[Abdullahbinmushtaq]

Summary

Implements the deliverables for v0.2.5, replacing anecdotal overhead claims with a reproducible benchmark harness, verifying documentation links, and entering feature freeze ahead of the v0.3.0 stable release.

Key Changes

• Overhead Benchmark Harness (tests/benchmarks/): Added a 1,000-step synthetic stream generator and runner to measure per-step check latency across all detectors and embedder backends.
• CI Benchmark Job: Added a GitHub Actions workflow job to run the benchmark on Ubuntu (Python 3.12) and save the report as an artifact.
• Documentation Updates:
  • Added docs/performance.md explaining the benchmark methodology, memory profile, and local reproduction steps.
  • Updated README.md to reflect measured performance and distinguish hash-based embeddings from neural embeddings.
  • Added a "Roadmap & Release Plan" section to both README.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Link Checker (scripts/check_links.py): Added automated validation for local markdown links and anchors, wired into CI and release gates.
• Release Preparation: Bumped package version to 0.2.5, updated CHANGELOG.md, and locked runtime changes for feature freeze.

Compatibility

• Zero runtime behavior change: Detectors, circuit breaker logic, defaults, budget boundaries, and public APIs remain unchanged.