Release notes from libsplinter

Version 1.2.0 - Green Onions

2026-06-30T19:46:59Z

Splinter 1.2.0 (LTS) — Changelog

This is a long-term support (LTS) release. Splinter is no longer beta.

The documentation site has also been completely overhauled. Please have a look!

Notable changes since the 1.1.9 release (06d7ccb). This release adds the
cooperative Logic Shard election system, two new CLI commands, a published
set of Rust bindings on crates.io, and a substantial round of core correctness
fixes. ~117 commits in total; the highlights are below.

Highlights

Logic Shard election — a cooperative, read-only memory-advisement system
so multiple agents can arbitrate madvise() intent over a shared store
without fighting each other.
Rust bindings on crates.io — libsplinter-sys and
libsplinter-persist-sys, vendored and built from source.
mop set/get is now the memory-operation API — the deprecated *_av()
functions have been removed.
New CLI commands: shard and retrain.
Numerous core memory-ordering and lifecycle correctness fixes.

Detailed changelog below (and the beginning of the changelog convention for the project!)

Logic Shard Election (cooperative memory advisement)

A new election system lets cooperating processes bid for the right to issue
posix_madvise() advice on regions of a shared store. The election is a
read-only, deterministic O(32) scan over a static bid table — no locks on the
hot path — and the hot path was kept under ~1500 LOC to remain compatible with
self-election.

New public API in splinter.h:

splinter_shard_election() — run the read-only scan, return the current
sovereign and its intent.
splinter_shard_is_sovereign() — query whether a shard currently wins.
splinter_shard_claim() / splinter_shard_claim_ex() — register a bid
(intent, 0–255 priority, duration in ticks); the _ex form lets a supervisor
bid on another process's behalf for deterministic tests.
splinter_shard_rebid() — refresh a claim's timestamp and optionally change
intent/priority/duration.
splinter_shard_release() — drop a claim.
splinter_shard_table_snapshot() — snapshot the full bid table.
splinter_madvise() — issue real posix_madvise() only if you win the
election (never call raw posix_madvise() on a shared store).

Intents: WILLNEED, SEQUENTIAL, RANDOM, DONTNEED, NONE. A bidder
cannot win the election while a live WILLNEED/SEQUENTIAL claim is held, so a
stray DONTNEED can't evict another agent's working set.

New CLI commands

shard — inspect and seed the Logic Shard bid table; map intent names,
view the current sovereign, and construct deterministic election scenarios.
retrain — prepare a key for retraining: zeroes the key's vectors and
flips its epoch back to 4, releasing the sequence lock and republishing the
key so clients and watchers revalidate it. Works even when vectors are
disabled (epoch-only flip in that case).

CLI command improvements

export — when a key is VARTEXT, the value is now included in the JSON
(for archival or sharing).
search — accepts the search phrase from a file or stdin, for pipe use.
unset — added a recursive option for removing tandem keys.
lua — many improvements: scripts can now access vectors and sleep.

Memory-operation API (`mop`) — breaking change

The mop set/get pattern is now the supported memory-operation API.
splinter_set_mop() / splinter_get_mop() replace the deprecated *_av()
functions.
Removed (previously deprecated): splinter_set_av(),
splinter_set_hybrid_av(), splinter_get_av(), splinter_get_hybrid_av().
Migrate to splinter_set_mop() / splinter_get_mop().
Default mop mode is now byte-aligned hybrid scrub (previously none).

Core changes & bug fixes

Fixed a missing memory fence in splinter_get(), dropping the EAGAIN retry
rate to nearly zero.
splinter_poll() no longer forces the caller to retry on a write-busy (odd)
epoch — it retries internally, as poll should; -2 is now returned only on
header loss.
Overwrites no longer leave stale embeddings behind.
VALUES are recomputed after initialization to avoid aliasing into slot data.
New splinter_retrain_slot() deliberately rewinds a slot's epoch and scrubs
its vector (epochs otherwise only advance) to signal revalidation.
Persistent stores now honor a custom umask on creation and open
exclusively (enforced by open()); safer default umask handling.
More portable CPU reference clock for transaction timestamps.
Enforce the token limit at 90% of a model's trained limit so models stay
runnable.

