0.7.2 accepted, so read Upgrading from 0.7.2 first.

⚠️ Upgrading from 0.7.2

Read this before upgrading a project or a script. Each item was checked against the v0.7.2 tag and current master. The full list, with exact error messages and every affected command, is in docs/public/reference/changelog.md under Upgrading from 0.7.2.

Saves that used to succeed can now stop with an error

• ROM saves stop while Graphics Editor sheet or Screen Editor edits are pending, and dungeon Save/**Apply Room** stop while Object Tile Editor edits are unapplied or Minecart Track Editor drafts are unpublished.
• Dungeon object, torch, pushable-block, entrance, and WaterFill saves now fail on data 0.7.2 accepted: object IDs, positions, or sizes that cannot be encoded (0.7.2's writer silently capped Type 1 sizes above 15), a third torch/block layer, an empty or conflicting block table, entrance room IDs outside 0x000-0x127, and WaterFill room IDs 0x100-0x127 (0.7.2 kept only the low byte).
• With a Hack Manifest loaded, many more dungeon and palette writes are checked before writing, so write_policy block can stop saves that 0.7.2 allowed.

z3ed scripts

• message-write and message-import-bundle --apply require --project with a loaded manifest, and --apply now exits non-zero when a project, manifest, write-policy, write, save, or readback check fails (a missing ROM or parse errors without --strict still exit 0).
• dungeon-import-custom-collision-json and dungeon-import-water-fill-json now write the ROM file when run without --dry-run; 0.7.2 changed only memory unless --sandbox was used.
• Dungeon write commands require a completed ROM backup, and dungeon-set-room-property no longer resets the room's other header bytes.
• JSON output changed for --spawn on dungeon-get-entrance/entrance-info, dungeon-object-validate, and dungeon-place-object. project-bundle-verify --check-rom-hash now checks manifests that carry only romChecksum and can fail them. palette-set-color --write is disabled; use dungeon-set-palette-color.

Projects and manifests

• A Hack Manifest address that does not parse completely – trailing junk, past 32 bits, or signed – now fails the load instead of quietly loading a different address.
• A malformed protected_regions, messages, or minecart_tracks section makes the whole Hack Manifest fail to load, and hook regions now take precedence over owned_banks.
• One ROM file backs one session on every open path. New Project writes <name>.yaze immediately and refuses to replace an existing file. Restoring a backup stages it until Save ROM.
• CRLF project.yaze files now load their settings (0.7.2 ignored all of them, including write-policy flags), and a lone carriage return is rejected.
• Custom object paths must stay inside custom_objects_folder, and the minecart track editor needs a manifest minecart_tracks.source.

Editor and packages

• The first launch after upgrading shows the Dungeon Workbench and closes the 10 standalone Dungeon windows it replaces, including Room List, Object Selector, and Palette Editor. ROM tools moved from File to Tools > ROM Analysis, and plain-key shortcuts no longer fire with modifiers held.
• Lower-layer pushable blocks in rooms 0xA8, 0x66, and 0x2C now load 64 tiles higher, at their real position on BG2, and several objects draw with their USDASM footprint.
• .theme files keep the colours they declare, and plot colours change in the built-in presets.
• Linux packages use /usr/bin and /usr/share/yaze, and Windows and Debian download names changed.
• The emulator pauses while its panels are hidden; turn on Keep Emulator Running in Background for the old behaviour. A saved Emulator category is now restored at startup, which 0.7.2 ignored.

