Phase 1 gate: publish Beta 4 and record maintainer acceptance

[WebCrew]

Goal

Prepare one reproducible unsigned Beta 4 installer from the completed Phase 1 foundation and record the project owner's real Windows acceptance result before declaring Phase 1 complete.

Beta 2 opened successfully but failed maintainer acceptance because its sandboxed preload bridge did not expose the project APIs; that regression is documented in #25 and fixed by #26. Beta 3 restored project creation, saving, reopening, scene manipulation, Undo/Redo and correct toolbar branding, which the maintainer verified successfully. Beta 4 supersedes it as the Phase 1 candidate because #28 completes safe project closing/deletion and adopts distinct SemVer prerelease artifact names.

Older betas remain published as historical prerelease evidence and must not be used for final Phase 1 acceptance.

Scope

• publish a non-overwriting v0.5.0-beta.4 prerelease from main
• produce Parlyn-Engine-Setup-0.5.0-beta.4-x64.exe
• describe the unsigned status honestly while SignPath approval remains pending
• use the repeatable Beta 4 checklist covering installation, branding, project/scene/world persistence, Close/Delete safety, error feedback, transforms, Undo/Redo and uninstall preservation
• record the tested artifact hash and outcome after the maintainer completes the checklist

No additional engine or editor feature work belongs in this gate.

[WebCrew]

Beta 3 maintainer acceptance — core pass (2026-09-07)

Tested by the project maintainer on the installed Windows build from v0.5.0-beta.3.

Passed:

• Parlyn starts successfully after installation
• toolbar branding appears once; the broken duplicate/fallback logo is gone
• New Project opens the native project-location flow
• a named project folder can be created
• the scene can be manipulated
• project-backed scene saving succeeds
• Undo/Redo flow reaches a successful Redo
• the Beta 2 window.parlynHost.createProject failure no longer occurs

This confirms the packaged Electron preload bridge fix from #25 / #26 on the maintainer's real Windows system.

Still pending before closing the full Phase 1 gate:

• close Parlyn, reopen the created project and verify the saved scene state
• complete the remaining checklist checks, including visible malformed-document error handling and uninstall preservation
• record the tested installer SHA-256 (if independently verified)

Phase 1 remains open until those remaining acceptance items are confirmed.

[WebCrew]

Beta 4 is published and ready for maintainer acceptance:

• Release: https://github.com/WebCrew/Parlyn-Engine/releases/tag/v0.5.0-beta.4
• Installer: Parlyn-Engine-Setup-0.5.0-beta.4-x64.exe
• Installer SHA-256: d9f6113ac8a4b6578f50cc1e8a4b8f0b1eccb776f7e95e67ba518e398260d935
• Checklist: https://github.com/WebCrew/Parlyn-Engine/blob/main/docs/MAINTAINER-ACCEPTANCE-v0.5.0-beta.4.md

Automated PR checks passed: Parlyn CI, CodeQL, Windows Installer, and the real Electron preload smoke test. The release workflow also completed successfully. Keep this issue open until the real Windows Close/Delete and recovery checks are recorded.

[WebCrew]

Maintainer Beta 4 acceptance completed on Windows:

• project creation passed
• scene changes survived Close and reopen
• existing Save features passed
• disposable project Test Delete moved successfully to the Windows Recycle Bin
• automated Parlyn CI, CodeQL, Windows Installer, real Electron preload smoke test, and release workflow passed

The observed clearing of Undo/Redo after same-session Close/Open is not a scene-persistence failure and was not part of this release gate's original transaction-history acceptance. It is tracked separately and narrowly in #29.

Phase 1 acceptance is complete.