chore(main): release 0.18.0

Author: cachekit-release-bot[bot]

.release-please-manifest.json

@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 {
-  ".": "0.17.1"
+  ".": "0.18.0"
 }

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,5 +1,21 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## [0.18.0](https://github.com/cachekit-io/cachekit-py/compare/v0.17.1...v0.18.0) (2026-08-05)
+
+
+### ⚠ BREAKING CHANGES
+
+* L1CacheConfig.namespace_index is removed. The flag was read by nothing and toggled no behavior, but it shipped in v0.17.1 and docs/configuration.md documented a copy-pasteable L1CacheConfig(..., namespace_index=True) example — L1CacheConfig is a frozen dataclass, so constructors still passing it now raise TypeError instead of silently lying. L1Cache.invalidate_by_key(), .invalidate_by_namespace() and .invalidate_all() are removed with it; per-key L1Cache.invalidate() is unaffected. Same removal shape as L1CacheConfig.invalidation_enabled in v0.16.0 (LAB-520).
+
+### Bug Fixes
+
+* **l1:** delete dead backed-mode SWR machinery; docs stop claiming backed SWR (LAB-388) ([#256](https://github.com/cachekit-io/cachekit-py/issues/256)) ([878ad08](https://github.com/cachekit-io/cachekit-py/commit/878ad0860a340477257d2ac4f19f3f107f0789b4))
+
+
+### Code Refactoring
+
+* delete dead L1 namespace-index/bulk-invalidation machinery (LAB-1433) ([#258](https://github.com/cachekit-io/cachekit-py/issues/258)) ([2607faf](https://github.com/cachekit-io/cachekit-py/commit/2607fafd3d0dcd974e94788b7e5d46ee676701d4))
+
 ## [0.17.1](https://github.com/cachekit-io/cachekit-py/compare/v0.17.0...v0.17.1) (2026-07-29)
 
 

pyproject.toml

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "maturin"
 
 [project]
 name = "cachekit"
-version = "0.17.1"
+version = "0.18.0"
 description = "Backend-agnostic caching for Python — intent-based decorators with circuit breaker, distributed locking, Prometheus metrics, and optional zero-knowledge AES-256-GCM encryption, on a Rust-powered core. Zero-config L1 in-memory; scales to Redis, Memcached, File, or CachekitIO."
 readme = "README.md"
 license = {text = "MIT"}

rust/Cargo.toml

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [package]
 name = "cachekit-rs"
-version = "0.17.1"
+version = "0.18.0"
 edition = "2021"
 authors = ["cachekit Contributors"]
 description = "High-performance storage engine for caching with compression and encryption"

src/cachekit/__init__.py

@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ def custom_function():
     ```
 """
 
-__version__ = "0.17.1"
+__version__ = "0.18.0"
 
 from collections.abc import Callable
 from typing import Any, TypeVar