🏰 Dungeon Rendering

• Corrected ROM-driven placement and layer behavior for doors, thin floor and wall strips, corners, diagonal walls and ceilings, moving walls, and floor-copy objects. The _plus3 solid strips and _plus13/_plus12 rail walls now draw from the object's own origin instead of 3, 13, or 12 tiles away. Conditional edge and cap routines check whether a layout or object tile owns each position. Lower straight stairs now raise the priority of a BG1 column next to the staircase, and spiral stairs raise the priority of the tiles just left and right of the staircase (BG1 for upper spirals, BG2 for lower spirals). Neither paints over tiles.
• Matched dozens of individual object families against USDASM, including Somaria paths, pushable blocks, torch codecs, hammer pegs, light beams, curtains, rupee and bombable floors, big key locks, prison cells, moving walls, the Turtle Rock pipe 0xFDC, and exact 4-word bar-corner payloads. Fixed-size objects no longer offer meaningless resize handles.
• Removed the hard-coded IsAllBgsObjectId list. BothBG routing now comes from draw-routine registry metadata plus explicit routing for stairs and fixed facades, and ObjectDrawer's duplicate dimension switch now uses DimensionService.
• Fixed dungeon palette slot mapping and made object previews, sprite previews, and the placement ghost use the room's own palette set, so browsing the selector shows what the room will actually look like.
• Added ROM-backed parser and renderer checks, independent Mesen fixtures for TableRock, BigHole, rails, bombable floors, and a west door, plus structural BG2 validation for vanilla HDMA water-control objects.

🧰 Dungeon Editor Workflow

• Kept the room canvas vertically stable by removing the selection action shelf and recent-room tab strip from above it. Recent rooms moved to a toolbar popup, and the Tools inspector's icon strip became one tool chooser grouped into Edit, Room, and Review. A new Pop out (or Show window) opens a tool standalone, and each tool is drawn in only one place at a time.
• Workbench toolbar actions that no longer fit now move into an overflow menu instead of disappearing, including Compare with its room picker, direct room ID, Swap Rooms, Sync View, and End Compare. The Object Selector gained a stream filter and a More menu, and the dungeon palette grid now adapts to 16/8/4/2/1 columns.
• Made issue capture local and opt-in: reports are no longer auto-saved on open, copy, screenshot, or close, and only Save to Issue Log writes the report. The object trace now replays the room-stream objects before the selected one, with layout tilewords, layer, and floor graphics context.
• Gave the room canvas, room selector and matrix, and Dungeon Map previews their own composite textures instead of sharing one per room, so they can no longer overwrite one another. Loading a dungeon into Dungeon Map now clears the previous dungeon's room type badges, stair and holewarp connections, and room positions.
• Spawn points 0x00-0x06 are now edited through their dedicated spawn-point record instead of the regular entrance fields. The dungeon validator now warns when a stateful chest comes after a big-key lock in the object stream or when a room uses more chest/lock event slots than the engine supports, replacing the old chest-count error.
• Object Selector cards show a draw-routine badge: a direction or category glyph, or C/K/B/P for chests, big key locks, bombable floors, and prison cells, with the routine family and base pattern size in the tooltip.

🧪 Oracle & Custom Dungeon Assets

• Replaced the modal Custom Object Workshop with a non-modal Custom Assets mode covering the 21 fixed Oracle runtime assets (Tracks + Props, Ice Props, and new Boss Bodies slots for 0x54), with Edit Tile Layout (desktop only), Place in Room, and a Minecart Routes & Collision shortcut on track slots. It edits existing slots only.
• Removed the track-corner alias that drew wall-corner objects 0x100-0x103 with object 0x31 corner assets in projects that mapped 0x31. Those IDs now stay wall corners unless the project maps the same ID directly.
• Published custom asset and minecart track sources with path confinement, exact-source comparison, atomic replacement, rollback, and decoded readback. WASM fails closed rather than pretending to publish.
• Custom Assets > Reload Assets (formerly Reload Workshop) now also refreshes external Oracle sprite preview art in every room, Workbench, and comparison viewer, stays available when Custom Objects is disabled, and keeps unsaved room and tile edits.

🛡️ Save Safety

• When a project Hack Manifest is loaded, dungeon palette saves, Palette Editor saves, and Object Tile Editor ROM writes are checked against it, and z3ed dungeon-set-room-property --manifest checks room-header and message-ID bytes. Object Tile Editor writes also record their source and detect tile sources shared by several objects.
• Made z3ed dungeon-set-room-property, dungeon-generate-track-collision, dungeon-import-custom-collision-json, and dungeon-import-water-fill-json roll back on a failed write or save, and made Minecart Track Editor collision generation transactional.
• Made ROM backup restore refuse while ROM edits are pending, accept only managed backups of the active ROM, and stage the restored ROM as unsaved until Save ROM, with a Discard Restored Backup button. Session tabs now mark a session Modified when only project settings or project editor drafts are unsaved.

