V1 release checklist

The checklist is ordered so each phase produces evidence required by the next.

1. Freeze scope

• Create main from the current development head.
• Record included algorithms, tasks, and deferred systems.
• Disconnect soft-robot, co-design, and 3DGS plugins from default imports.
• Remove soft-robot, co-design, and 3DGS source, configurations, tests, scripts, docs, assets, and default registrations after dependency review.
• Capture a machine-readable compatibility matrix.

2. Make installation reliable

• Fix Python package discovery and verify wheel contents.
• Split core, simulator, Torch integration, visualization, and development dependencies into installable extras.
• Define supported Python, JAX, operating system, accelerator, and simulator versions.
• Validate clean CPU installation from the built wheel.

3. Establish release quality gates

• Delete obsolete or invalid tests and merge unique assertions into current tests.
• Separate unit, integration, accelerator, simulator, and benchmark suites.
• Convert script-shaped tests into collected tests or explicit CI commands.
• Add package-build, wheel-install, config-validation, and CPU-smoke CI jobs.
• Record optional GPU and simulator jobs without making unsupported claims.

4. Stabilize the user surface

• Define the supported Python API and command-line entry points.
• Add clear errors for unavailable optional integrations.
• Validate all included YAML configurations against plugin registrations.
• Add one minimal and one robot recipe with pinned expected outputs.

5. Rewrite product documentation

• Replace the README with a feature-first product story, quickstart, task gallery, architecture, compatibility matrix, benchmarks, and roadmap.
• Rebuild docs around installation, concepts, recipes, integrations, operations, reference, and development.
• Move research logs and internal records outside the user guide.
• Reuse approved paper GIFs and videos with captions and repository-safe assets.

6. Prove industrial readiness

• Publish reproducibility, latency, throughput, compilation, memory, success rate, constraint-violation, and reliability measurements where applicable.
• Run each benchmark under a versioned protocol and retain raw artifacts.
• Document failure behavior, device fallback, logging, and saved-run schema.

7. Prepare and publish the release candidate

• Complete license, citation, contribution, security, and conduct policies. The project now uses MIT; citation, contribution, security, and conduct files are present.
• Generate an inventory for source, wheel, and documentation artifacts.
• Run secret, large-file, dependency, and license scans. The core dependency closure has no detected strong-copyleft package. The earlier inventory's project entry was UNKNOWN; the current project license is MIT. Regenerate the inventory when preparing the release candidate.
• Build the release candidate from a clean checkout and run the release gate.
• Review the final diff, then tag and publish only after explicit approval.