chore: prepare for release v0.18.0 (#1491)

* chore(release): prepare for v0.18.0
* update release date

---------

Co-authored-by: Pouyanpi <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Pouyan <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: tgasser-nv <[email protected]>

Author: 3 people

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -9,6 +9,56 @@ 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] - 2025-11-06
+
+### 🚀 Features
+
+- *(bot-thinking)* Implement BotThinking events to process reasoning traces in Guardrails ([#1431](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1431)), ([#1432](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1432)), ([#1434](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1434)).
+- *(embeddings)* Add Azure OpenAI embedding provider ([#702](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/702)).
+- *(embeddings)* Add Cohere embedding integration ([#1305](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1305)).
+- *(embeddings)* Add Google embedding integration ([#1304](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1304)).
+- *(library)* Add Cisco AI Defense integration ([#1433](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1433)).
+- *(cache)* Add in-memory LFU caches for content-safety, topic-control, and jailbreak detection models ([#1436](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1436)), ([#1456](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1456)),  ([#1457](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1457)), ([#1458](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1458)).
+- *(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)).
+
+### 🐛 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
+
+- *(examples)* Add Nemoguard in-memory cache configuration example ([#1459](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1459)), ([#1480](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1480)).
+- Add guide for bot reasoning guardrails ([#1479](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1479)).
+- Update LLM reasoning traces configuration ([#1483](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1483)).
+
+### 🧪 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)* Add type-annotations and pre-commit checks for tracing ([#1388](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1388)), logging ([#1395](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1395)), kb  ([#1385](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1385)), cli ([#1380](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1380)), embeddings ([#1383](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1383)), server ([#1397](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1397)), and llm ([#1394](https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Guardrails/issues/1394)) code.
+- 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)).
+
 ## [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" }]