docs: add v0.0.96 release entry

[cv]

Summary

Add the canonical docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx release entry with the exact ## v0.0.96 heading.
The entry reconciles all 66 first-parent commits since v0.0.95 with the live v0.0.96 label ledger and groups the user-visible changes by operator journey.

Changes

• Add the parser-safe dated MDX changelog entry for v0.0.96 with root-absolute links to the focused user guides.
• Source summary:
  • #7194 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document persistent baseline network policy exclusions and their inspection, rebuild, and snapshot behavior.
  • #7188, #7427, and #7546 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document DNS-backed HTTPS inference routing, keyless loopback endpoints, and provider-marker isolation.
  • #7319, #7274, #7528, #7353, and #7560 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document the managed default gateway service, onboarding readiness, and container-runtime identity safeguards.
  • #7349, #7498, #7406, #7196, #7559, #7421, #7510, and #7295 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document gateway-scoped status, lifecycle diagnostics, managed MCP recovery, delete-edge safeguards, and CLI failure output.
  • #7305, #7480, #7471, #7365, and #7541 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document installer version checks, version-tag reporting, license guidance, WSL Ollama selection, and DGX Station vLLM detection.
  • #7482, #7466, #7208, and #7434 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document Ollama resource details, reasoning precedence, and Hermes onboarding behavior.
  • #6830, #7492, and #7563 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Document the authoritative OpenClaw production lock, fixed managed-image dependency boundary, and Hermes image-size reduction.
  • #7505, #7530, #7547, #7508, #7548, #7549, #7537, #7534, #7515, #7511, #7551, #7562, and #7575 -> docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx: Summarize release validation, transient retry, identity revalidation, bounded npm-audit retry, sharding, image reuse, timeout, telemetry, and workflow-hardening changes.
• Reconciled without separate changelog prose:
  • #7539, #7526, #7507, #7506, #7519, #7516, #7396, and #7254: Test-harness or fixture-only changes.
  • #7403, #7161, #6877, #7531, #7525, #7522, #7536, #7552, #7566, #7553, #7561, and #7577: Dependency, internal validation, contributor-workflow, image-selection optimization, or CI ordering changes with no separate user-facing release claim.
  • #7556, #7573, #7576, and #7578: Experimental repository-maintainer conflict automation with no canonical user documentation surface.

Type of Change

• Code change (feature, bug fix, or refactor)
• Code change with doc updates
• Doc only (prose changes, no code sample modifications)
• Doc only (includes code sample changes)

Quality Gates

• Tests added or updated for changed behavior
• Existing tests cover changed behavior — justification: test/changelog-docs.test.ts validates dated changelog structure, version headings, and published links.
• Tests not applicable — justification:
• Docs updated for user-facing behavior changes
• Docs not applicable — justification:
• Sensitive paths changed (security, policy, credentials, preflight, onboarding, inference, runner, sandbox, or messaging)
• Sensitive-path review completed or maintainer-approved waiver recorded — reviewer/approval link/justification:
• Non-success, skipped, or missing CI check accepted by maintainer — check name, approval link, and follow-up issue:

Documentation Writer Review

• Documentation writer subagent reviewed the completed changes
• Result: docs-updated
• Evidence: Reviewed docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx at exact head 696d7f24f against all 66 release commits, WRITING.md, docs/CONTRIBUTING.md, product scope, skip terms, parser-safe MDX structure, published routes, and the Docker-identity, managed-image dependency, and required-gate retry contracts. No blocking findings or suggested corrections.
• Agent: Codex Desktop

DGX Station Hardware Evidence

• Tested on DGX Station
• Tested commit:
• Station profile/scenario:
• Result:
• Supporting evidence:

Verification

• PR description includes a Signed-off-by: line and every commit appears as Verified in GitHub
• Normal pre-commit, commit-msg, and pre-push hooks passed, or npm run check:diff passed when hooks were skipped or unavailable
• Targeted behavior tests pass for the current change set, or tests are marked not applicable above — npx vitest run test/changelog-docs.test.ts: 6/6 passed.
• Applicable broad gate passed — npm test for broad runtime/test-harness changes; npm run check for repo-wide validation/coverage changes — command/result: Not applicable to this prose-only changelog entry.
• Quality Gates section completed with required justifications or waivers
• No secrets, API keys, or credentials committed
• npm run docs builds without warnings (doc changes only) — the build passed with 0 errors and 2 existing Fern warnings; the published-route check passed.
• Doc pages follow the style guide (doc changes only)
• New doc pages include SPDX header and frontmatter (new pages only) — native changelog files use the required parser-safe MDX SPDX comment and no frontmatter.

---

Signed-off-by: Carlos Villela cvillela@nvidia.com

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features
  • Persistent network policy exclusions for operator-approved baseline agents.
  • DNS-backed HTTPS inference switching with per-route credential separation and compatible-endpoint fallback.
  • Improved default gateway handling on supported platforms.
  • Updated model menu details and refined onboarding credential staging/routing.
  • Enhanced forced rebuild behavior to retain managed MCP configuration during specific drift/execution-loss conditions.
• Bug Fixes
  • Improved gateway diagnostics and more targeted gateway/version probing.
  • Tightened installer/version validation to confirm required executable version reporting.
  • Strengthened release verification for approved end-to-end runs with retry/timeout and artifact handoff rules.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Adds the v0.0.96 changelog entry, covering policy and inference behavior, gateway operations, installer and onboarding updates, image assembly, and release validation orchestration.

Changes

v0.0.96 Release Notes

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Release scope and policy behavior docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx	Adds the v0.0.96 overview and documents persistent policy exclusions and DNS-backed HTTPS inference routing changes.
Gateway and recovery behavior docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx	Documents OpenShell gateway defaults, lifecycle and health checks, sandbox gateway scoping, diagnostics, rebuild recovery, and command outcome handling.
Installer, inference, and image updates docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx	Records installer requirements, platform preparation, Ollama and Hermes onboarding changes, production lock usage, dependency updates, and image assembly changes.
Release validation orchestration docs/changelog/2026-07-25.mdx	Documents E2E execution, retries, timeouts, platform sharding, image reuse, provisioning, credentials, and artifact handoff rules.

Estimated code review effort: 1 (Trivial) | ~3 minutes

Suggested reviewers: prekshivyas

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately summarizes the main change: adding the v0.0.96 changelog release entry.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch codex/docs-v0.0.96

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_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

[github-actions]

🌿 Preview your docs: https://nvidia-preview-pr-7564.docs.buildwithfern.com/nemoclaw

[github-actions]

PR Review Advisor — No blocking findings reported

Advisor assessment: No blocking advisor findings reported
Next action: No advisor follow-up needed.
Findings: 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions

Model lanes

• GPT-5.6 Terra (primary): Completed · high confidence · 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions
• Nemotron 3 Ultra (second opinion): Completed · high confidence · 0 blockers · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions
• Model comparison: normalized findings match; normalized E2E selections match; severity counts match.

Nemotron output stays in workflow artifacts and does not change the assessment above.

E2E guidance

Advisory only. E2E / PR Gate selects and runs jobs independently.

Recommended E2E: None

Workflow run details

This automated review informs maintainers. Warnings and suggestions do not require a response. A maintainer decides whether to merge.