# SkillFoundry v5.6.0 Release Notes

**Release Date:** 2026-04-19
**Codename:** Parallel Dispatch

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## Overview

v5.6.0 adds two execution infrastructure features: a parallel dispatch engine for multi-story pipelines (2-5x speedup on independent work) and a natural language cron compiler that converts English scheduling descriptions into cron expressions.

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## New Features

### Parallel Dispatch Engine (`sf_parallel_analyze`)

DAG-based dependency analysis that transforms sequential story execution into parallel waves.

**How it works:**
1. Parse story dependency metadata (dependsOn, blocks, files, hasMigration)
2. Build directed acyclic graph, detect cycles
3. Topological sort into execution waves
4. Each wave contains only independent, non-conflicting tasks
5. Execute waves via Promise.allSettled with configurable concurrency

**Conflict detection:**
- File overlap: stories modifying the same files cannot run in parallel
- Migration ordering: stories with DB migrations are serialized
- Dependency chains: respects hard (dependsOn) and soft (prefers) dependencies

**Analysis output includes:**
- Wave structure with task assignments
- Critical path (longest dependency chain)
- Maximum parallelism achievable
- Estimated speedup factor
- Per-wave parallelism count

### Natural Language Cron (`sf_cron_compile`)

20+ pattern matchers for common scheduling descriptions:

| Input | Output |
|-------|--------|
| "every morning at 9am" | `0 9 * * *` |
| "weekdays at 2:30pm" | `30 14 * * 1-5` |
| "every 30 minutes" | `*/30 * * * *` |
| "every Sunday at midnight" | `0 0 * * 0` |
| "first day of every month" | `0 0 1 * *` |
| "twice a day at 9am and 5pm" | `0 9,17 * * *` |
| "every evening" | `0 18 * * *` |

**Features:**
- Confidence scoring (exact/high/medium/low)
- Next 5 execution times calculated for any expression
- Cron expression validator (ranges, steps, lists)
- Graceful fallback for unrecognized patterns

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## Files Added

| File | Purpose |
|------|---------|
| `mcp-server/src/mcp/parallel-dispatch.ts` | DAG analysis, wave generation, parallel execution engine |
| `mcp-server/src/mcp/nl-cron.ts` | NL-to-cron compiler, validator, next-run calculator |
| `docs/V5.6.0-RELEASE-NOTES.md` | This file |

## Files Modified

| File | Change |
|------|--------|
| `mcp-server/src/mcp/handler.ts` | sf_parallel_analyze and sf_cron_compile tools + handlers |
| Version files (8 locations) | 5.5.0 -> 5.6.0 |
| `README.md`, `CHANGELOG.md`, `site/` | Documentation updates |

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## Upgrade Instructions

```bash
git pull
cd mcp-server && npm run build
pm2 restart skillfoundry-mcp
```

No database changes. No migration required.