🔧 z3ed CLI

• Added dungeon-get-palette for the full room palette-set mapping, raw colors, and every room sharing the selected global US/OOS palette.
• Added dry-run-first dungeon-set-palette-color with mapping/color compare-and-swap, manifest ownership, clean-disk baseline, a two-byte write fence, required backup, atomic save, whole-ROM diff, and external readback. Legacy palette-set-color --write is disabled because it could report an in-memory change as persisted; its preview still works.
• Added dungeon-set-door-type and dungeon-set-pot-item (dry-run by default, expected-value checks, required --manifest) and dungeon-list-pot-items, --include-objects on dungeon-describe-room, and the dedicated spawn-point schema for --spawn on dungeon-get-entrance and entrance-info. Custom collision imports now leave unchanged rooms alone, and collision export refuses to write over the ROM file.
• z3ed --self-test now checks that two representative runtime assets (agent/prompt_catalogue.yaml and an Overworld patch) resolve from the installed package layout.
• Added dungeon-remove-object, which removes one ordinary room object only when its stream index, ID, position, size, and layer all match the expected values. It is a dry run unless --write is given.
• project-bundle-verify --check-rom-hash accepts the iOS romChecksum manifest field alongside rom_sha1.

🎨 Appearance & Editor Shell

• Added five editor themes: Blood Moon, Catppuccin Mocha, Dracula, Rosé Pine, and Temple of Time, with the upstream MIT notices for Catppuccin, Dracula, and Rosé Pine kept in assets/themes/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The macOS app bundle includes only the themes listed in assets/themes/distributable-themes.txt, and CI checks that tracked themes match that list.
• Theme files now get smart defaults for colors they leave out, including accent, error, warning, success, and info. Omitted borders, scrollbars, table colors, links, histograms, highlights, and modal backgrounds are no longer black on file-loaded themes. Colors a .theme file declares are never replaced, so a deliberate black border or highlight is kept.
• Reworked the welcome screen into a compact start card whose Start and Recent panes never scroll: the Recent list is cut to what fits, and optional Start rows drop on small windows. The Release History card became a Release notes link, and the resume button now names the most recent available ROM or project.
• Repaired the editor chooser dashboard: --startup_dashboard=hide now also suppresses the chooser on most automatic opens after a ROM or project loads (it can still appear when opening from the welcome screen), cards are legible on light themes, Display Density has effect, the shortcut hint says Ctrl+E instead of F1, and the Performance Dashboard no longer draws twice per frame.
• Renamed Tools > Window Finder to Find Window… (Ctrl+P). Help → Keyboard Shortcuts now opens the shortcuts browser instead of Settings and is bound to Ctrl+Shift+/.
• The right sidebar drawer shows an icon strip below its header with one icon per switchable drawer. The header can also show a context badge: agent status for AI Agent, an unread count for Notifications, a lock icon for locked Properties, and the active editor's name for Help.
• The overworld status bar shows the map under the cursor while the canvas is hovered, with the selected map alongside it when they differ, and falls back to the selected map on leave. The Tile16 selector's scroll region reports the grid width plus 18px of chrome instead of a 332px floor, so it no longer forces horizontal scroll in a narrow dock.

🖥️ Emulator, iOS & Platform

• Added TCP endpoint support to the Mesen socket client alongside Unix domain sockets, so debugging no longer requires a local socket path.
• Fixed the iOS device build (preset build paths and editor API calls) and added the remote desktop connection, room viewer, command runner, and annotation review views to the iOS app target.
• Routed the normal macOS Quit menu item through ordered application shutdown.
• Mesen2-OOS CPU registers now show real values; 0.7.2 looked for uppercase JSON keys the server does not send, so every register read as 0.
• Hidden emulator panels no longer keep the game running: frames and audio stop until the panel is visible again, unless Keep Emulator Running in Background is enabled.

