# Release 0.3.10 — Opt-in BPE estimation and bounded model budget auto-tuning

**Coordinated packages:** `ds4-context-core`, `ds4-context-reference-adapter`, and `ds4-context-engine` 0.3.10.
**Implementation commit:** `0607238`.

## Summary

Adds a selectable `o200k-base-v1` text estimator, provider/model/estimator-specific calibration, and opt-in evidence-gated expansion of automatic context-category ceilings. `chars-v1` remains the default estimator; `modelAwareness.autoTune` remains off unless explicitly enabled. The reference adapter and Pi extension continue to depend exactly on the matching core version.

## Changes

- Portable core accepts a BPE estimator through its existing runtime-neutral interface; the Pi adapter lazy-loads `js-tiktoken`. Non-text content still uses bounded heuristics.
- Model profiles can select `tokenEstimator` by exact `provider/model`, provider wildcard, or global override. Calibration histories are isolated by estimator version as well as provider and model.
- Auto-tuning uses accepted same-profile samples, rejects outliers, respects configured category limits and hard input ceilings, and withdraws expansion after insufficient headroom. Calibrated estimator-unit limits cannot exceed nominal model limits.
- Manifests and model diagnostics identify estimator version and calibration/auto-tuning decisions. Existing golden compatibility remains anchored to the unchanged default behavior.

## Measured scope and limitations

Bounded synthetic multi-turn Pi/DS4 sessions on OpenRouter `openai/gpt-6-sol`, `openai/gpt-6-luna`, and `openai/gpt-5.6-terra` demonstrated calibration, a genuinely larger opt-in recent tail, provider usage above the native-window headroom threshold, and withdrawal to `no-headroom` on the following turn in each model's session. Retrieval and live tool cycles were also exercised separately. See [model-awareness measurements](../MODEL_AWARENESS.md) and [provider-token drift](../PROVIDER_TOKEN_DRIFT_BENCHMARK.md) for methodology, numbers, and bounds.

These measurements do not establish production retrieval quality, provider-side compaction behavior, or accuracy for arbitrary models/routes. In particular, equivalent Codex-route measurements did not yield usage and are not claimed as validated. No provider calls are required for this release procedure.

## Compatibility

No new defaults are enabled: `chars-v1`, disabled `autoTune`, and disabled DS4 native continuation remain unchanged. No SQLite migration or change to canonical Pi JSONL, privacy consent, native continuation, or the portable runtime-adapter contract is introduced. BPE remains adapter-injected rather than adding a third-party tokenizer dependency to portable core. Restart Pi after upgrading so the new compiled core and session configuration are loaded.

## Validation and publication

On Node 26.5.1, the coordinated release passed a clean `npm ci`, `npm run check` (97 Vitest files, 607 tests, TypeScript builds and root typecheck), deterministic `npm run quality:compare`, the `npm run schema:context-persistence` size bound, and `npm run pack:check` in a clean consumer after synchronizing both exported runtime version constants. All typecheck/tests were also rerun after that correction. Dry-run tarball review contained 243 core files, 7 reference-adapter files, and 97 extension files; none included untracked local state. All three packages were then published to npm at 0.3.10 in dependency order. After registry propagation, `npm run registry:check -- 0.3.10` verified all three exact-version artifacts in a fresh consumer.