Sanctuary v1.6.0 release notes

Released: 2026-07-01

Minor release. The headline is the concierge dashboard becoming the single default surface an operator sees, paired with a status-honesty hardening so the dashboard never reports green when Castle Wall is not actually enforcing, plus honest install-time messaging for the setup flow and the Hermes wrap path and a Castle Wall arming runbook for macOS.

Why this release exists (the version story)

The published latest channel was at 1.5.0 (2026-06-30). That build predates the single-surface concierge dashboard, the dashboard status-honesty hardening, and the honest install-time messaging fixes. There is no separate tag for that work yet, and the feature weight since the v1.5.0 tag makes a semver minor bump correct. v1.6.0 brings the published package back in line with main.

The full per-PR detail lives in the git history from the v1.5.0 tag through main. The summary below groups that work. macOS Castle Wall capability claims trace to the same proven and partial rows in ASSURANCE_MATRIX.md as prior releases; this release does not change them.

Highlights

Single-surface concierge dashboard

The v1.1 conversational concierge is now the single default dashboard surface. An operator lands on a conversational spine with a click-to-clear approvals queue and an agent switcher (#830). The posture home is folded to a /posture view and verification gets a dedicated Verify nav item, so the default landing surface is conversational rather than a status board (#832).

Dashboard status honesty: no green on config presence

The /api/sovereignty score and the layer cards now reflect a real enforcement verdict rather than the mere presence of a config file (#828). Before this change, the dashboard could show green when a config was present but Castle Wall was not actually enforcing. After it, the score and cards report the actual enforcement state, so a green surface means the live-enforcement probe succeeded.

Model-choice privacy note in setup

The CLI setup flow now surfaces the model-choice privacy tradeoff at configure time, so an operator sees the tradeoff when they pick a model instead of discovering it later. The same change fixes a dead intelligence configure reference in the CLI (#829).

Honest install-time messaging

• The Hermes wrap path gives honest first-run messaging when ~/.hermes/config.yaml already exists, instead of implying a fresh setup on a host that is already configured (#836).
• Castle Wall fresh-wrap messaging no longer shows a spurious re-pin nag, and a new macOS arming runbook plus status and deploy doc currency ship alongside it (#834).

Docs and version currency

• README, ROADMAP, and quickstart are brought to current version and honest macOS capability bounds (#833).
• A signed-self-update overclaim in the changelog is corrected and stray Codex artifacts are removed (#827).

Upgrade path

npm install -g @sanctuary-framework/mcp-server@1.6.0

Existing fortresses continue to work. This release is server-side and dashboard-side: the concierge dashboard and the status-honesty fix ship with the npm package. The macOS Castle Wall enforcement proof continues to require the signed system-extension build deployed on the operator host; this release does not change that.

What this release does NOT claim

• macOS Castle Wall enforcement is per-uid allow/deny plus attended reboot-survival, proven on the drill host. It is NOT a per-flow rule-attributed audit trail, and this release does not add one.
• The dashboard status-honesty fix makes the score and cards reflect the real enforcement verdict; it does not add a new enforcement mechanism.

These limits are the same ones named in ASSURANCE_MATRIX.md; product and marketing copy must preserve them.