chore: prepare for release v0.18.0

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -9,6 +9,77 @@ This project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.htm
 >
 > The changes related to the Colang language and runtime have moved to [CHANGELOG-Colang](./CHANGELOG-Colang.md) file.
 
+## [0.18.0] - 2025-11-04
+
+### 🚀 Features
+
+- *(bot-thinking)* Add reasoning trace extraction from llm calls ([#1431](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1431)) 
+- *(bot-thinking)* Emit BotThinking events with reasoning traces ([#1432](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1432)) 
+- *(bot-thinking)* Improve event logging and add bot thinking display ([#1434](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1434)) 
+- Add Azure OpenAI embedding provider ([#702](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/702)) 
+- *(library)* Add Cisco AI Defense integration ([#1433](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1433)) 
+- *(cache)* Add LFU caching system for models (currently applied to content safety checks) #1436 
+- *(cache)* Add LLM metadata caching for model and provider information ([#1456](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1456)) 
+- *(cache)* Add caching support for topic safety and content safety output checks ([#1457](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1457)) 
+- *(cache)* Add caching support for jailbreak detection ([#1458](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1458)) 
+- Add Cohere embedding integration ([#1305](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1305)) 
+- Add Google embedding integration ([#1304](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1304)) 
+- *(llm)* Add automatic provider inference for LangChain LLMs ([#1460](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1460)) 
+- *(llm)* Add custom HTTP headers support to ChatNVIDIA provider ([#1461](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1461)) 
+- *(benchmark)* Create mock LLM server for use in benchmarks ([#1403](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1403)) 
+
+### 🐛 Bug Fixes
+
+- *(config)* Validate content safety and topic control configs at creation time ([#1450](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1450)) 
+- *(jailbreak)* Capitalization of `Snowflake` in use of `snowflake-arctic-embed-m-long` name. ([#1464](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1464)) 
+- *(runtime)* Ensure stop flag is set for policy violations in parallel rails ([#1467](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1467)) 
+- *(llm)* [**breaking**] Extract reasoning traces to separate field instead of prepending ([#1468](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1468)) 
+- *(streaming)* [**breaking**] Raise error when stream_async used with disabled output rails streaming ([#1470](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1470)) 
+- *(llm)* Add fallback extraction for reasoning traces from <think> tags ([#1474](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1474)) 
+- *(runtime)* Set stop flag for exception-based rails in parallel mode ([#1487](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1487)) 
+
+### 🚜 Refactor
+
+- [**breaking**] Replace reasoning trace extraction with LangChain additional_kwargs ([#1427](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1427)) 
+
+### 📚 Documentation
+
+- Release notes for v0.17.0 ([#1438](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1438)) 
+- More detail for release notes ([#1447](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1447)) 
+- *(examples)* Add nemoguards cache configuration example ([#1459](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1459)) 
+- Add guide for bot reasoning guardrails ([#1479](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1479)) 
+- *(cache)* Documentation on in-memory caching ([#1480](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1480)) 
+- Update LLM reasoning traces config guidance ([#1483](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1483)) 
+
+### 🎨 Styling
+
+- *(cache)* Replace pass with ellipsis in abstract methods ([#1455](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1455)) 
+
+### 🧪 Testing
+
+- Add mock embedding provider tests ([#1446](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1446)) 
+- *(cli)* Add comprehensive CLI test suite and reorganize files ([#1339](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1339)) 
+- Skip FastEmbed tests when not in live mode ([#1462](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1462)) 
+- Fix flaky stats logging interval timing test ([#1463](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1463)) 
+- Restore test that was skipped due to Colang 2.0 serialization issue ([#1449](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1449)) 
+
+### ⚙️ Miscellaneous Tasks
+
+- Resolve PyPI publish workflow trigger and reliability issues ([#1443](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1443)) 
+- Fix sparse checkout for publish pypi workflow ([#1444](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1444)) 
+- Drop Python 3.9 support ahead of October 2025 EOL ([#1426](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1426)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean tracing (10 errors) ([#1388](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1388)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean logging (43 errors) ([#1395](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1395)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean kb/ (1 error) ([#1385](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1385)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean /cli (37 errors) ([#1380](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1380)) 
+- Update insert licenser pe-commit-hooks to use current year ([#1452](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1452)) 
+- *(library)* Remove unused vllm requirements.txt files ([#1466](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1466)) 
+- *(llm)* Deprecate nemoguardrails.llm.params module in favor of direct parameter passing ([#1471](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1471)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean embeddings/ (25 errors) ([#1383](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1383)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean server/ (20 errors) ([#1397](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1397)) 
+- *(types)* Type-clean llm/ (27 errors) ([#1394](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1394)) 
+
+
 ## [0.17.0] - 2025-10-09
 
 ### 🚀 Features

README.md

@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
 [![Code style: black](https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg)](https://github.com/psf/black)
 [![arXiv](https://img.shields.io/badge/arXiv-2310.10501-b31b1b.svg)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.10501)
 
-> **LATEST RELEASE / DEVELOPMENT VERSION**: The [main](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/tree/main) branch tracks the latest released beta version: [0.17.0](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/tree/v0.17.0). For the latest development version, checkout the [develop](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/tree/develop) branch.
+> **LATEST RELEASE / DEVELOPMENT VERSION**: The [main](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/tree/main) branch tracks the latest released beta version: [0.18.0](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/tree/v0.18.0). For the latest development version, checkout the [develop](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/tree/develop) branch.
 
 > **DISCLAIMER**: The beta release is undergoing active development and may be subject to changes and improvements, which could cause instability and unexpected behavior. We currently do not recommend deploying this beta version in a production setting. We appreciate your understanding and contribution during this stage. Your support and feedback are invaluable as we advance toward creating a robust, ready-for-production LLM guardrails toolkit. The examples provided within the documentation are for educational purposes to get started with NeMo Guardrails, and are not meant for use in production applications.
 

pyproject.toml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ description = "NeMo Guardrails is an open-source toolkit for easily adding progr
 authors = ["NVIDIA <[email protected]>"]
 license = "LICENSE.md"
 readme = "README.md"
-version = "0.17.0"
+version = "0.18.0"
 packages = [{ include = "nemoguardrails" }]