DaoyuanLi2816 · DaoyuanLi2816 · Aug 11, 2026 · Aug 11, 2026 · Aug 11, 2026 · Aug 11, 2026
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
@@ -24,6 +24,10 @@
 *.svg   text eol=lf
 *.cff   text eol=lf
 
+# The fallback selection source is retained byte-for-byte alongside its
+# newline-normalized, human-readable JSON projection.
+benchmarks/evidence/alignment-external-v1/*.raw binary
+
 # Anything genuinely binary must never be touched.
 *.png   binary
 *.jpg   binary

diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -6,6 +6,40 @@ All notable changes to miniVERL are recorded here. The format follows
 
 ## [Unreleased]
 
+## [0.7.0] - 2026-08-10
+
+### External Alignment Gate result
+
+- The first preregistered external-alignment study terminated at starting-
+  checkpoint selection. Two declared lineages and eight candidates all
+  measured 0/64 retained JSONNav utility against the unchanged 20% floor. No
+  checkpoint was selected; teacher qualification, continuation SFT/DPO/KD/OPD
+  training and the reserved final test did not run. This is a study-design and
+  precondition finding, not a post-training method comparison.
+- Added a schema-valid early-stop result and 512 privacy-safe JSONNav
+  selection rows. `miniverl pilot --study-result ...` returns
+  `do_not_continue_this_study` and `insufficient_evidence` without turning one
+  stopped study into a universal method recommendation.
+- Preserved the original fallback selection artifact and published a corrected
+  lineage-only projection plus correction manifest. The primary and fallback
+  selection manifests are disclosed as separately generated but byte- and
+  task-identical, not independent samples.
+- Granite Guardian values are explicitly unqualified diagnostics. Granite and
+  PairRM qualification, PairRM method preference and teacher qualification are
+  `not_run`; the necessary retained-utility failure does not depend on them.
+- Added a generated checkpoint gate matrix and study-flow diagram with mobile
+  layouts, plus the external-study page, English/Chinese release framing and
+  browser visual coverage.
+
+### Foundation and artifact hardening
+
+- The bridge validates bundle trees before opening content; refuses symlinks,
+  reparse points, non-regular or escaping entries and bounded-tree violations;
+  and distinguishes complete, incomplete and uninspected privacy checks.
+- Dataset extension sidecars bind source digest and row count, conversion
+  revalidates source identity before publication, and row provenance uses
+  bounded contiguous runs.
+
 ### Fixed
 
 - A reward scaffold saved with a UTF-8 byte-order mark is no longer reported as
@@ -768,7 +802,8 @@ Same-tokenizer only; one trajectory per forward pass; `swap` unavailable for
 quantized models; only Qwen3 and Qwen2 architectures tested; single-seed GPU
 results. The full list is in `docs/limitations.md`.
 
-[Unreleased]: https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl/compare/v0.6.3...HEAD
+[Unreleased]: https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl/compare/v0.7.0...HEAD
+[0.7.0]: https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl/compare/v0.6.3...v0.7.0
 [0.6.3]: https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl/compare/v0.6.2...v0.6.3
 [0.6.2]: https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl/compare/v0.6.1...v0.6.2
 [0.6.1]: https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl/compare/v0.6.0...v0.6.1

diff --git a/CITATION.cff b/CITATION.cff
@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@ cff-version: 1.2.0
 title: "miniVERL: Auditable single-GPU alignment and distillation runtime"
 message: "If you use miniVERL in your work, please cite it as below."
 type: software
-version: 0.6.3
-date-released: 2026-08-06
+version: 0.7.0
+date-released: 2026-08-10
 license: Apache-2.0
 repository-code: "https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl"
 url: "https://github.com/DaoyuanLi2816/mini-verl"
@@ -32,7 +32,11 @@ abstract: >-
   algorithmic parity with PPO. miniVERL is designed for one personal CUDA GPU,
   automatically selects bf16 or fp16, and requires neither Ray nor a cluster.
   Published performance is measured on one RTX 4080; other GPU models use the
-  same code path but remain unmeasured.
+  same code path but remain unmeasured. The v0.7.0 external-alignment study
+  terminated at its preregistered checkpoint-selection gate: two declared
+  lineages and eight candidates all scored 0/64 retained JSONNav utility, so
+  no teacher qualification, continuation method comparison or reserved final
+  test was run.
 authors:
   - family-names: Li
     given-names: Daoyuan

diff --git a/PROJECT_STATE.md b/PROJECT_STATE.md
@@ -6,16 +6,39 @@ and what it printed.
 
 Last updated: 2026-08-10.
 
-Canonical release state: stable `v0.6.3` (`005a4549da713716e64c3ae80ff55fb131519f79`), development `0.7.0.dev0`.
+Canonical release state: releasing `v0.7.0`.
 Every public version claim is generated from `release-state.yaml` and gated by
 `python scripts/release_state.py --check`.
 