🧱 Release Validation

• Added a dedicated Release-config native test build for Linux, macOS, and Windows that fails on zero tests, missing suites, wrong-configuration binaries, or empty JUnit results.
• Bounded reusable CI builds to four workers and separated build caches by configuration to reduce runner pressure and cache pollution.
• Replaced the two duplicate pull-request WASM builds with one Release-derived wasm-smoke build with a 45-minute limit and a serial Chromium Playwright smoke test. It now also runs for inc/, cmake/, ext/, and assets/ changes and caches CPM at the path the build actually uses.
• Moved Linux DEB/TGZ payloads to an FHS layout and hardened package validation: the manifest version and Git SHA must match the release, shared libraries must resolve, a real APT install and purge must succeed, the macOS bundle signature is re-verified after relocation, Windows ZIPs must carry app-local MSVC runtimes, and the NSIS installer runs a silent install and uninstall.
• scripts/install-nightly-local.sh now validates a nightly before activation: staged directories, both executables present and running --version, macOS signing verified after resource copying, and an atomic current symlink swap only on success.

📚 Documentation

• Replaced stale parity percentages and Stable/Beta/WIP labels with one canonical desktop editor readiness matrix (Tester ready, Conditional, View only, Experimental) and a tester guide that distinguishes component test, direct ROM readback, app-path test, GUI smoke, and manual acceptance evidence.
• Generated the ALTTP quick reference from pinned usdasm and jpdasm sources and added a SNES hardware reference whose register addresses are checked against usdasm. scripts/agents/alttp_reference.py check fails when a generated section is stale or an address disagrees.

Validation Snapshot

The figures below were added to these notes on 2026-09-13. They are not a run against the final release head, which is pending.

• ROM parser/drawer parity and room fingerprint tests pass for the covered vanilla rooms and objects.
• z3ed dungeon-object-validate reported 0 mismatches across 1190 validated objects for the canonical vanilla ROM used by the dungeon parity audit.
• The Release test gate executed 3286 discovered stable tests locally on macOS instead of accepting an empty test run.
• Final tag SHA, packaged-candidate digests, hosted Release workflow run links, and a full-suite run against the release head are pending.

Known Limits

• Full emulator 1:1 parity is not claimed. Static water, ice, bar, remaining small-corner objects, and more door families still need independent witnesses. Vanilla 0xD8 and 0xDA remain structural-only because they control HDMA.
• The Custom Assets browser exposes only the 21 fixed Oracle slots. Arbitrary custom object IDs, the externally DMA-loaded Kydreeok and Manhandla pixel graphics, and a general project object catalog are out of scope.
• Oracle custom source publication requires a subsequent Oracle build and in-game check. Save ROM alone cannot prove published assets reached the game. Other ROM hacks need a named compatibility test before being described as supported.
• Headless package smoke checks do not replace hands-on GUI launch/quit on each desktop platform. Windows signing and macOS universal, Developer ID, notarization, and Gatekeeper acceptance remain separate release gates.

---

v0.7.2

Type: Dungeon RC + Fail-Closed Save Safety + Build/CI Hardening Date: 2026-07-17

🏰 Dungeon RC Stabilization

• Rendered dungeon object and sprite previews by default so selector browsing starts from visual room-context feedback instead of fallback symbols.
• Kept Workbench-local dungeon tools available alongside standalone windows, making mixed Workbench/Window editing safer during longer dungeon sessions.
• Persisted entrance and special-object save domains through the dungeon save path so Save ROM covers the room state needed by real editing workflows.
• Hardened door placement to reject positions outside the ALTTP/USDASM 12-entry door tables instead of accepting clamped-but-invalid slots.
• Canonicalized room-object names and resource-label export from room_object.h, including newly named logic-only and rare decor objects.
• Preserved zero-tile DrawNothing logic objects as no-payload cases while keeping the conservative fallback for uncataloged drawable objects.
• Added editable pit-damage room membership controls and protected the pushable-block loader from invalid pointer operands and table-capacity overruns.
• Added ROM-backed regression coverage for pit-damage persistence, pushable-block boundaries, and a pinned room 0x001 BG1/BG2 object-overlap pixel.

