# Sley 1.2.0 And The Machine-Native Break

Date: 2026-08-27
Status: public source note
Chronicle: https://greyforge.tech/chronicles/sley-120-machine-native-break

## Public Decision

Greyforge Labs is freezing active feature development of the human-readable
Sley 1.x architecture after Sley 1.2.0. The public repository remains available
under Apache-2.0 for use, study, experimentation, extension, and forks.

Active language research is moving to an incompatible Sley 2.x lineage. Sley
2.x treats direct human readability of the canonical raw program
representation as optional while retaining human control over objectives,
requirements, constraints, authority, policy, evaluation, risk, deployment,
and acceptance.

The public Machine-Native Invariant is:

> No Sley 2.x design decision should be rejected solely because its raw
> representation is inconvenient for humans.

This decision does not prohibit human-readable projections, explanations,
inspectors, visualizers, debugging interfaces, reports, or audit artifacts. It
removes only the requirement that the canonical machine representation must
itself be optimized for direct human authorship.

## Verified Sley 1.2.0 Release Facts

- Public release: https://github.com/GreyforgeLabs/sley/releases/tag/v1.2.0
- Public repository: https://github.com/GreyforgeLabs/sley
- Release state: GitHub pre-release / release candidate
- Published: August 27, 2026
- Tag: `v1.2.0`
- Commit: `d281cd1c44d9566753f881ded0a32a623244c902`
- License: Apache-2.0
- Supported artifact: `sley-1.2.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz`
- SHA-256:
  `2765aa5adb09f2ef071b5c97d2726951193b0ac97ddddb9e91e26c5562261838`
- Verification: 38 release targets
- Report schemas: 99
- Contract fixtures: 187 of 187
- Declared integration checks: 264 of 264
- Release-packet checks: 11 of 11
- Public-release checks: 4 of 4

The supported release boundary is Linux x86_64 with unsigned provenance. The
release does not claim package-manager publication, artifact signing, macOS,
Windows, container support, production deployment, or general production
promotion.

## Claim Classes

### Proven today

Sley 1.2.0 release identity, artifact boundary, verification counts, license,
public repository, and current release-candidate limitations.

### Architectural decisions

The Sley 1.x feature freeze, the clean 2.x lineage, the absence of a
compatibility promise, and the Machine-Native Invariant.

### Working thesis

Greyforge expects a growing share of software engineering to involve machines
creating, inspecting, transforming, testing, and exchanging implementation.
This is a forecast that motivates the architecture. It is not a claim that
people no longer write or read code.

## Citation Boundary

Use the Chronicle and the linked public repository or release for public
claims. Do not infer unreleased Sley 2.x syntax, encoding, implementation,
benchmarks, compatibility, migration tooling, roadmap, release timing, or
support commitments from this note.