Context Harness v0.8.0 is a packaging and reliability release for the vector-index work that landed in v0.7.0.

The headline: the native Linux and Apple Silicon release binaries now build with the zvec vector-index accelerator statically included. You can download ctx, run it, and use the zvec-backed semantic search path without manually compiling or installing a separate zvec library.

That matters because Context Harness is supposed to be local-first infrastructure, not a weekend of linker archaeology. The canonical store is still SQLite. The zvec index is still rebuildable sidecar state. v0.8.0 makes the fast path much easier to actually use from the release artifacts.

Release notes

The latest release is v0.8.0, published on June 8, 2026.

What’s changed since v0.7.0:

Download:

# Apple Silicon macOS
curl -L https://github.com/parallax-labs/context-harness/releases/latest/download/ctx-macos-aarch64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv ctx /usr/local/bin/

# Linux x86_64
curl -L https://github.com/parallax-labs/context-harness/releases/latest/download/ctx-linux-x86_64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv ctx /usr/local/bin/

Windows users can download ctx-windows-x86_64.zip from the v0.8.0 release.

zvec in the binary, not beside it

v0.7.0 introduced the zvec vector-index sidecar as the fast semantic candidate path. v0.8.0 turns that into something users can get from a normal release download.

The release workflow now builds these native targets with local-embeddings-tract,zvec-bundled:

Those binaries use the statically linked zvec build path. The release smoke check for macOS arm64 verified ctx 0.8.0 from the downloaded archive and confirmed there is no external libzvec dynamic-library dependency.

For the cross or fallback targets, Context Harness still publishes working binaries without zvec bundled:

Those remain useful compatibility artifacts, but the native Linux and Apple Silicon downloads are now the best path if you want accelerated semantic search.

Hyphenated search now behaves like user text

SQLite FTS5 treats punctuation as query syntax in places where normal users just mean words. Before this release, a query containing terms like local-first or MCP-compatible could be parsed too literally by FTS and fail to return the expected keyword candidates.

v0.8.0 normalizes user-entered keyword text before passing it to FTS:

local-first MCP-compatible multi-repo

becomes a normal keyword query over:

local first MCP compatible multi repo

That fix applies to keyword search directly and to the keyword side of hybrid search. The semantic side is unchanged.

CI now proves the zvec path

The release is not just a Cargo feature rename. CI now separately checks:

The release workflow uses the same native zvec feature path for Linux x86_64, Linux aarch64, and macOS aarch64. That gives us a practical confidence gate before publishing downloads.

Upgrading

Use the latest release binary for your platform:

# Apple Silicon macOS
curl -L https://github.com/parallax-labs/context-harness/releases/latest/download/ctx-macos-aarch64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv ctx /usr/local/bin/

# Linux x86_64
curl -L https://github.com/parallax-labs/context-harness/releases/latest/download/ctx-linux-x86_64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv ctx /usr/local/bin/

If you build from source, use the release branch or tag:

git checkout v0.8.0
cargo install --path crates/context-harness --force

No config migration is required. Existing SQLite stores and zvec sidecars continue to follow the same model: SQLite owns the canonical data, and the vector index is derived state that can be rebuilt.

What this release means

v0.8.0 is the release where the vector-index accelerator stops being only an implementation milestone and becomes part of the normal download experience.

There is still more to do: upstreaming the static zvec binding changes, broadening zvec support across fallback targets where it makes sense, and continuing to tune retrieval quality. But the core user-facing promise is now much stronger:

download one native binary, point it at your local context, and get the fast semantic path without a separate zvec install.