🌎 Overworld Follow-through

• Added a right-click Tile16 sampling action to the overworld canvas context menu, covering the common eyedropper workflow without opening the Tile16 editor first.

🛡️ Fail-Closed Save Safety

• Made multi-editor saves transactional across the complete ROM, so a late validation, backup, or file-write failure rolls back the attempted save and keeps the user's edits available to retry.
• Preserved the selected Save As destination across ROM-hash, pot-item, and ASM-conflict confirmations and rejected stale confirmations after switching ROM sessions.
• Made unsupported dungeon object, sprite, pot-item, and chest growth stop with an actionable error rather than guessing relocation space or partially rewriting shared streams.
• Strengthened expanded-message, custom-overworld, palette, project-path, manifest, and hash validation with vanilla and Oracle regression coverage.

🧱 Build & CI Stabilization

• Fixed the WASM/browser build after the 0.7.1 editor reorg by excluding the stale yaze_debug_inspector.cc path that still referenced removed PanelManager-era editor APIs.
• Added project_graph_tool.cc back to the WASM AI source list so ProjectGraphTool links correctly in browser builds.
• Skipped POSIX-shell-dependent project-action tests on Windows, keeping the Windows Core matrix green while a real cross-platform script-runner rewrite is deferred.
• Stabilized fork pull-request checks, WASM builds, and the memory-sanitizer gate used by the release matrix.

🌐 Localization & Desktop Reliability

• Added the internationalization catalog pipeline and French localization.
• Initialized native file dialogs explicitly on Linux and Windows.
• Hardened session restore, SDL startup, asset lookup, configuration loading, ROM handling, and CLI error paths.

🧰 CLI & Agent Tooling

• Updated scripts/z3ed to resolve binaries under build/presets/<preset>/bin/, which restores z3ed discovery for CI presets and preset-specific local builds.

📝 Release Metadata & Post-Tag Hygiene

• Advanced trunk version metadata to 0.7.2 after the v0.7.1 tag.
• Aligned post-release docs metadata so future release notes and generated release bodies stay consistent.

Deferred Follow-Up

• Complete the 0.8.0 dungeon milestone: remaining rare-object parity, pit/block first-class encoders, and deeper BG1/BG2 overlay-stream validation.
• Add manifest-backed copy-on-write allocation for shared dungeon streams so safe growth can proceed after the 0.7.2 fail-closed containment release.
• Refresh or remove the stale web debug inspector against the current post-reorg editor APIs.
• Replace POSIX-shell-only project-action test scaffolding with a cross-platform test harness.

---

v0.7.1 (April 2026)

Type: Packaging + Welcome Screen Overhaul + Dungeon Editor Parity/Polish Date: 2026-04-19

Welcome Screen & Project Startup

• Added a guided New Project flow with clearer startup/project creation affordances.
• Added async ROM metadata scanning for recent projects plus pin/rename/notes actions.
• Added a short undo window for recent-project removal and command-palette entry points for welcome actions.

Dungeon Editor Parity & Polish

• Restored BG1/BG2 layout routing while preserving pit/mask semantics.
• Fixed real-room 0x034 rendering for single-tile payloads.
• Added replay-geometry selection bounds for more accurate object hitboxes.
• Added ROM-backed parity tests and room render snapshots.
• Simplified workbench inspector/navigation flows, kept hidden room state sparse, and lazily materialized room state.

Performance & Footprint

• Added lazy session-editor construction.
• Deferred hidden full-mode asset loads.
• Trimmed eager overworld bitmap memory.
• Released unused room buffer textures and split render-target texture creation.

CLI / Build / CI

• Fixed the WASM dungeon tile-row build path.
• Added overworld map ID validation before ROM access.
• Hardened Linux GUI smoke-run binary path handling.

Deferred to 0.8.0

• z3dk integration proposal tracks embedded assembler/LSP/lint workflows, unified Mesen2 client work, and .mlb export.

