This is a dated article from AKM's publishing archive. For current product behavior, see the documentation index.

akm 0.7.0 is out. This is the last pre-1.0 ship in the v1 cycle. The headline features are a durable proposal queue that routes all agent-suggested changes through a single reviewable path, three new CLI surfaces (reflect, propose, distill) that write into that queue, a lesson asset type for synthesized knowledge, per-call-site LLM feature gates that are all off by default, and a paired-run benchmarking framework (akm-bench) for measuring whether your stash actually improves agent outcomes. A batch of security, UX, and hygiene hardening rounds out the release.

If you are on 0.6.x, the v1 migration guide covers the per-surface delta. The upgrade is opt-in — everything new requires explicit configuration or a new command invocation.

TL;DR

• Proposal queue (akm proposal list/show/diff/accept/reject) — all agent-generated changes flow through a durable queue before touching your stash.
• akm reflect, akm propose, akm distill — three new commands that produce proposals without mutating live stash content.
• lesson asset type — first-class synthesized knowledge, produced by akm distill and promoted via akm proposal accept.
• llm.features.* map — seven opt-in gates (all false by default) for bounded in-tree LLM call sites.
• quality: "proposed" — proposed assets are excluded from default search; surface them via --include-proposed or akm proposal *.
• akm-bench v1 — paired noakm/akm runs, per-ref attribution, delta reporting.
• Security hardening — git message sanitization, bench env isolation, LLM body redaction, npm tarball host validation.

Proposal queue (akm proposal *)

The fundamental problem with agent-generated suggestions is trust: you want to capture what the agent learned without blindly writing unreviewed content into your stash. The proposal queue solves this by separating generation from promotion.

All proposal-producing commands write to a durable queue that lives outside the asset tree. Unaccepted drafts never appear in search results or get committed. When you're ready to accept a proposal, akm proposal accept runs full validation and then routes the write through the same writeAssetToSource() path used by akm remember and akm import — no special handling, no bypass.

akm proposal list                       # list pending proposals
akm proposal show <id>                  # render one proposal
akm proposal diff <id>                  # diff vs. the live ref
akm proposal accept <id>                # validate, then promote to stash
akm proposal reject <id> --reason "…"  # archive with reason

Multiple proposals for the same ref coexist without filesystem collisions. Auto-accept can be enabled per-source via autoAcceptProposals: true in your stash config (requires a writable source, defaults off).

Three new commands: reflect, propose, distill

These three commands are the primary way to generate proposals.

akm reflect [ref] [--task ...]        # reflect on an asset and propose improvements — doclint:ignore (historical — akm 0.7.0 release announcement; folded into `akm improve` later)
akm propose <type> <name> --task "…"  # generate a new asset as a proposal — doclint:ignore (historical — akm 0.7.0 release announcement; moved to `akm proposal new` in 0.9.0)
akm distill <ref>                     # synthesize a lesson from an asset — doclint:ignore (historical — akm 0.7.0 release announcement; folded into `akm improve` later)

reflect and propose shell out to your configured agent CLI and write only to the proposal queue — they never mutate live stash content. distill is a bounded in-tree LLM call, gated behind llm.features.feedback_distillation, that produces a lesson-type proposal from an existing asset.

All three emit usage events so you can track which workflows you're actually using.

lesson asset type

lesson is a new first-class asset type designed for synthesized knowledge — the kind your agent derives from experience rather than imports from a source. Lessons are stored under lessons/<name>.md in your working stash, parallel to memories/. Required frontmatter: description and when_to_use.

The canonical workflow: akm distill <ref> produces a lesson proposal → akm proposal list shows it → akm proposal accept <id> promotes it to your stash. Direct authoring via akm import or akm remember-style flows is also supported if you want to write lessons manually.

llm.features.* — opt-in LLM gates

Every bounded in-tree LLM call site is now gated behind exactly one feature flag. All defaults are false, so enabling the schema has no effect until you opt in. Seven flags ship in 0.7.0:

Turn on what you want:

akm config set llm.features.feedback_distillation true
akm config set llm.features.memory_consolidation true

Every gated call site uses the tryLlmFeature() wrapper from src/llm/feature-gate.ts, which guarantees: disabled → fallback returned without ever calling the LLM; throw → error swallowed, fallback returned; timeout → 30-second hard limit, fallback returned.

quality: "proposed" and --include-proposed

SearchHit.quality now has three well-known values: "generated", "curated", and "proposed". The first two appear in default search. Proposed assets are excluded by default — they only surface via akm search ... --include-proposed or via the akm proposal * commands. Unknown quality values parse-warn-include so plugin authors can extend the set without breaking the indexer.

akm-bench v1

Bench grows from a smoke test into a paired-utility framework:

• Track A — paired noakm/akm runs. For each task, bench runs your agent CLI twice (without and with akm available), captures per-tool-call utility, and emits a comparable score pair.
• Track B — registry attribution. Utility deltas are mapped back to specific [origin//]type:name refs so you can see which assets in your stash actually contributed to the improvement.
• akm-bench compare — aggregates paired runs into a delta report.
• akm-bench attribute — surfaces the per-ref attribution report.

akm-bench compare results/noakm results/akm
akm-bench attribute results/akm

The technical reference for akm-bench now lives in the standalone itlackey/akm-bench repo.

Security hardening (PR #275)

Five security, UX, and hygiene issues landed together in the pre-prod hardening batch:

Security:

• #270 — git message sanitization. Commit messages and remote URLs written by akm are sanitized to prevent shell-substitution and control-character injection through user-supplied content.
• #271 — bench env isolation. Each agent invocation in akm-bench runs in a scrubbed environment so host secrets don't leak into bench transcripts.
• #272 — LLM body redact + npm tarball host validation. Outbound LLM request/response bodies are redacted in error reporting before surfacing to stderr. akm add npm:… now validates the tarball download host against your configured npm registry instead of blindly following arbitrary dist.tarball URLs.

UX:

• #273 — workflow noise gate, stashes deprecation warn, setup --help. akm workflow next/complete/status no longer print spurious progress noise on quiet runs. Configs using the legacy stashes[] key now emit a single deprecation warning per process (was: per call site). akm setup --help renders the full help block.

Hygiene:

• #274 — tsconfig + HF pin + shapes throw. tsconfig.json now covers tests/ so bunx tsc --noEmit catches test-file errors. The HF embeddings model is pinned to a specific revision. The output-shape registry now throws on a missing shape rather than silently falling back to JSON.stringify.
• #276 — bench tmp redirect. akm-bench no longer writes scratch state under /tmp; everything lands under ~/.cache/akm/bench/.

Upgrade

npm install -g akm-cli@0.7.0
# or
bun install -g akm-cli@0.7.0
# or from an existing install
akm upgrade

Verify:

akm info --format text     # version 0.7.x
akm proposal list          # queue starts empty — that's expected

Try the new surfaces:

akm setup                                            # detects installed agent CLIs
akm config set llm.features.feedback_distillation true
akm distill memory:my-debugging-notes               # produces a lesson proposal — doclint:ignore (historical — akm 0.7.0 release announcement; `distill` command + ref grammar both retired later)
akm proposal list
akm proposal accept <id>

No manual migration is required for users on 0.6.x with no agent or llm.features blocks configured. Everything new is opt-in.

Full historical details are in the pre-1.0 migration plan (pinned to its last commit before the doc was retired) and the 0.7.0 release notes.

Full changelog at CHANGELOG.md.