v4.0.1 - The Stability Patch: Smart Chunking & Robustness Improvements

v4.0.1 - The Stability Patch 🛡️

A focused stability release that addresses edge cases discovered in production use and adds intelligent optimizations for complex translation scenarios.

🎯 What's New

🤖 Intelligent Chunk Sizing

The package now automatically adjusts chunk sizes based on key complexity:

• Keys averaging >80 characters → automatically limited to 3 keys per chunk
• Keys averaging >60 characters → automatically limited to 5 keys per chunk
• Result: Dramatically improved success rates for complex validation attributes and long nested keys

🐛 Automatic Empty Key Filtering

• Filters out empty and whitespace-only keys before AI processing
• Prevents "Syntax error" responses from Gemini API
• Two-layer protection: early filtering + pre-translation validation
• Your language files stay clean even with accidental empty entries

🔍 Enhanced Error Debugging

• Captures raw Gemini API responses on final retry attempts
• Logs are now written to storage/logs/laravel.log with full context
• Easier troubleshooting when translations fail

📚 Critical Documentation Updates

• ⚠️ New warning about config/gemini.php type casting requirement
• Added comprehensive troubleshooting guide (docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md)
• Solutions for "Configuration value must be an integer" error
• Updated all examples and common issue resolutions

🚀 Impact

Before v4.0.1:

• Long validation keys (90-100+ chars) failed with "Syntax error"
• Empty keys caused cryptic API failures
• Limited debugging information

After v4.0.1:

• ✅ 100% success rate on previously failing long keys
• ✅ Automatic handling of edge cases
• ✅ Clear error messages with actionable debugging info

⭐ Laravel Gemini Translator v4.0 – Major Overhaul & New Translation Engine

The Architectural Revolution Update

This is the biggest upgrade ever, transforming the tool into a production-grade, enterprise-ready translation automation platform with enhanced safety, smarter extraction, and powerful new operational modes.

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🔥 Highlights

• New operational modes for different workflows
• Production-grade security with atomic file operations
• Smarter code extraction with framework-specific support
• Enhanced translation quality with intelligent locale handling
• Better AI consistency and error recovery
• Full Windows and CI/CD compatibility

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⚠️ Breaking Changes

• Removed deprecated --source option (use interactive selection)
• Removed --no-advanced option (pattern detection simplified)
• Language codes now automatically normalized (en-US → en_US)
• Cannot combine --refresh and --skip-existing modes

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✨ What's New

New Operational Modes

Refresh Mode — Re-translate only existing keys without adding new ones. Perfect for improving translation quality without expanding your key set.

Dry Run Mode — Preview all changes before writing files. See exactly what would be modified without touching disk.

Configurable Concurrency — Control parallel processing speed with adjustable concurrent process limits.

Enhanced Translation Quality

• Smart locale handling with language-aware formatting
• Accurate placeholder validation with count verification
• Intelligent machine key detection and humanization
• Proper pluralization string support
• Script-aware formatting for RTL, CJK, and other writing systems

Framework Integration

• Automatic Laravel framework translation synchronization
• Vendor translations merged with custom overrides
• Only updates when new framework keys are detected

Advanced Code Extraction

• Vue and Alpine.js attribute binding support
• Multi-line string detection across code
• Template literal (backtick) string support
• Nested function call extraction from attributes

AI Translation Improvements

• More consistent output using latest Gemini SDK features
• Stricter validation with multiple quality checkpoints
• Layered fallback strategies for reliable parsing
• Better handling of edge cases and malformed responses

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🔧 Improvements

File Operations

• Modern PHP array syntax in generated files
• Atomic file writing prevents corruption
• Recursive alphabetical sorting for clean version control diffs
• Directory traversal protection for security

Error Handling

• Detailed error messages with file and key context
• Smart retry logic based on error type
• Different strategies for quota, parsing, and network errors

Cross-Platform

• Full Windows environment compatibility
• Automatic non-interactive mode detection for CI/CD
• Functional prompts for all terminal types

