refactor: de-brand "limina" — read as plain aexp

[KadenMc]

Summary

limina (github.com/KadenMc/limina) was vendored in on 2026-04-20 as a research harness — meant as a one-time inspiration, but the name "seeped in deep" (~280 occurrences across code identifiers, a public-API surface, persisted storage keys, the vendored tree, docs, and tests). This makes the harness read as plain aexp, while keeping a modest, honest credit. The package name (agentic-experiments / aexp) is unchanged.

One PR, staged commits A–E, then housekeeping + the 0.5.0 release cut.

Stages

• A — vendored tree (0237ee4): de-brand the harness tree; delete the stale top-level skill/ (its body told the agent to git clone github.com/theam/limina).
• B — persisted keys, dual-read (cba517b): rename the stored keys with a read-side fallback — existing signac projects + install markers self-heal, no migration.
• C — code identifiers / public API (2d77fb5): rename the limina-branded identifiers; module aexp.limina_io → aexp.kb_io.
• D — prose (fdd0069): docstrings, comments, slash commands, docs/**, README, pyproject, CHANGELOG.
• test (9fb822d): direct unit tests for the dual-read fallback.
• E — kill the vendor/ directory (c710cb6): src/aexp/vendor/limina/ → src/aexp/scaffold/ — both vendor/ and limina/ directories gone. Drop the vendoring-ceremony files (VENDORED_FROM.txt, VERSION); retire the "vendor" vocabulary (compute_vendor_sha→compute_scaffold_sha, VENDOR_ROOT→SCAFFOLD_ROOT, vendor_sha→scaffold_sha, _VENDOR_TEMPLATES*, the merge_* vendor* locals→shipped*). Drop dead reference/ excludes from pyproject.
• shim drop (de80482): aexp.limina_io was briefly kept as a re-export shim; removed it — no external consumers, no API-stability commitment yet.
• housekeeping: README — drop feature-count tallies (81bc1bc) and the stale version line + v0.3 roadmap from ## Status (844e361).
• release (c873fb1): version bump to 0.5.0, CHANGELOG [Unreleased] cut to [0.5.0].

Breaking changes (public API)

Old names are removed — no compat shim:

Old	New
install_limina()	install_scaffold()
is_limina_installed()	is_scaffold_installed()
compute_vendor_sha()	compute_scaffold_sha()
LiminaArtifactRef	ArtifactRef
module aexp.limina_io	aexp.kb_io

Persisted keys — renamed, with a read-side fallback (no migration)

• run-link key job.doc["limina"] → job.doc["aexp"] — via schema.read_run_link() / write_run_link(); read_run_link falls back to the legacy limina key, write_run_link clears it so a re-stamped job self-heals.
• install marker limina_vendor_sha → scaffold_sha — the install short-circuit dual-reads both.
• W&B run config config["limina"] → config["aexp"] — past W&B runs keep config.limina; new runs get config.aexp.
• validator error codes limina.* → aexp.* (not persisted).

electricrag's existing .runs/ and .aexp/installed.json keep resolving untouched.

Kept on purpose

• A muted credit + KadenMc/limina link in a README "Acknowledgements" section and one docs/concepts.md line.
• CHANGELOG.md history left verbatim.
• The legacy marker key name limina_vendor_sha in the dual-read fallback.

Release — 0.5.0

This PR bumps pyproject.toml to 0.5.0 and cuts CHANGELOG [0.5.0]. After merge, the release is tagged + published manually: git tag v0.5.0 on the merge commit, then poetry publish --build to PyPI.

Consumer (electricrag) follow-ups — after merge, maintainer-run

1. aexp install --force (--dev, dry-run first) to refresh the de-branded AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md block-merge + slash commands; re-run aexp airgapped init after.
2. Hand-delete the now-orphaned .claude/skills/limina/.
3. Fix the one notebook import from aexp.limina_io import … → from aexp.kb_io import … (hard break — no shim).

Testing

• Full suite: 459 passed, 5 skipped (pre-existing environmental skips), green at each stage.
• ruff check src tests — clean.
• mypy — only pre-existing noise (untyped signac/frontmatter, type-arg, no-untyped-def, a ported-kb_validate.py operand error); the refactor introduces none.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code