🚀 WaterCrawl v0.5.0 Released

We're thrilled to announce the release of WaterCrawl v0.5.0 — our biggest update yet! This version comes with a host of improvements aimed at making the platform more powerful, secure, and developer-friendly.

Whether you’re already using WaterCrawl to crawl and convert websites into AI-ready knowledge, or just hearing about us for the first time, this release brings a ton of enhancements you’ll love.

---

🧱 Mono-Repo Improvements

We’ve restructured WaterCrawl into a mono-repo, making it easier to contribute, collaborate, and maintain consistency across the entire codebase.

• 📚 Docs migrated into the main repo

• ⚛️ Frontend migrated into the main repo

• 🔧 Improved internal tooling and structure for better modularity

---

💡 Developer Experience Upgrades

A smooth dev workflow is key — and we’ve doubled down on it:

• ✅ Added PR linting to enforce code standards

• 🐳 Improved Docker configuration & setup docs

• 🖼️ Enhanced README 🎨

• 🛠️ Added contribution guidelines and GitHub issue/PR templates

---

🔐 Stability & Security

Security and reliability are non-negotiable. This release addresses that head-on:

• ⚠️ Fixed Docker build warnings

• 🔐 Updated dependencies to patch known vulnerabilities

• 🧰 Added packageManager to package.json

• 🔄 Enabled MinIO consistency check on startup

---

✨ New Features

We’re also excited to introduce a major new feature:

• 📨 Invitation-based user registration — control access to your WaterCrawl instances more easily and securely.

---

🧠 Why WaterCrawl?

WaterCrawl is designed to help teams extract, structure, and prepare web data for AI workflows. Whether you’re building a knowledge base, training a chatbot, or analyzing web content, WaterCrawl gets you the clean, structured data you need — fast.

---

💙 Join the Community

We’re building WaterCrawl in the open and would love for you to be part of it!
🛠️ Try it, contribute, or star the repo on GitHub:
👉 github.com/watercrawl/watercrawl

Let’s shape the future of web crawling and AI-ready content together.

---

Got feedback or ideas? Drop them in GitHub Issues or reach out directly — we’d love to hear from you!