---

v0.7.0 (March 2026)

Type: Feature Completion + iOS Remote Control + API Expansion Date: 2026-03-03

📱 iOS Remote Control

• Added Bonjour LAN discovery (_yaze._tcp.) for auto-detecting desktop instances.
• Added Remote Room Viewer for all 296 dungeon rooms with overlay/metadata controls.
• Added Remote Command Runner with command catalog autocomplete/history and --write safety confirmation.
• Added Annotation Review Mode with create/edit/delete workflows synced through desktop REST endpoints.
• Added desktop connection controls with discovered hosts, manual IP fallback, and persistent status pill.

🌐 Desktop HTTP API

• Added POST /api/v1/command/execute for remote z3ed command execution.
• Added GET /api/v1/command/list for command metadata and autocomplete catalogs.
• Added GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /api/v1/annotations for annotation CRUD against annotations.json.
• Added Bonjour publisher integration for desktop service advertisement on macOS.

🧰 Editor Completion (0.7.0 must-ship + should-ship)

• Added Sprite Editor undo/redo with snapshot actions and unit tests.
• Added Screen Editor undo/redo and restored toolbar wiring for map edits.
• Added Message Editor replace + replace-all behavior.
• Completed music tracker stubs (rest/key-off insertion, range delete, song rename popup).

🏰 Dungeon Editor Improvements

• Added DungeonUsageTracker visual usage grids for blockset/spriteset/palette analysis.
• Polished dungeon workbench/panel workflow (mode clarity, status badges, and return affordances).
• Extended undo/redo coverage into adjacent dungeon map edit workflows.

🛠️ Custom ROM Hack Features

• Added desktop BPS patch export/import with CRC validation for patch-based release flows.
• Strengthened overworld hack editing reliability with hard-delete semantics, list/filter/sort + duplicate/nudge iteration flow, and undo-backed item workflows.

💻 CLI Expansion

• Added palette command set (palette-get-colors, palette-set-color, palette-analyze) for scripted ROM-hack iteration and automation.

🎨 UI and Theming

• Added themed tab-bar primitives (BeginThemedTabBar/EndThemedTabBar).
• Adopted themed widgets in key editor surfaces (dungeon workbench, status bar, pixel editor, screen editor).

✅ Validation Snapshot

• ctest --preset mac-ai-unit --output-on-failure passed on the release candidate revision.
• ctest --preset mac-ai-integration --output-on-failure passed on the release candidate revision.

🗂️ Deferred to 0.8.0

• Overworld scratch-pad persistence.
• Overworld eyedropper mode.
• Graphics editor clipboard workflow.
• Music SPC/MML import.
• Final dungeon draw-routine registry dedupe/docs cleanup.

---

v0.6.2 (February 2026)

Type: Release Consistency + Bundle/Validation Hardening Date: 2026-02-24

🔄 Version Consistency

• Updated all current-release markers and app-facing metadata to 0.6.2.
• Aligned release/coverage documentation with the current build version.

📦 .yazeproj Bundle Workflow

• Hardened bundle unpack cleanup behavior on invalid bundle failures.
• Expanded dry-run validation and bundle verification coverage.

🧪 Oracle Validation

• Continued smoke/preflight workflow improvements for Oracle development loops.

🎛️ Editor UX

• Continued refinement of dungeon placement feedback and tile selector usability.

---

v0.6.1 (February 2026)

Type: Oracle Validation + Bundle Workflow + Editor UX Hardening Date: 2026-02-24

🧪 Oracle Validation Workflow

• Added Oracle-focused smoke/preflight command flows and reporting improvements.
• Added D6 track-room threshold gating (--min-d6-track-rooms) to detect minecart regressions in structural checks.

📦 .yazeproj Bundle Workflow

• Added project bundle verify/pack/unpack command support in z3ed.
• Added safer unpack defaults:
  • rejects traversal entries,
  • cleans partial output on invalid bundle failure,
  • supports --keep-partial-output for debugging.
• Added --dry-run unpack mode for non-writing structural checks.

🔐 Integrity & Hashing

• Standardized SHA1 generation across platforms for bundle verification.
• Added bundle ROM hash verification (--check-rom-hash) and robust hash normalization.