Inference (splinference / splainference)

New --vector-training switch makes selected vectors a write-once-only
contract, preventing calculated centroid/variance sets from being overwritten
during tuning.
Fixed unhandled context-window overflow beyond a model's trained size.
Embedding context size is now derived from the model's training size.
Key capacity scales with store size (up to ~500k keys).
Batches are cleared between runs to prevent residual bleed; cold-start fixes.

Rust bindings

Published as conventional -sys crates: libsplinter-sys (in-memory) and
libsplinter-persist-sys (persistent, built with SPLINTER_PERSISTENT).
Vendored C sources are compiled from source via the cc crate and bound with
bindgen at build time — no system install of libsplinter required.
Bindings updated to follow the mop API helper changes.

Build & packaging

bigbang universal installer for Debian/Ubuntu-based systems, plus a
package shuttle for Debian-based distros.
On arm64, the rpath is baked in at compile time, removing the build-time
dependency on patchelf.

Documentation

New documentation site and a refreshed README with expanded coverage of
events, FFI, CLI/REPL usage, and governance.
Updated thesis (now also citeable via arXiv if you use it in research) and updated build instructions.
Changelogs now versioned in changelogs/{VERSION}.md for convenience.

Version 1.1.9 - Max's Caramel Chew

2026-04-21T23:12:46Z

This is a really, really, really big one. Splinter is now essentially a RAG in a box 🎁

Additions

We now have an epoll() compatible signal group broker (currently in testing, appreciate any testers):
splinter_event_bus_open(), splinter_event_bus_wait(), splinter_event_bus_close() and splinter_event_bus_get_dirty()` to see what fired.
New CLI 'ingest' command reads a text file and chunks it into (n) slots x (max_val_len), allowing splinference to embed
New CLI 'search' command allows for semantic search ordered by Eudlidean distance over embedded keys
New CLI caps command allows for showing compiled-in capabilities and
New CLI uuid command generates a UUIDv4 on-demand (no external dependencies)
New sidecar system monitor allows for watching loads and triggering run breakpoints while observing bus debug chatter
WASM is now supported (GET/SET) for SIMD workloads (thanks to WASMEdge embedded)
Splainference now provides completion using chat templates

Fixes

Correctly parse .splinterrc and -r --rc-file directives are now honored properly
Numerous CLI code and efficiency improvements

Version 1.1.8 - Crinkle Cookies

2026-04-08T22:15:57Z

This is a significant feature and bug fix release:

Splinference is now production ready (all bugs fixed)
Added splinter_append() to the core library (this is the last block needed for context management)
Updated the TS bindings and added tests for bun
Implemented bump to advance a key's epoch without doing any other work
Numerous minor improvements & documentation cleanup

Full Changelog: v1.1.7...v1.1.8

Version 1.1.7 - Blue Freeze Pop

2026-03-26T20:55:16Z

This is a periodic maintenance release. The bulk of the changes are in the CLI/Inference, where code was hardened in line with real-world use and semantic embedding workflow needs. Fixed many positional argument bugs, brought in argparse to replace getopt for CLI modules, improvements in test coverage and overhaul of CMake, among many other improvements.

There was also just a general catching up to the massive amount that recently went into core, so fixtures in the CLI are now more permanent feeling.

Core additions:

splinter_pulse_keygroup() -> Pulse a signal group by any of its members (key name) (slot no longer needed)
splinter_set_as_system() -> Commandeer a key as a binary scratch pad for accounting
splinter_unset_label() -> unsets a previously-set bloom label

CLI additions:

New bind command to bind a bloom label to a signal group ID.

All users are encouraged to upgrade, but no security fixes are in this release (pull when ready).

Version 1.1.6 - Knickerbocker Glory

2026-03-06T00:15:16Z

This release provides a much needed splinter_enumerate_matches() to scope keys based on bloom bits. It provides a convenient callback (similar to CURL) that can function as an iterator for only slots that match a certain bitmask (bloom) filter.

IOW - lightning fast search tagged by bits instead of equality or string match, which was already there, just not-so-conveniently exposed. This callback implementation remedies that and is warranted even though the 999 LOC ceiling is looming closer.

Splinter 1.1.5 - Root Beer Float

2026-02-25T19:41:15Z

This is the first public "official" release of Splinter!! 🎉

This is also the beginning of the public change manifest.

We can get happy on vectors and share our High Rank Tensors in memory again!! 🤓