release: v2.3.6 "Sounding"

[doublegate]

The v2.3.6 "Sounding" release cut. A sounding is a depth measured with its uncertainty attached, which is what every workstream in this release has in common.

Ceremony

Surface	Change
Cargo.toml	workspace version 2.3.5 → 2.3.6 (+ Cargo.lock)
crates/rustynes-libretro/rustynes_libretro.info	display_version → v2.3.6
CHANGELOG.md	[2.3.6] - 2026-08-17 - "Sounding" with Added / Fixed / Changed / Documented
.github/release-notes/v2.3.6.md	the maintainer-authored release body
docs/STATUS.md, VERSION-PLAN.md	current release, v2.3.5 demoted to "built on"
README.md	version badge + current-release prose
AGENTS.md	release block, six new standing rules, two now-false claims corrected
CLAUDE.local.md	volatile session state refreshed

The version bump tripped a standing audit, which is the guard working

libretro_info_audit failed immediately on the bump: it pins the local .info's display_version against the workspace manifest, and the manifest had moved. That test exists because v2.3.5 shipped a .info whose version had drifted from the crate for eleven days. It caught this in one run.

A known gap remains and is not fixable here: the audit can only see the local copy. RetroArch reads dist/info/rustynes_libretro.info from libretro/libretro-super, which will still say v2.3.5 after this release. That needs an upstream PR at cut time — the same trigger the v2.2.9 licence drift established.

Two claims in AGENTS.md were false and are corrected

Both were true when written and have since been resolved upstream:

• libretro-super#2069 merged 2026-08-16 — RetroArch now reads GPLv3+.
• RetroArch#19416 merged 76f60626984a — rustynes is now line 268 of pkg/apple/update-cores.sh, between reminiscence and sameboy. Verified against master, not the PR state. Being in the build list is not being installable: it arrives with the next App Store RetroArch build, on libretro's cadence.

Only libretro/docs#1180 remains open.

Six new standing rules in AGENTS.md

Each earned by a defect in this release rather than invented:

1. A fix touching one call site of a shared path may not fix the bug — and will report that it did. The rewind fix changed measure_in_place's final restore only; all 21 per-trial restores still cleared the ring.
2. A test asserting "not empty" passes while a second defect remains. With the wipe fixed the ring grew instead. Assert exact equality.
3. Prose asserting an intent is how a defect survives releases. Pixel Provenance shipped broken for four releases behind a comment claiming the opposite of its own code.
4. ab_check.sh benchmarks the reference immediately after a ~45 s fat-LTO compile — read the order-bias control before the candidate column.
5. "Inert on almost every cycle" predicts a win only if the work is actually executed — the fat-LTO mechanism behind three APU nulls.
6. The bot ceremony has a third hiding place: plain issue comments. Antigravity posts its entire review as an ordinary PR comment, invisible to both a thread sweep and a reviews[].body read.

Plus a seventh on panel state outliving the Nes it describes, now funnelled through one clear_rom_bound_analysis hook.

Not in this release, named so it reads as a decision

• Latency Oracle and RAM Atlas per-game persistence and export paths (Watch/Cheat seeding, Lua API, RetroAchievements authoring) — additive, and better shaped once the labels have been used in anger.
• The Latency Oracle's end-to-end millisecond figure (internal lag plus the frontend pipeline cost perf.rs already tracks). It reports the game's internal lag only, and says so.
• APU D2 and D4 — unmeasured on purpose; their prior is a null, not an unknown.
• Workstream 0's "treat it as a class" audit — deferred to v2.3.9's quality release, where it belongs.

Verification

release-auto.yml tags and publishes on final-green main; do not tag by hand, it races. PRs run Linux-only while main runs the full Windows/macOS matrix, so main CI must go green after merge or the release workflow skips.

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📥 Commits

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⛔ Files ignored due to path filters (1)

• Cargo.lock is excluded by !**/*.lock, !Cargo.lock

📒 Files selected for processing (8)

• .github/release-notes/v2.3.6.md
• AGENTS.md
• CHANGELOG.md
• Cargo.toml
• README.md
• VERSION-PLAN.md
• crates/rustynes-libretro/rustynes_libretro.info
• docs/STATUS.md

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR performs the v2.3.6 “Sounding” release cut across the workspace: bumping the workspace version, updating libretro metadata, and refreshing the user- and maintainer-facing release documentation to describe the v2.3.6 release.

Changes:

• Bump workspace/crate versions from 2.3.5 → 2.3.6 (including Cargo.lock).
• Update release-facing surfaces (changelog entry, release notes, README “Current Release”, status/version plan docs).
• Update libretro .info display_version to match the new release tag.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
Cargo.toml	Bumps workspace version to 2.3.6.
Cargo.lock	Updates workspace crate versions to 2.3.6.
crates/rustynes-libretro/rustynes_libretro.info	Updates display_version to v2.3.6.
CHANGELOG.md	Adds the [2.3.6] release entry describing the release contents.
.github/release-notes/v2.3.6.md	Adds maintainer-authored release notes for v2.3.6.
README.md	Updates version badge and “Current Release” section to v2.3.6.
docs/STATUS.md	Updates the current-release header block to v2.3.6.
VERSION-PLAN.md	Updates the “Current release” narrative to v2.3.6.

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[doublegate]

@coderabbitai full review

[coderabbitai]

⚠️ Action not completed

Review rate limited.

[github-actions]

Antigravity review (Gemini via Ultra)

This PR is a trivial release preparation that bumps versions across the workspace to v2.3.6 and updates the changelog and documentation.

Blocking issues

None found.

Suggestions

• PR Title: The title release: v2.3.6 "Sounding" violates the project's Conventional Commits rule (feat|fix|docs|refactor|test|chore|perf|build|ci). Change it to use a valid type, such as chore: release v2.3.6 "Sounding".
• CHANGELOG.md: If the project uses Keep a Changelog link references at the bottom of the file, ensure the [Unreleased] and [2.3.6] reference links are updated to point to the correct diff comparisons.

Nitpicks

• Cargo.toml (line 48): The comment specifies an [Unreleased] -> [X.Y.Z] rename, but CHANGELOG.md instead adds the new [2.3.6] section below an empty [Unreleased] heading.

_{Automated first-pass review by agy on a self-hosted runner -- not a human review.}