🎛️ Editor UX

• Improved dungeon placement feedback near/at entity limits.
• Added custom-object overlay controls and faster D6 room navigation in dungeon workbench.
• Improved Tile16/tile selector interactions with hover previews, filter/jump UX, range validation feedback, and explicit decimal tile ID input (d:<id>).

---

v0.6.0 (February 2026)

Type: Undo System + Dungeon Compositing + UI Overhaul Date: 2026-02-10

Undo/Redo

• Unified UndoManager embedded in Editor base class.
• Per-editor undo/redo: overworld, dungeon, graphics, music, message.
• Custom collision and water fill undo actions.

Dungeon Editor

• SNES priority compositing with coverage masks.
• Entity drag-drop with selection inspector.
• Custom collision editor with JSON import/export.
• Water fill zone authoring with brush radius.
• Mutation tagging by domain (tile objects, collision, water fill).

UI

• Semantic color system replacing hardcoded style pushes.
• EventBus migration replacing legacy callback navigation.
• Right panel manager and sidebar simplification.
• Viewport-relative sizing helpers for responsive dialogs.

ROM Safety

• Write fence stack rejecting out-of-bounds writes.
• Dirty custom collision save without full room reload.

Cleanup

• Removed SessionObserver, PanelManager callbacks, legacy navigation APIs.
• Removed deprecated SetMutationHook alias.
• Archived 20 stale internal docs.

---

v0.5.6 (February 2026)

Type: Dungeon Editor UX + Minecart Tooling Date: 2026-02-05

⛏️ Dungeon & Minecart Tooling

• Configurable minecart collision IDs and track object IDs (project-level [dungeon_overlay] settings).
• Track collision overlay with legend + per-tile direction arrows (straights, corners, T-junctions, switches).
• Minecart Track Editor audit: 32 slots, filler detection, missing-start warnings, and room coverage reporting.
• Minecart sprite overlay to flag carts placed off stop tiles.
• Camera quadrant overlay to plan fast cart routes.

🎯 Object Editing UX

• Custom object previews keyed by subtype and bounds derived from custom extents.
• Hover/selection now respects the active layer filter.

🧪 Stability

• Headless ImGui initialization hardened for editor tests.

---

v0.5.5 (January 2026)

Type: Editor Foundations + Stability Date: 2026-01-31

🧰 Editor & Architecture

• Modernized EditorManager for better isolation and testability.
• Introduced yaze_core_lib to separate core logic from the app shell.

🧪 Tests

• Added AsarCompilerTest and EditorManagerTest suites.

🎨 Graphics

• Fallback to grayscale palette for graphics sheets missing a palette.

🧱 Build

• Cleaned up CMake entry points and presets; unified main entry point logic.

---

v0.5.4 (Release Candidate January 2026)

Type: Stability + Mesen2 Debugging Date: 2026-01-25

🐞 Mesen2 Debugging

• New Mesen2 debug panel in the Agent editor (socket picker, overlay controls, save/load, screenshot capture).
• Mesen2 debug shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+M) and socket list refresh on panel open.
• New z3ed mesen-* CLI commands for live Mesen2 inspection and control.

🤖 AI & HTTP API

• Model registry caching with /api/v1/models?refresh support.
• CORS + error handling for HTTP API endpoints and /symbols format validation.
• Normalized OpenAI base URL detection for local OpenAI-compatible servers.

🧰 Desktop UX

• Fix message editor preview/font atlas rendering after ROM load.
• Sync editor/panel context on category switches to avoid blank views.

📦 Nightly Builds

• Normalize macOS nightly bundle layout so launchers resolve yaze.app.
• Refresh wrapper detection to handle alternate app locations.

🧾 Versioning

• Sync version strings across docs, build config, and project defaults to 0.5.4.

---

v0.5.3 (Released January 2026)

Type: Build, WASM & Code Quality Date: 2026-01-20

🔧 Build & Release

• Fix release validation scripts for DMG packaging.
• Create VERSION file as canonical source of truth (0.5.3).
• Update CMakeLists.txt fallback version.
• Fix wasm-ai CMake preset (add YAZE_ENABLE_AI=ON for AI_RUNTIME dependency).

