v0.7 is the release where Rotifer Protocol stops being a sandbox experiment and starts being a production tool. Genes can now reach the internet. We built a real AI product using nothing but genes. And you can browse and install genes from inside VS Code.

Hybrid Genes: Controlled Network Access

Until now, every gene was a pure function — input in, output out, no side effects. That’s great for safety, but real-world agents need to call LLM providers, fetch web pages, query databases.

v0.7 introduces Hybrid fidelity — genes that execute in the WASM sandbox but can make network requests through a Network Gateway:

rotifer init my-api-gene --fidelity hybrid

The gateway enforces:

Domain whitelisting — only pre-declared domains in the gene’s phenotype
Rate limiting — per-gene request quotas
Timeout enforcement — no gene can hang waiting for a response
Response size caps — prevent memory exhaustion from large payloads

Every network request is logged in the audit trail. The gene’s sandbox isolation remains intact — it can talk to the internet, but it can’t touch the filesystem, spawn processes, or escape its fuel budget.

Dogfooding: A 4-Gene AI Documentation Pipeline

The best way to prove a protocol works is to build something real with it. We built an AI documentation assistant using a 4-gene sequential pipeline:

doc-retrieval → answer-synthesizer → source-linker → (output)

Gene	Fidelity	Role
`doc-retrieval`	Hybrid	Vector search against pgvector-indexed documentation
`answer-synthesizer`	Hybrid	LLM-powered answer generation (provider-agnostic)
`source-linker`	Wrapped	Attach source URLs and confidence scores

The pipeline runs end-to-end through rotifer run with schema validation at every junction. If doc-retrieval returns chunks that don’t match answer-synthesizer’s input schema, the pipeline fails fast with a clear error — not a silent hallucination.

8 E2E tests pass, covering 4-gene seq, 2-gene seq, and single-gene execution paths.

VS Code Extension: Genes in Your Editor

The Rotifer Protocol extension is now on the VS Code Marketplace:

Gene Registry browser — tree view grouped by domain, with download counts and fidelity badges
One-click install — rotifer install from the sidebar
Gene details — version, schemas, reputation score, README
Publish from context menu — right-click any SKILL.md → “Rotifer: Publish as Gene”
Reputation panel — Arena / Usage / Stability breakdown

Works in VS Code and Cursor. Install it: search “Rotifer Protocol” in the extension marketplace.

CLI Improvements: Batch Publish & Smart Chains

v0.7 makes the CLI significantly more ergonomic for developers managing multiple genes:

`rotifer publish --all`

Publish every gene in your workspace with one command:

rotifer publish --all

Progress bar, per-gene status (created vs. updated), and a summary report at the end. Skips directories without valid gene.toml.

Auto-Chain: publish → arena → reputation

Publishing a gene now automatically submits it to the Arena and computes its initial reputation score:

rotifer publish my-gene
# ✅ Gene "my-gene" created
# ✅ Arena submission: done
# ✅ Reputation: 72.4 (S:0.85 U:0.60 R:0.90)

Skip with --skip-arena if you’re iterating fast and don’t want to trigger evaluation yet.

Server-Side Search

Gene search now runs on the server via PostgreSQL full-text search (tsvector + pg_trgm), replacing the client-side Fuse.js implementation. Benefits:

Handles 1000+ genes without shipping a search index to the browser
Fuzzy matching on gene names via trigram similarity
Weighted search across name, description, and domain fields
Debounced API calls with client-side fallback

Token Auto-Refresh

rotifer publish and other authenticated commands now silently refresh expired tokens. No more “session expired” errors in the middle of a batch operation.

Gene Composition Pipeline Hardening

The Seq and Par pipeline combinators got significant reliability improvements:

Schema pre-check — validate output→input schema compatibility before execution starts
Error propagation — structured error context flows through the pipeline with source gene attribution
Pipeline logging — per-stage timing and I/O size tracking
5 compatibility tests — covering schema mismatch, timeout cascade, and partial failure scenarios

What’s Next: v0.8

v0.8 focuses on security hardening and P2P protocol design:

WASM Host Function network gateway (replacing the Node.js proxy)
P2P metadata discovery RFC
Epoch automation for reputation recalculation
Platform resilience: Forgejo self-hosting + GitLab mirror

Upgrade: npm i -g @rotifer/playground@latest

VS Code: Search “Rotifer Protocol” in Extensions

Docs: rotifer.dev/docs

Source: gitlab.com/rotifer-protocol/rotifer-playground