-## v0.7.0 External alignment evidence — IN PROGRESS
+## v0.7.0 External Alignment Gate — EVIDENCE RELEASE IN PROGRESS
 
-Branch `v0.7.0-foundation`, based on `0bd194600aeb65b90eadd14bfa1ec313aa2a9c36`.
-Not yet pushed. Commit author is
-`Daoyuan Li <94409450+DaoyuanLi2816@users.noreply.github.com>` on every commit,
-matching the 9:1 dominant identity since v0.6.0.
+Branch `v0.7.0-evidence-release` starts from the exact post-PR-#52 main commit
+`a8272e2b5674e12107461a81d285f1a3d56588a5`. PR #51 merged the public
+preregistration/outcome as `c50aa93b95e6fe4a6aa6251491d3c2b5a9480ebe`;
+PR #52 corrected the handoff boundary before merge. Every source commit author
+is `Daoyuan Li <94409450+DaoyuanLi2816@users.noreply.github.com>`.
+
+Current scientific state is terminal and unchanged: two declared lineages,
+eight candidates, 0/64 JSONNav retained utility for every candidate, no
+selected checkpoint, no teacher qualification, no continuation method and no
+final-test access. The release work is evidence projection and documentation,
+not a restarted experiment.
+
+### Evidence-release identities
+
+| evidence | state / SHA-256 |
+| --- | --- |
+| original fallback selection | preserved byte-for-byte; `53efeb1af196fe8a2fd3733f3f9d6a9ce101fcc76365fc45515adc47cc7d3cd3` |
+| corrected fallback projection | lineage metadata only; `6f23de43f03a69275d8bedc9b029a1b728fb2004a9b3a225c66ba1fee671592b` |
+| primary / fallback selection manifests | both `e1e165e3547c7784b17e93b7e665df66ea6cafa70bec093a69377bc6683bc20b`; separately generated, task-identical, not independent |
+| portable JSONNav selection rows | 512 rows, no prompts/responses/absolute paths; `18d5733e70bfe292e282bd5b6e3fc94869837fab30a151a642aa11c3e4c9d771` |
+| early-stop result | schema-validated; digest recorded by the final release validation |
+| final test | `not_accessed`, zero tasks scored |
+
+Amendment 4 is explicitly post-selection and pre-release. It changes no
+quantitative value, gate, threshold, endpoint or decision. Granite Guardian is
+an unqualified diagnostic only; Granite and PairRM qualification, method-level
+preference evaluation and teacher qualification are `not_run`.
 
 ### Phase A progress
 
@@ -209,11 +232,11 @@ harmful compliance 0.37–0.77 with room to fall. Only utility is a hard zero.
 
 ### The zero was validated before it was believed
 
-Every rollout ended at `PARSE_ERROR_LIMIT` with **zero tool calls emitted** and
-exactly 128 tokens — a uniform deterministic failure across four adapters
-including the base model. That signature fits a misconfigured harness as well
-as an incapable policy, and 128 = 2 turns x the 64-token per-turn budget is
-exactly what a too-small budget would produce.
+Every primary-lineage rollout ended at `PARSE_ERROR_LIMIT` with zero valid tool
+calls and exactly 128 tokens. Fallback-lineage rollouts emitted two to four
+JSONNav tool calls and ended by final answer, max turns or repeated-call limit,
+but still solved 0/64 for every adapter. These are distinct observed failure
+behaviors, not one uniform signature.
 
 The environment's oracle clears the identical settings 8/8, all
 `FINAL_ANSWER`, at 64, 128 and 256 tokens per turn and at both difficulties.
@@ -257,13 +280,21 @@ Contributor audit over the merged range: 16 commits, sole author
 GPU spent across all of v0.7 so far: **1.2 hours** of the 48-hour envelope,
 peak reserved 5.25 GiB against the 14.5 GiB gate.
 
-### Next action
-
-Both lineages failed and the outcome is merged. The next session executes
-`docs/handoffs/v0.7.0-final-execution-prompt.md`: make `miniverl pilot` return
-the recommendation against downstream alignment, write the study page and its
-data-bound figures, update both READMEs, add an evidence comment to issue #39
-while keeping it open, and release v0.7.0.
+### Release action
+
+The evidence-release branch adds the schema-valid early-stop result, portable
+selection rows, original/corrected fallback relation, identical-suite
+disclosure, `miniverl pilot --study-result`, the study page and data-bound
+figures. After its full green validation it will release v0.7.0, add an
+evidence comment to issue #39 while keeping the issue open, then advance main
+to `0.7.1.dev0` through a separate state-sync PR.
+
+Local release gates on implementation commit `013993a8cd5002a9ed166ba1e6948305f92c1bfb`
+plus its quality-record-only update pass 2,098 CPU tests with 6 platform skips
+and 21 deselections at 86.35% combined branch coverage. The available RTX 4080
+suite passes 8 tests and the opt-in network suite passes 15. Ruff, format,
+mypy, actionlint, strict MkDocs, four-viewport browser checks, package/Twine,
+clean-install and extracted-sdist gates pass.
 
 No continuation arm, no teacher qualification and no method comparison will
 run — none of them is scientifically authorized by the selection outcome.