STAGE 0.5.5

Released: 2026-07-22

STAGE 0.5.5 distinguishes process completion from requested-operation completion. It keeps the 0.5 Practitioner Kernel and all supported artifact schemas compatible.

Why This Patch Exists

Lanternworks exposed a false-positive verification path. Unity accepted a test command containing -quit, imported and compiled the project, exited zero, and did not produce a current Test Runner result. An older result path could have made that process exit look like a passing suite.

A wrapper can preserve a process exit correctly and still fail to prove that the requested project operation happened. STAGE now requires the current invocation to produce its declared completion signal before the operation can be reported as passed.

Changes

• Require a fresh project-owned completion signal or result from the current invocation before reporting an operation as passed.
• Treat zero process exit without that signal as inconclusive.
• Reject stale result artifacts as evidence for a current invocation.
• Add the distinct Successful Exit Without Completion failure pattern.
• Refresh the Lanternworks longitudinal study at product revision 254773c, including its factual player-facing Structure guides and fresh Unity suite results.

Practitioner Impact

Before reporting an engine test, build, import, generation, or readiness operation as passed, identify the result that proves completion. Examples include a fresh test report with executed-test and failure counts, a settled editor state, an expected generated artifact, or a project readiness signal.

Process exit remains useful evidence, but it is not a substitute for the operation's own result. Use a fresh result path, safely remove an owned old result before invocation, or verify invocation identity and freshness.

Compatibility

The plugin package version is 0.5.5; SPEC.md is method version 0.5. Project-map and case-study artifact versions 0.1 and 0.3 remain supported. No game-project migration is required.

Verification

The release is checked through:

• the complete STAGE release gate;
• direct Codex plugin and all skill-package validators;
• repository-local project-map, case-study, and Markdown-link validation;
• package self-containment and size checks; and
• a fresh local plugin installation reporting version 0.5.5.

Limitations

The motivating engine behavior was observed in Unity 6000.3.6f1 on the same-owner Lanternworks dogfood project. The general requirement is not Unity-specific, but this release does not claim that every tool needs the same kind of completion signal. Each project operation owns the signal appropriate to its actual result.