# Forge 4.0.0

Ephemeral sessions. Permanent engineers.

This matched release contains Anvil 4.0.0, Connect 4.0.0 and Hammer 4.0.0. Product payload: Forge-4.0.0-RC.2, packaged as three signed Windows setup EXEs.

## What changes

- Fresh Anvil context reconstructs permanent identity, ownership, workspace, protected authority, assignment, durable decisions and knowledge, and recorded operational state without requiring prior conversation.
- Routine chatter and history do not automatically become Working Memory. Full historical evidence remains available on demand.
- Context refresh communicates removals and revocations. Oversized mandatory context blocks engineering. Lease renewal does not reload history.

## Download and upgrade

Back up Anvil before upgrading. Update the matching Anvil server to 4.0.0 before updating Connect and Hammer to 4.0.0. Compatibility with an older Anvil memory API is not claimed.

Anvil, Connect and Hammer are signed Windows setup EXEs. Close the relevant client before running its installer. Hammer's setup wrapper contains the accepted RC.2 runtime payload.

The Anvil and Hammer update manifests advertise their 4.0.0 setup EXEs. Spark is not included in this release; the existing Spark downloads remain 2.9.0. The older Hammer ZIP remains a historical 2.9.5 package and is not a 4.0.0 download.

## Validation scope

Controlled staging passed 97 architecture tests, 21 Connect tests, 7 installer tests and 74 staged assertions. All 13,528 original records and three evidence files remained unchanged. Fresh MCP and headless Hammer reconstruction were tested.

Synthetic startup measurements decreased from approximately 1.438 million to 11.5 thousand serialized characters, about 99.2%. These are controlled fixture measurements, not a universal customer benchmark. Live-provider engineering and live Arena, Paul and DBCooper acceptance were not performed.

Verify package SHA-256 values against the accompanying public SHA256SUMS.txt before installation.