---
title: Bengal 0.1.8
description: External references, cross-site link previews, config v2, cache CLI, and Patitas CommonMark improvements
type: changelog
date: 2026-01-13
draft: false
lang: en
tags: [release, changelog, external refs, cache, config, patitas]
keywords: [release, 0.1.8, external references, link previews, cache hash, config v2, patitas]
category: changelog
---

# Bengal 0.1.8

**Key additions:** Cross-project documentation links and cross-site previews, nested config v2, cache hashing CLI with autodoc self-validation, and Patitas CommonMark compliance improvements.

---

## Highlights

### External Linking & Previews
- **External references**: `[[ext:project:target]]` syntax with template-based resolution, cached index lookups, and exported `xref.json` for consumers; includes built-in templates for Python stdlib and common libs (requests/httpx, pydantic/fastapi/sqlalchemy, numpy/pandas).
- **Link previews**: Cross-site previews for whitelisted hosts with allowed host/scheme settings, CORS fetch, and per-host failure thresholds.

### Config & Packaging
- **Config v2**: Nested config architecture with structured `site.*`/`build.*` accessors, backward-compatible loader alias, and explicit disabled-feature booleans (e.g., `features.rss: false`).
- **Outputs config**: Rename `features.yaml` → `outputs.yaml` (compat preserved); remove unused `features.syntax_highlighting` toggle.
- **Kida packaging**: Remove bundled Kida engine in favor of `kida-templates>=0.1.1`, keeping template support while shrinking the tree.

### CLI & Cache
- **Cache CLI**: New `bengal cache inputs` and `bengal cache hash` commands (JSON/verbose) for deterministic CI cache keys that include the Bengal version.
- **Autodoc cache validation**: Track hash+mtime for autodoc sources, detect stale inputs in taxonomy change detection, and migrate cleanly from pre-0.1.8 caches.
- **GitHub Pages cache**: Workflow cache invalidation tightened to rebuild when outputs are missing.

### Markdown Parser
- **Patitas**: Container-stack architecture phases 1-4 for lists/blockquote handling, lazy blockquote continuation, entity parsing fixes; full CommonMark 0.31.2 compliance (652/652 spec examples, no xfails).

---

## Upgrading

```bash
uv pip install --upgrade bengal
# or
pip install --upgrade bengal
```
