Release channels - PolymerOS Docs

Agent-assisted draft. The commands are checked against repository sources, but the guide copy has not completed human editorial review.

PolymerOS has four release channels. They run in one direction, from least to most vetted:

chaos  →  alpha  →  beta  →  stable

Each rung up the ladder adds scrutiny, a stronger signature, and soak time. A build is never rebuilt to move up a channel: the same artifacts are re-published one rung higher after they earn it, so a build in Beta is byte-for-byte the build that passed through Alpha and Chaos.

What each channel means for you

Chaos — development builds from the autonomous-agent pipeline. Each one passes a build gauntlet (compile, boot, compartment checks, trust-ring rendering) shortly before it is published, and it is signed automatically. Expect rough edges; run it in a VM and verify the checksum. No promises beyond that.
Alpha — where new subsystems land first, after a Chaos build has soaked for a number of days with no regression evidence and an operator has signed off. Expect breakage.
Beta — feature-complete builds under broad testing before Stable. To reach Beta, an Alpha build must additionally prove that the update path from the previous Beta works.
Stable — for general use. A Stable build has been through Beta soak, a release review, and a 2-of-3 threshold approval held by multiple people, and is updated only after extended validation.

Which channel a build follows

A build's channel is baked in when it is built. An install follows its channel by checking that channel's latest.json pointer for a newer signed release. Switching channels is a deliberate act on your part, not something the server decides. The channel is also visible in the version string a build reports — for example 0.0.5+chaos.20260705T2140Z names the channel and the time it was stamped.

What is not built yet

These are the honest gaps today, one sentence each, so you know what a channel does and does not currently promise:

Only Chaos produces builds right now; Alpha, Beta, and Stable have no builds published yet.

The part of an update that actually writes the new system to disk and flips the boot pointer is not wired up yet, so the atomic-switch-and-rollback story is a model rather than working code (updates today only plan the change, they do not apply it).

The freshness pointer each channel publishes (latest.json) is not itself signed yet, so a client cannot yet reject a stale or rolled-back pointer.

The channel name is not yet carried inside the signed metadata, so downgrade protection between channels is not enforced yet.