Epic: Two-lane fork — Reliable (@latest) / Frontier (@frontier)

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Two-lane strategy

v1.100.0 ships the Reliable lane as npm @latest. Frontier is opt-in via @frontier.

	Reliable	Frontier
Dist-tag	@latest	@frontier
Versions	1.100.x	2.0.0-frontier.N
Builder	Opus 4.6[1m] max	Opus 5 high
First brain	GPT-5.5 xhigh → Sol (#715)	GPT-5.6 Sol high
Second brain	Fable high	Fable high
Graduation	Stays on @latest	Promotes to @latest as v2.0.0 when proven (#673)

Versioning rules

• Reliable patches: v1.100.1, v1.100.2, etc. Tagged, published to @latest
• Frontier prereleases: 2.0.0-frontier.0, .1, .2, etc. Tagged, published to @frontier
• Caret ranges protect consumers: ^1.100.0 never picks up 2.x
• Tags are immutable. A published version cannot be altered

Graduation

v2.0.0 ships to @latest only when the maintainer has personally consumed the frontier in other repos and confirmed it works (#673, #545). Issues closing is not the criterion.

Child issues

Reliable lane

• Set the Opus 4.6 line in stone: name the fallback, prove it with a canary, and cut release/opus-4.6 only if the canary says to #689 — Set the Opus 4.6 line in stone (canary, dist-tag, isolation rule)
• feat: brain-only install mode — ladder without the harness #710 — Brain-only install mode
• GPT-5.5 retires from Codex CLI on 2026-10-14 — Reliable lane's first brain dies #715 — GPT-5.5 retires 2026-10-14, migrate to Sol

Frontier lane

• release.yml: bare npm publish will steal @latest on frontier tags #713 — release.yml dist-tag support (blocks first frontier publish)
• Frontier lane kickoff — Opus 5 + Sol + Fable on @frontier dist-tag #717 — Frontier kickoff (branch, version, model pins, first publish)

Both lanes

• Two flavors: Workhorse (opus-4-6[1m] + GPT-5.5, escalate to Fable/5.6 when hard) and Frontier (Opus 5 + Fable + Sol) #707 — Two-flavor design (the spec this epic implements)
• CI/CD audit: 60+ suites, brittle string guards, solo-maintainer overhead #714 — CI/CD audit (test suite serves both lanes)
• Containerized baseline test suite — prove future changes are improvements #716 — Containerized baseline suite (prove changes are improvements)

Sibling repos

• Adopt two-lane strategy — pin known-good models on @latest, bleeding edge opt-in codex-sdlc-wizard#181 — adopt two-lane strategy