v0.4.0

[0.4.0] - 2026-05-04

Plugin protocol expansion release.

This release adds three new plugin categories alongside the existing courier and channel infrastructure: provider plugins for LLM inference backends, database plugin protocol and registry support for read+write database backends, and deployment plugins for managed deployment lifecycle control planes. It also extends dispatch up to reconcile project-local deployment declarations and channel bindings against managed cloud backends.

Breaking

• Extension catalog documents now require a top-level catalog_id, and every catalog entry now requires a stable publisher-prefixed id; catalogs missing those identity fields are rejected on refresh or load

Extensions

• Added dispatch-provider-protocol, dispatch-database-protocol, and dispatch-deployment-protocol crates with JSON-RPC 2.0 stdio framing
• Added provider and database plugin manifest validation, registry storage, catalog recognition, and dispatch extension install support
• Added installed-provider-plugin bridging from the native courier model-backend path; the DISPATCH_BACKEND_<PROVIDER> override resolves to the installed plugin when one is registered for that provider name
• Added the deployment plugin category, including manifest validation, registry storage, catalog recognition, and the dispatch deployment CLI for validate, test-run, deploy, upsert, update, get, list, list-revisions, preview-rollback, rollback, start, stop, and delete operations
• Added project-local deployment bindings to dispatch.toml with validate, test_run, deploy, and upsert reconcile modes
• Added confirmation gating for dispatch up deployment bindings that mutate remote resources, with --yes for non-interactive deploy and upsert runs
• Added .dispatch/state/deployments.json tracking for deployment IDs and active revision IDs produced by dispatch up
• Added cached deployment bundles so dispatch up materializes code.parcel_dir and code.bundle_path specs into reproducible bundles before sending them to the backend
• Added channel-to-deployment binding support so channel parcels receive dispatch.deployment.* metadata labels generated during reconciliation
• Added dispatch up --target seren-cloud support that resolves catalog-sourced extension artifacts for the remote target, embeds dispatch.resolved_extensions and dispatch_channels metadata in deployment specs, and skips local channel runtime startup for remote-target deployments
• Added a websocket ingress mode to the channel plugin protocol for plugins that hold an upstream socket open instead of polling
• Added provider, database, and deployment registry path configuration to project-local dispatch.toml resolution
• Added provider, database, and deployment plugin protocol documentation under docs/

Changed

• dispatch parcel inspect now renders courier inspection extension metadata generically instead of special-casing Seren deployment IDs
• Connector bundles are superseded in extension documentation by the concrete provider and database plugin categories
• Deployment plugin capabilities carry backend-specific capability details under namespaced extensions keys
• Deployment test_run output may return either structured JSON or plain text
• Provider, database, and deployment plugin protocols follow the existing lenient wire-protocol policy for forward compatibility
• Plugin ecosystem documentation drops version anchors from tier status lines so the docs do not need to be updated each release