v0.52.0 Release Recap

v0.52.0 is a non-breaking backup operations release that adds a read-only freshness check for published backup catalog metadata.

What Changed

Area	New in v0.52.0	Why it matters
Freshness command	contextdb snapshot lifecycle index publish freshness	Checks whether the published backup catalog is recent enough
Age threshold	--max-age	Lets operators set the acceptable stale window for dashboards and monitors
Published metadata fetch	--published-url, --method, --token	Reuses the existing authenticated published-payload read path
Feature metadata	lifecycle-index-publish-freshness	Lets live deployments advertise published backup freshness checks

Compatibility

This release adds a read-only CLI check. It does not publish metadata, modify backup files, change lifecycle index format, or alter drift comparison behavior.

Operator Flow

contextdb snapshot lifecycle index publish freshness \
  --published-url "$CONTEXTDB_LIFECYCLE_INDEX_PUBLISHED_URL" \
  --max-age 24h \
  --token "$NORN_TOKEN" \
  --report

The report includes the published payload, generated_at, check time, maximum allowed age, actual age, and validation errors when the payload is stale or malformed.

Verification

Release gates for this slice:

Gate	Status
go test -count=1 ./...	Passed
npm run docs:build	Passed
git diff --check	Passed