Release Philosophy

This document describes the versioning and release coordination strategy across the Cleanroom Labs project suite. All projects follow Semantic Versioning.

v1.0.0: Coordinated Launch

The v1.0.0 release is the only release coordinated across all three foundation projects:

  • AirGap Deploy — deployment packaging tool

  • AirGap Transfer — large file transfer utility

  • Cleanroom Whisper — offline transcription application

The goal of the coordinated v1.0.0 is to demonstrate integrated workflows (e.g., Deploy → Transfer → Install) and deliver a Minimum Viable Product for each project.

Post-v1.0.0: AirGap Synchronized, Whisper Independent

After v1.0.0, only AirGap Deploy and AirGap Transfer follow a synchronized release strategy. These two projects are tightly coupled — Deploy produces deployment packages that Transfer moves across the air gap — so their compatibility must be explicitly managed.

Cleanroom Whisper releases independently. It consumes AirGap Deploy packages but does not impose compatibility constraints on the AirGap tools.

Versioning Rules

Patch Releases

All projects may have independent patch releases (v1.0.1, v1.0.2) for bug fixes at any time. Patch releases do not require coordination.

Minor Releases

Minor releases (v1.1, v1.2) for the AirGap projects are coordinated between Deploy and Transfer but do not require Whisper involvement. Minor releases add functionality in a backward-compatible manner.

Major Releases

The AirGap projects share a major version number. A major version bump (e.g., v1.x → v2.0) is reserved for changes that break mutual compatibility between Deploy and Transfer — for example, a package format change that makes Deploy v2.0 output unreadable by Transfer v1.x.

When the shared boundary breaks, both projects bump to the same new major version simultaneously. This keeps the version numbers permanently aligned: if Deploy and Transfer share a major version, they are guaranteed to be mutually compatible.

Per-project backward-incompatible changes (breaking CLI flags, configuration format changes) are introduced through deprecation cycles in minor releases, not major bumps. This avoids forcing the companion project to bump for changes that don’t affect it.

Cleanroom Whisper manages its own major version independently.