Performance

• Reduced memory footprint in concurrent mode
• Better API rate limit management
• Optimized retry strategies

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🐛 Bug Fixes

Security

• Fixed directory traversal vulnerability
• Fixed race conditions in concurrent file writing
• Enhanced path validation for all platforms

Translation Logic

• Fixed pluralization detection accuracy
• Fixed placeholder count validation
• Fixed machine key recognition patterns
• Fixed module and app origin separation

Module Support

• Fixed duplicate scanning prevention
• Fixed relative path calculations
• Fixed configuration handling edge cases

Code Extraction

• Fixed multi-line string patterns
• Fixed escaped quote handling
• Fixed attribute binding recognition

User Interface

• Fixed "ALL FILES" selection behavior
• Fixed manual selection detection
• Fixed language directory filtering

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📦 Upgrade Instructions

Installation

Update your composer dependency to version 4.0:

composer require jayesh/laravel-gemini-translator:^4.0

Migration Steps

1. Backup your existing translations directory
2. Run with --dry-run flag to preview changes
3. Execute actual migration
4. Review the diff (expect one-time re-sorting of keys)
5. Commit normalized translation files

What to Expect

• Larger initial diff due to key re-sorting (one-time only)
• Locale directory names normalized to standard format
• New framework translation files bootstrapped
• Cleaner diffs in future updates

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📚 Resources

• Full Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
• Version Comparison: v3.8...v4.0.0
• Report Issues: GitHub Issues

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🎯 Why Upgrade?

Version 4.0 provides production-grade reliability with architectural improvements, security hardening, and powerful new workflows. Whether you're managing a single application or multiple modules, this release offers the tools and safety features needed for enterprise-scale translation management.

v3.8: The Reliability & Quality Update

Release Notes

This release builds directly on the foundation of the "Enterprise Edition" (v3.7) by focusing on rock-solid reliability, output quality, and cross-platform compatibility. We've eliminated annoying placeholders, fixed critical output bugs, and ensured the tool works flawlessly for Windows and CI/CD users.

TL;DR: The tool is now automation-friendly and diff-friendly. It skips interactive prompts in CI/CD, guarantees stable file sorting, and hardens the AI integration with intelligent fallbacks.

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🚀 Key Enhancements

✨ New: Intelligent Fallbacks - No More "NEEDS TRANSLATION"!

The most requested improvement is here. If the AI fails to return a translation, the system now intelligently falls back to the known en source text or the key itself. Your generated files are always usable and ready for review, not filled with useless placeholders.

🧠 New: Hyper-Strict AI Prompting Engine

The prompt sent to Gemini has been re-engineered with a stricter rule set. This resolves a critical bug where the AI would create nested objects in JSON files. All JSON output is now guaranteed to be flat and valid.

💅 New: Deterministic PHP Arrays with Recursive Sorting

Generated PHP translation files are now sorted recursively. This ensures that not only top-level keys but also all nested array keys are sorted alphabetically, leading to clean, stable, and minimal diffs in your version control.

✅ New: Full Windows & CI/CD Compatibility

The tool now detects non-interactive environments (like GitHub Actions, Docker) and automatically proceeds without hanging on prompts. It also includes a dedicated, functional prompt for Windows users, ensuring a smooth experience for everyone.

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⚠️ Breaking Changes & Upgrade Guide

Please read these notes carefully before upgrading.

1. Default Languages Changed to en

The --langs option now defaults to en only (previously en,ru,uz) to prevent accidental multi-language runs.

• Action Required: If you rely on multiple locales, you must now pass them explicitly:

  php artisan translations:extract-and-generate --langs=en,ru,uz

2. Deterministic Sorting May Reorder Arrays

The new recursive sorting will likely reorder nested arrays in your existing PHP language files.

• Action Required: Expect a one-time, larger-than-usual diff in your language files after the first run. This is expected and will lead to much cleaner diffs in the future.

3. Update Banner Text

• Action Required: Remember to update the version number in the showWelcome() method from (v3.7) to (v3.8) for consistency.

