Front-facing honesty audit (2026)

Measured 2026-09-07 against main, live voxlang.org, and gh metadata. This page is the persistence of the six-track critique. It is research, not a product claim.

Phase 0 decisions (locked for Track A)

Decision	Choice
Install SSOT	Source-first: `cargo install --locked --path crates/vox-cli` with Rust from `rust-toolchain.toml` (1.98.1). Demote `voxup` until a published (non-draft) GitHub Release exists.
`llms.txt` authority	Both: hand file `docs/src/.well-known/llms.txt` (MCP `resource://vox/llms.txt`) and Starlight plugin `/llms.txt` (site). Update together. Serve `/.well-known/*` from `docs-astro/public/.well-known/`.
Community CTA	Contributor Hub + GitHub Issues. Do not link Discussions until the repo setting is enabled (USER-AUTHORIZED).

What a no-JS researcher sees

GitHub: 2 stars, 0 forks, empty homepageUrl, no topics, no published Releases, Discussions disabled.
Live homepage: hero is current; playground static-demo still taught retired @endpoint / @table type / @mcp.tool (hard parse errors since 2026-06-30).
Live /reference/stability/ 404 (undeployed). Site-root /llms.txt 200; /.well-known/llms.txt 404.
Live https://voxlang.org/voxup 404 — curl … \| sh pipes HTML into a shell.

Claim calibration

Claim	Verdict
One `.vox` → schema + server + browser	Defensible. Drop the deploy limb from the hero.
“100+ MCP tools”	Underclaim (331 in `contracts/mcp/tool-registry.canonical.yaml`). Overclaim is Mature, not the count.
“Marching toward a production-hardened v1.0”	Defensible as destination language next to a pre-1.0 install line.
Python-free QLoRA	Defensible with Emergent/Preview tags.
Compile `.vox` into native Tauri apps	True overclaim. `vox-gui` is the operator console.
Mesh “automatically routes”	True overclaim. Opt-in; federation routing experimental and default-off.
“zero hallucination compiler”	True overclaim. Compiler checks syntax/types; Socrates is Preview.
LSP “production-grade… full cross-reference”	True overclaim. Completions/hover partial; no `definition_provider`. Compiler-core Mature is fine.
`voxup` one-liner works	False today. No published releases; CI drafts; `voxup` ignores drafts; live script 404s.
“Funded via Open Collective”	Overstate. Collective exists; use “community-backed.”

Track A remediations (landed in-repo)

Source-first install, playground current syntax, why_vox lockstep, stability grades, agent surfaces (llms.txt, vox-docs.json, CITATION.cff, system prompt), Discussions unlinked, smoke assertions added. Live voxlang.org stays stale until docs-deploy.yml runs after these files reach main.

USER-AUTHORIZED GitHub settings (not done in this change)

Do not flip these from a docs PR. Operator checklist (gh as brbrainerd):

Set repository homepage to https://voxlang.org (gh repo edit vox-foundation/vox --homepage https://voxlang.org).
Add topics mirroring CITATION.cff keywords (programming-language, compiler, rust, ai-native, model-context-protocol).
Enable Discussions or keep the Issues/Contributor Hub links this change uses.
Align .github/FUNDING.yml with Open Collective vs GitHub Sponsors.
Cloudflare zone: confirm Managed robots.txt is off (or only prepends Content-Signals). Origin docs/src/robots.txt is copied to the site root at build; an edge override can hide the voxlang.org sitemap lines.

Track B / C backlog (later PRs)

Public @endpoint sweep: expl-runtime.md, vox-web-stack.md, VS Code README, design-system pillar tables.
Retarget frontend-surface-ownership.md / dashboard docs to vox-gui (ADR-045).
Optional noindex for vox-marquee-explainer-2026.md (do not robots-block research-index).
Fix crates/vox-forge User-Agent (github.com/vox-lang/vox → vox-foundation/vox).
Default status: roadmap on docs/superpowers/plans/** and architecture *-plan-*.md.
Bump remaining 0.4 metadata if any surface was missed.

Success criterion

A no-JS scrape of GitHub + voxlang.org/ should say: pre-1.0 (0.6.0), build from source, compiler/CLI most mature, GUI is an operator console (Preview), current bare-keyword syntax. It should not say @endpoint, “compile .vox into native Tauri apps,” “curl voxup works,” “Funded via,” or “zero hallucination compiler.”