Fishwrap Engine Ships v2.0; Distribution Migrates to OCI Image

Fishwrap Media announces the public release of Fishwrap v2.0, codenamed “The Newsstand.” Effective this date, the engine transitions from clone-and-install distribution to a signed OCI image artifact at ghcr.io/maxspevack/fishwrap. The release is a breaking change; downstream consumers must migrate from vendor/fishwrap checkouts to docker pull ghcr.io/maxspevack/fishwrap:2.0.

Distribution Model

The image publishes both exact and floating-minor tags (:2.0.0 and :2.0). No :latest tag is published; per the release ADR (docs/adr/001-release-artifact.md), a floating :latest was identified as an avoidable risk vector for consumers who pin loosely. The omission is intentional.

The image excludes WeasyPrint by default. Approximately 80 MB of PDF-rendering dependencies are lazy-imported only when PDF output is requested. Consumers who do not generate PDFs receive a substantially smaller artifact.

New Surfaces

Three CLI entrypoints are exposed by the image: fishwrap-build, fishwrap-version, and fishwrap-validate-config. The consumer contract is documented at docs/IMAGE_CONTRACT.md; the configuration schema at docs/CONFIG_SCHEMA.md. The engine’s first Architecture Decision Record (docs/adr/001-release-artifact.md) establishes the paper trail the Chief Editor has long requested.

A daily demo refresh workflow (.github/workflows/demos.yml) rebuilds, validates, and publishes the four reference demos (Daily Clamour, Zero Day, Hallucination, ShowRunner) to fishwrap.org on a fixed cadence.

Engine Improvements

The engine now self-bootstraps its SQLite schema during _initialize_engine. Ephemeral databases in CI work without seed data; fresh local clones no longer crash with no such table: articles.

Retirements

The MacBook-resident launchd ship pipeline — ship_demos.sh, publish_demo.sh, scripts/refresh_demos.sh, the launchd plist, and the corresponding Makefile targets — is decommissioned. Its responsibilities migrate to CI. ROADMAP.md is also retired; roadmap state now lives in Issues and Milestones.

Daily Clamour’s production pipeline now consumes the OCI image rather than the in-tree engine. The publication’s daily refresh continues uninterrupted.

Review

Gafton (lulz.eng.gafton) reviewed the architecture and signed off on the OCI artifact, the schema bootstrap, and the WeasyPrint deferral. Klausner (lulz.admin.klausner) reviewed the rewritten documentation suite — README, RELEASING, CONTRIBUTING, IMAGE_CONTRACT, CONFIG_SCHEMA — and approved with the standing observation that release notes are not a substitute for working software, but they help.

The Newsstand is the first Fishwrap release shipped under the new contract. Future engine releases will follow the same pattern.

Gafton confirmed the artifact; Klausner approved the documentation; the Founder ran the release procedure and went to bed.