[muellerberndt]

Release 0.96.0. release-0.96 holds the six lanes of the milestone merged on a513b74, the version at 0.96.0, the CHANGELOG's ## 0.96.0 — 2026-11-11 and the lanes' Unreleased entries consolidated into it. The coordinator merges, tags and publishes after the owner has read the release notes.

Merged lanes

Lane	Final head	What it holds
lane-096-device	05b8f98	cadence.Lives: many lives of the default composition stepped together on a device; an outcome's checks in one read on torch; the calibration of a CUDA card the table has not read; the ledger of a moment's crossings (#274)
lane-096-cpu	637f72f	opt-in learning_compiled_moment: a greedy act, a lesson's judgment and a taught lesson each in one compiled call on the CPU (#282)
lane-096-retention	5cb1909	opt-in memory_fade: place records nobody uses fade, slower the deeper their use; a fading store's brain saves checkpoint format cadence-brain/3; where the composition's falls come from (#253, #280)
lane-096-attention	3718401	opt-in recall_cortex_norm, recall_gain_after and recall_gain_next; the heads, vocabulary, crossing and held-token instruments (#269, #266, #267, #272)
lane-096-simplify	e114306	recall_copy removed; a synapse_rate of zero holds the synapse, its optimizer moments and its neuron's bias; the sequence battery's composed arm (#281)
lane-096-research	20b943c	the lesson-step, goal-route and exposure-parity instruments of the grammar chamber, each with its declared protocol; no source change (#257, #258, #270)

Commits of the integration

• ed30e3e: the release. Version 0.96.0 in pyproject.toml, cadence.__version__, the install pins and the documentation links; the CHANGELOG section with one summary and the sections new, changed and removed, fixes, instruments and measured negatives; and the rate-zero rule stated as measured where the CHANGELOG, docs/settling.md, docs/tune.md and Learner describe synapse_rate: a reciprocal pair holds where both directions are at rate zero, and one direction alone takes half its partner's step.
• ebf2b12: the one-call act returns its action without a cast, which strict mypy refuses under NumPy 2.4's stubs (CI's Python 3.11 job). No value changes.
• 62052c1: Lives on a torch device keep the optimizer moments of a synapse at rate zero, as the lone brain's learner does; tests/test_rate_zero.py holds the case.
• 65fa89b: the device benchmarks' test loads its life module by path under its own name, since benchmarks/vocabulary holds a life module too and one pytest process imports both.
• 9bf5abe: Lives refuse a recall memory with the cortex at unit norm by that name, and the backends guide's table of host-keeping options lists memory_fade and recall_cortex_norm.
• fd02a02, a8207c7: the compiled act carries the cortex at unit norm under recall_cortex_norm (the lane carried the fix into its later write helper as well), and three typing sites of 4ecc474.
• 1df37f1, e574fb1: the API reference's Recall signature without copy; AGENTS.md names the second goal epic by its title (Goal: saying sentences formed in the brain #173).

Merge conflicts and their resolution

• CHANGELOG.md: every lane's section kept in merge order, then consolidated in ed30e3e.
• benchmarks/sequence/battery.py: the composed arm (simplify) and the default arm (research) both kept.
• src/cadence/stream.py: the three attention options joined to Recall.OPTIONS and CONSTRUCTION_OPTIONS without copy.
• docs/memory.md: the released-gains section placed before "Declared tokens".
• The compiled moment's later heads were fast-forwards of this branch; the lane merged the branch into itself and resolved generic.py and _moment.py there.

What changes for a caller

• recall_copy is refused at compose and retune with one sentence that names recall_gain, and a saved memory with the pathway is refused by name. cadence 0.95.2 runs it.
• A learner with a rate of exactly zero on some synapse keeps that synapse's optimizer moments and the held neurons' biases where 0.95.2 moved them. No test, benchmark or composed brain sets a rate of zero.
• A brain saved with memory_fade writes the checkpoint format cadence-brain/3, which earlier releases refuse; every other brain's checkpoint is unchanged.
• A CUDA card the default backend's table has not read is timed once per machine; CADENCE_CALIBRATE=0 keeps the margin of twice the work.
• Every new option is off at its founder: memory_fade=0.0, recall_cortex_norm=False, recall_gain_after=0, recall_gain_next=0.0, learning_compiled_moment=False. cadence.Lives is a new class.

Checks

At 637f72f, the last code head (ed30e3e changes the version string, the CHANGELOG and documentation text):

Check	Where	Result
ruff check src tests, mypy	Apple M-series (Python 3.13.7, NumPy 2.5.4) and a Python 3.11 environment with NumPy 2.4.6 as CI's 3.11 job	clean
Recorded-lives gate (CADENCE_FUSED=0: test_learned_code, test_observation_code, test_recall_memory, test_reset_arousal)	Apple M-series	206 passed
Opt-out identity against main on backend="cpu"	Apple M-series	23 of 23 lives identical on the NumPy solver and on the compiled kernels
tests/test_compiled_moment.py, tests/test_recall_cortex_norm.py, tests/test_documentation.py	Apple M-series	67 passed
Full suite, the lane's own run	Linux	4,088 passed, 272 skipped, 1 xfailed

At ed30e3e on the Apple machine: ruff and mypy clean in both environments, tests/test_documentation.py, tests/test_packaging.py, tests/test_public_configuration.py, tests/test_api_patch_audit.py, tests/test_rate_zero.py and tests/test_memory_fade.py pass (201 passed), and cadence.__version__ reads 0.96.0.

Earlier heads of this branch: 8eb5426, the Mac full suite in two processes (2,969 passed, 236 skipped, 1 xfailed; the benchmark paths 1,138 passed, 7 skipped); ebf2b12, the gate, the identity (23 of 23), MLX (760 passed, 8 skipped) and the cross-lane lives (every act equal, parameters within 2e-10); feb9965, the one-process CI-style suite on Linux (4,060 passed). CI is green on every head it ran to completion; one run lost two matrix jobs to a GitHub Actions incident and passed in full on a rerun.

The identity lives are 23 compositions that name none of the new options (the default, a wide association, two regions, an image, two slots, a fixed and a learned code, attention=True, two heads, recall=False, recall_founder=True, arousal, maturity, memory_choice, rehearsal, recall_gain with tokens, an apical compartment at teaching="deep", observers, four streams). Each lives 40 steps with rewards, teachers and episode ends, 12 lessons, a save, a reload and 10 further steps, and the lives with arousal a second life of live and wait. Compared with main: every act, every checkpoint array, the description and the checkpoint after the reload. recall_copy is the exception: compose and retune refuse it with the CHANGELOG's sentence.

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