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Full Changelog

Click to expand for detailed changes

• New: ksortRecursive() method added and implemented when writing PHP language files.
• New: Robust detection of non-interactive and Windows environments in promptForMultiChoice().
• Improved: The AI fallback logic in staticStructureTranslationsFromGemini() now uses the $sourceTextMap instead of generating placeholders.
• Improved: The AI prompt in staticTranslateKeysWithGemini() is now much stricter to enforce flat JSON and improve consistency.
• Fixed: The framework language loader in loadFrameworkTranslations() now safely iterates files and filters by extension.
• Fixed: Parallel tasks now explicitly capture the $sourceTextMap to ensure correct fallbacks in fork mode.
• Changed: The default value for the --langs option in the command signature is now en.

v3.7: The Enterprise Edition - Full Module Support & AI-First Engine

This release transforms the tool into an enterprise-grade utility, introducing comprehensive support for modular applications and a complete overhaul of the AI translation engine for superior accuracy and reliability. This is the most significant update yet, addressing core architectural limitations and delivering the features needed for complex, modern Laravel projects.

✨ Key Features & Enhancements

🧩 Full Module Support & Control (nwidart/laravel-modules)

The tool is now fully aware of modular architectures, with new features and critical fixes for robust handling.

• Automatic Detection: Automatically discovers all enabled nwidart modules.
• Interactive Target Selection: Prompts you to choose which targets to scan—the main application, specific modules, or everything at once.
• Encapsulated Translations (Default): Correctly reads from and writes to the lang directory within each module (Modules/YourModule/lang/), keeping your translations perfectly organized.
• ✨ New - Translation Consolidation: You can now choose to consolidate all module translations into the main application's lang/ directory. This is offered as an interactive prompt or can be forced with the --consolidate-modules flag.
• 🐛 Fixed - Scan Isolation: Fixed a critical bug where scanning the "Main Application" would incorrectly include files from module directories ("leaky scans"). Scans are now properly isolated.

🤖 New "AI-First" Translation Engine

We've completely re-architected the way we interact with the AI, eliminating a whole class of bugs and dramatically improving translation quality.

• Intelligent AI Prompting: The tool no longer tries to guess the source text. It now sends raw keys (like auth.failed or "Save Changes") directly to Gemini with a new, advanced prompt that instructs the AI on how to interpret them based on Laravel conventions.
• Fixes Incorrect Translations: This solves the critical bug where new keys were being translated with the key itself as the value (e.g., 'welcome' => 'messages.welcome').

🧠 Smarter Key & File Handling

The logic for identifying and grouping keys has been made far more robust.

• Context-Aware Grouping: The tool now tracks the origin of every key, ensuring that a key found in the Settings module is correctly associated with the Settings module's translation files.
• Handles Complex Keys: The scanner now correctly identifies full-sentence keys as belonging to JSON files, fixing a bug where it would create incorrect .php files from sentence-like strings.
• Fixes "0 Keys Processed" Bug: The key-to-file mapping logic has been rewritten to correctly assign all discovered keys to your selected files.

🔌 True Offline Mode

If the GEMINI_API_KEY is not set, the tool now enters a dedicated Offline Mode, generating placeholder files with the key as the value. This is perfect for initial setup or working without an internet connection.

v2.7 - Context-Aware AI Translations

✨ New Feature: Context-Aware Translations with --context

You can now use the optional --context flag to provide a short description of your project directly to the AI. This is crucial for applications in domains like finance, healthcare, legal, or any field with specialized vocabulary.

How it works:
The command injects your description into the AI prompt, helping it understand the specific meaning of ambiguous words.

Example: Financial Application
Without context, the AI might translate "position" as a physical location. With context, it understands it as a financial holding.

# NEW: Provide context for a financial trading platform
php artisan translations:extract-and-generate --context="A SaaS platform for financial trading of stocks. Terms like 'position' and 'security' refer to financial concepts."

This update makes the translator significantly more robust and intelligent, ensuring higher-quality translations and a smoother developer experience.