🌐 WASM/Web

• Service worker: Stream responses instead of buffering (fixes memory spikes for large assets).
• Service worker: Throttle cache eviction to once per 60 seconds (reduces O(n) overhead).
• Filesystem tool: Tighten path guard to prevent /.yazeevil bypass attack.
• Build tool: Fix boolean output format for JSON responses.

🤖 AI & CLI

• Add LMStudio support with configurable --openai_base_url flag.
• Allow empty API key for local OpenAI-compatible servers.

---

v0.5.2 (Released January 2026)

Type: Build Fix Date: 2026-01-20

🔧 Build

• Fix build when YAZE_AI_RUNTIME is disabled.
• Add proper guards around AI runtime-dependent code paths.

---

v0.5.1 (Released January 2026)

Type: UX + UI Polish Date: 2026-01-20

✨ UI Modernization (ImHex-inspired)

• Restructure menus and fix sidebar toggle icon.
• Add comprehensive UI polish with animations and theming enhancements.
• Cross-platform theme file system with ~/.yaze/themes/ support.
• Complete ImHex UI modernization phases 2-5.
• Animated hover effects for themed widget buttons.
• List virtualization and expanded command palette.
• Lazy panel initialization with OnFirstDraw hook.
• GUI animation system with smooth hover effects.

🧩 Architecture

• ContentRegistry panel self-registration with REGISTER_PANEL macro.
• Core UI events and texture queue budget.
• Extract yaze_cli_core library for shared CLI infrastructure.
• ZoomChangedEvent published from Canvas zoom methods.

🗂️ Storage & Paths

• Unified app data under ~/.yaze across desktop/CLI.
• Web build storage consolidated under /.yaze (IDBFS).
• Project management panel now surfaces storage paths.

🧭 Versioning

• Added VERSION file as the source of truth for build/versioning.

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v0.5.0 (Released January 2026)

Type: Platform Expansion & Stability Date: 2026-01-10

🧩 Graphics & Palette Accuracy

• Fixed palette conversion and Tile16 tint regressions.
• Corrected palette slicing for graphics sheets and indexed → SNES planar conversion.
• Stabilized overworld palette/tilemap saves and render service GameData loads.

🧭 Editor UX & Reliability

• Refined dashboard/editor selection layouts and card rendering.
• Moved the layout designer into a lab target for safer experimentation.
• Hardened room loading APIs and added room count reporting for C API consumers.
• Refreshed welcome screen and help text across desktop/CLI/web to spotlight multi-provider AI and CLI workflows.

🤖 Automation & AI

• Added agent control server support and stabilized gRPC automation hooks.
• Expanded z3ed CLI test commands (test-list, test-run, test-status) and tool metadata.
• Improved agent command routing and help/schema surfacing for AI clients.
• Added OpenAI/Anthropic provider support in z3ed and refreshed AI provider docs/help.
• Introduced vision refiner/verification hooks for AI-assisted validation.

🌐 Web/WASM Preview

• Reduced filesystem initialization overhead and fixed /projects directory handling.
• Hardened browser terminal integration and storage error reporting.

📦 Platform & Build

• Added iOS platform scaffolding (experimental).
• Added build helper scripts and simplified nightly workflow.
• Refreshed toolchain/dependency wiring and standardized build directory policy.
• Hardened Windows gRPC builds by forcing the Win32 macro-compat include for gRPC targets.
• Fixed Linux static link order for test suites and tightened Abseil linkage.
• Release artifacts now include a release-focused README and exclude internal test helper tools.
• Windows ships as a portable zip (no installer) with trimmed runtime DLLs.

🧪 Testing

• Added role-based ROM selection and ROM-availability gating.
• Stabilized rendering/benchmark tests and aligned integration expectations.
• Added AgentChat history/telemetry and agent metrics unit coverage; expanded WASM debug API checks.

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v0.4.0 - Music Editor & UI Polish

Released: November 2025

• Complete SPC music editing infrastructure.
• EditorManager refactoring for better multi-window support.
• AI Agent integration (experimental).