This Beta is the largest release since July. It adds ACME, the A.I. Compliance Management Engine, fronted by a new persona, Gordon: when a session declares that a subproject was created, a recipe ran, or a count is N, ACME checks the artifacts those claims require on disk and writes what it finds — in plain language — to a compliance log you can open, before the AI replies. It runs at session boot, subproject start, subproject close and handoff, and on demand when you say “ACME”; it detects, reports and advises, and never repairs anything itself. Its cookbook (CFT-FWK-COOKBK-ACME-COMPLIANCE) ships inside CRAFT Core Files/framework/ — the first CORE-shipped Official Cookbook; nothing to download. The same cut carries CRAFT Stations: named specialist personas for one area each — scheduled tasks, skills, plugins, Claude Code, Claude Design, n8n, or Claude on AWS — with a station registry, per-station operating and hazard playbooks, and seven new personas (Antonin, Samin, Yotam, Cody, Des, Nate, Austin; roster 19 → 27). Approval is MANUAL by default; AUTOMATIC is an owner decision made through a fixed disclosure. The station system’s longitudinal test has not yet run, and user guides for ACME and Stations follow in a later release.

Also in this build: an explicit owner close-ratification for subprojects (your own words, not a gate-name echo) with close attestations and a per-project compliance log; a subproject planning queue; the test-clock discipline (completion criteria must be satisfiable in a subproject’s own sessions; longitudinal testing rides a test-handoff packet); wait-state triage for blocked subprojects; session-length handling driven by observed events — every predictive percentage warning is gone; backup source-of-truth repair and co-branch path refusal; every key decision names what executes it, and every handoff records the model that ran the session; two always-on communication directives; single-line lessons; delete-independent recipes across the framework; and four user guides (lessons-learned format, test-handoff packets, session length and compaction, secure GitHub setup — refreshed). Universal Lessons 53 → 67; recipes 188 → 200 across the framework, with the Cowork volumes in the kit growing 78 → 89. Free during the beta — no membership required; see the terms at craftframework.ai/terms. Every release is signed and verifiable (SHA256SUMS + SHA256SUMS.asc). CRAFT makes no claim to reduce risk; it supplies knowledge and structure, and the decisions stay yours.

Get it on the GitHub release page or from the downloads page.

This Release Candidate adds two user-facing capabilities. CRAFT can now recommend which Claude Cowork model best fits a task — a triage on how checkable, long-horizon, and well-defined the work is — and keeps that guidance grounded in a Model Research Log it refreshes, so it reflects today’s model landscape rather than a stale rule of thumb. And subprojects gain a first-class suspended state: long-running work can be paused with its state intact and resumed in a later session, instead of only active-or-closed. Also in this build: organizable session names, a more reliable state-keyed project footer from a new project’s first response, and boot that surfaces any suspended subprojects. Free during the beta — no membership required; see the terms at craftframework.ai/terms. Every release is signed and verifiable (SHA256SUMS + SHA256SUMS.asc).

Read the announcement: CRAFT July 2026: Pick the Right Model, and Pause Work Without Losing It. Get it on the GitHub release page or from the downloads page.

The original September 1 date was set in late 2025 for the pre-Cowork Beta and was never re-derived after the framework was rebuilt for Claude Cowork — so it has been recomputed from the product’s actual late-June launch. The full honest history is in the announcement: A Straight Answer About the Beta Deadline.

What the date means is unchanged: when the window closes, only the Founding Chef sign-up closes. The framework keeps working, stays free to download during the Beta, and anything you’ve downloaded stays yours. Site pages are being updated to the new date; if you spot a stray September 1 after the update pass, the feedback form reaches the builder directly.

An updated Release Candidate is live: the full user-tier framework — CORE 17 + COWORK 74 recipes — in the two-folder layout, with the persona system (6 active personas plus 8 on-request specialists), personalization (off by default), a guided tutorial mode, subprojects, and the quality tooling. This build corrects the user-edition packaging so the kit ships only user-facing content — the admin-only lessons cheatsheet and the AI sitemap pointer are no longer included. Free during the beta — no membership required; see the terms at craftframework.ai/terms. Every release is signed and verifiable (SHA256SUMS + SHA256SUMS.asc).

Get it on the GitHub release page or from the downloads page. Future releases are posted to the downloads page as they ship.

The complete user-tier framework is now publicly downloadable, free: the full recipe set (CORE 17 + COWORK 70 = 87 recipes), 6 default plus 9 on-request personas, personalization (off by default), a guided tutorial mode, subprojects, and the quality tooling. Free during the beta — no membership required; see the terms at craftframework.ai/terms. Every release is signed and verifiable (SHA256SUMS + SHA256SUMS.asc).

Get it on the GitHub release page or from the downloads page. Future releases are posted to the downloads page as they ship.

The site was rewritten across every structural page to reflect the post-flavor framework. Pre-Cowork content — the three-flavor split, the cross-platform language, the file-attachment workflow — was retired. The framework users meet on the site is the framework they get.

The blog category that hosts framework writeups, decision narratives, and lessons-learned dispatches now has a fixed name. The lock keeps the editorial posture from drifting under future themes; readers can subscribe knowing what they’re subscribing to.

The file every CRAFT session reads on boot now has a written contract: required sections, optional sections, behavioral-directive encoding rules, generation and maintenance guidelines. Sessions that follow the spec open with the same ground state across projects.

LOCK now means “preserve bytes” by default. Any narrow modification to a LOCKED artifact requires a revision-delta block stating what changed, why, the BLESS source, and the scope bound. Silent edits are forbidden under any circumstance — readers can audit prior LOCKED state byte-for-byte.

Personal access tokens are issued per session, used inside the session, and scrubbed before the session closes. Tokens never persist in mounted folders, environment files, or git config. The discipline turns a recurring leak vector into a bounded, auditable event.

Recipes now carry a lifecycle stage that signals maturity: Experimental, Tested, Official, Deprecated. Stage transitions are explicit; combination rules govern which stages can compose together. AI sessions can read the stage and adjust trust accordingly without inspecting recipe bodies for hints.