# Forge 4.0.8 release candidate

Matched signed Anvil, Hammer and Connect 4.0.8.0 installers. Controlled staging accepted; published for download September 29, 2026. Website publication does not authorize installation or production promotion.

## Legacy recovery

Startup no longer puts every ambiguous legacy promotion into mandatory model context or prevents read-only reconstruction. A bounded review-queue reference preserves the count/hash and on-demand evidence route. Known current restrictions remain mandatory. No original fact is relabeled, approved, deleted, or rewritten.

Read-only recovery is not engineering authority. Rules still require explicit promotion, valid content/hash and provenance. Execution requires an actual assignment. When legacy applicability is unresolved, an Administrator can review relevant original evidence and authorize the exact bounded assignment against a snapshot of its rules and current facts. This does not override known restrictions, authorize other assignments, or grant production permission. Changing the snapshot or revoking the review invalidates that scoped authorization.

Supported Connect workflow (no ready checkout required): `forge_connect_review_authority` with `inspect`, then an explicitly approved `approve-rules` using the returned revision/hash, followed by a fresh `inspect` and explicitly approved `approve-assignment` with mission ID, snapshot hash and review rationale. Reopen afterward. `revoke-assignment` removes scoped authorization. Do not auto-approve to bypass a block. Rules approval appends a new revision; prior rules and reviews remain intact.

## Archive engineers

Anvil Administration → Product Engineers → Archive. Check in active work first. Show archived engineers → Restore reverses the operation to the prior enabled/paused/disabled state. Built-in engineers cannot be archived. Archive removes engineers from normal discovery and blocks checkout, not evidence retrieval. Existing knowledge, assignments and historical evidence remain intact.

Connect offers `forge_connect_archive_engineer` with `archived=true/false`; listing with `include_archived=true` includes archived records. Mutations require Administrator authority and existing engineer access. Changes are version checked and recorded in an append-only archive audit table.

## Upgrade and rollback

Back up the Anvil database and installed payloads before installation. New authority-review and archive-audit tables are additive. Do not downgrade while engineers remain archived: old clients do not understand the new state. Restore archived engineers through 4.0.8 first, or restore the complete pre-upgrade database and matched binaries. Do not delete new evidence to manufacture rollback compatibility.

Native SSH/key instructions and TLS/host-key validation are unchanged. No Spark enrollment or workspace verification is introduced. Oversized protected context, unavailable identity, authentication failures, and revocations remain fail-closed. Detailed evidence is fetched only when needed.