Since v0.2.9, Alchemist gains the first stable 0.3.0 release with:
Security:
- Fixed a critical bug where a config parse failure on a configured instance could re-enable unauthenticated setup endpoints.
- Session cookies are no longer marked Secure by default, restoring plain HTTP and LAN login flows unless ALCHEMIST_COOKIE_SECURE=true is set.
- Restricted /api/fs/* filesystem browsing to loopback clients during initial setup.
- Hardened proxy header handling with explicit trust configuration.
Library and encoding:
- Added per-library transcoding profiles with built-in presets.
- Added lossless MP4/MOV to MKV remuxing when a file is already in the target codec.
- Added subtitle sidecar extraction for text subtitle tracks.
- Added stream rules for commentary stripping, language filtering, and default-track retention.
- Added optional VMAF quality gating.
- Added duplicate detection in Library Intelligence.
- Added Library Doctor health scanning.
- Added mirrored output roots.
Job management:
- Added Skipped and Archived tabs.
- Added sort controls for jobs.
- Added per-job priority promotion.
- Added live retry countdowns.
- Added structured skip explanations.
- Added structured failure explanations.
Engine control:
- Added Background, Balanced, and Throughput runtime modes with manual overrides.
- Added drain mode.
- Added boot-time auto-analysis of queued jobs.
UI redesign:
- Replaced page h1 blocks with a compact engine control strip.
- Restructured the dashboard around compact stats, savings, and recent activity.
- Grouped log viewer entries by job.
- Rebuilt the setup wizard inside the main shell.
- Redesigned library selection around recommendations and chips.
- Replaced custom stats bars with Recharts area and bar charts.
- Merged hardware into Transcoding settings.
- Merged notifications and automation into one tab.
- Improved mobile navigation and jobs layout.
- Tightened typography and token usage across the design system.
- Added analyzing shimmer states and protected terminal job states from poll overwrites.
Reliability and stability:
- Added exponential retry backoff.
- Cleaned orphaned temp outputs and subtitle sidecar temp files on startup.
- Fixed infinite analysis loops and boot-analysis pagination.
- Kept the engine running when the queue drains so new watcher jobs are picked up.
- Serialized analysis passes and dropped overlapping watcher-triggered passes.
- Added job stall detection.
- Fixed graceful shutdown on Ctrl+C and SIGTERM.
- Added log retention pruning.
- Added auth session cleanup.
- Cached /api/system/resources for 500ms.
- Added a Drop guard for in_flight_jobs.
- Stopped re-probing completed job detail source files when encode_stats already exist.
Hardware and encoding:
- Fixed Apple VideoToolbox encodes with -allow_sw 1, yuv420p conversion, and hvc1 tagging.
- Switched Intel Arc selection to VAAPI-first with QSV as last resort.
- Improved audio planning so lossless codecs transcode while common Atmos/EAC3 tracks can copy.
- Added libopus runtime fallback to AAC when libopus is unavailable.
- Surfaced fuller FFmpeg failure logs and VideoToolbox-specific failure explanations.
Backend architecture:
- Upgraded to Rust 2024 and MSRV 1.85.
- Upgraded sqlx to 0.8 and rand to 0.9.
- Removed async-trait in favor of native async fn traits with trait-variant where needed.
- Split server.rs into focused submodules.
- Moved ffprobe execution to tokio::process::Command with a timeout.
- Split high-volume and low-volume broadcast channels.
- Hardened cancellation-lock recovery and stderr truncation.
- Added warnings for invalid notification and schedule JSON plus safer analysis pagination limits.
Database:
- Extended decisions with structured reason codes and payload JSON.
- Added job_failure_explanations with legacy fallback support.
- Added indexes for structured explanation filtering.
- Preserved automatic upgrades from 0.2.5 onward.
CI/CD and tooling:
- Added nightly workflows using the shared build pipeline.
- Added actionlint to release checks.
- Added the Playwright reliability suite to CI.
- Documented and validated the Windows contributor workflow.
- Expanded just release-check to cover fmt, clippy, tests, actionlint, web verify, docs build, E2E, and backend build.
- Standardized release binaries and checksums.
- Published multi-arch Docker images for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64.
Release metadata and docs cleanup:
- Bumped Cargo, VERSION, web, web-e2e, and docs manifests to 0.3.0.
- Updated stable changelog dates and nightly image references.
- Removed stale RC-era Windows wording from the README and docs.
- Clarified that the Windows core contributor path is supported while broader utility and release recipes remain Unix-first.
- Clarified that AMD AV1 remains outside the validated 0.3.0 support matrix.
- Aligned Docker Compose, Helm, and release-facing docs on ghcr.io/bybrooklyn/alchemist.
- ship runtime reliability, watcher/scanner hardening, and hardware hot reload
- refresh admin/settings UX and add Playwright reliability coverage
- standardize frontend workflow on Bun and update deploy/docs
- Add setup auth fixes and scheduler time validation for reliable onboarding
- Harden file watcher behavior under bursty filesystem events
- Improve DB stability with WAL, timeouts, FK enforcement, runtime legacy watch_dir support, and new indexes
- Add session cleanup task and include config dirs in initial scans
- Switch reqwest to rustls for cross-compilation without OpenSSL
- Add cross-platform build script (bun + zig + cargo-xwin) and design philosophy doc
- Bump documentation changelog for v0.2.6-beta
