Agent Control release notes for v1.18.0

src/content/docs/release-notes/agent-control-release-notes/agent-control-1-18-0.mdx

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+---
+subject: Agent Control
+releaseDate: '2026-07-06'
+version: 1.18.0
+features: ['Adds exponential backoff + jitter retries to OCI artifact fetches via a new `BackoffPolicy` (configurable under `self_update.download_retry`), replacing the old `with_retries(usize, Duration)` API.', 'add post-download script support for OCI packages.', 'Hardens service restart policies on Linux and Windows (systemd rate limiting: 5 restarts max in 60s) to prevent crash-looping from saturating CPU.', 'Added support for remote agent type definition retrieval from OCI registries.', 'Agent type definitions now tolerate unknown fields for forward compatibility.', 'On-host agents: now it is possible to avoid specifying a health check in the agent type definition, in which case the agent health will be not reported.', 'On-host agents: removed command-based version checking. Agent version is now determined from OCI package metadata, eliminating the need for `deployment.version` configuration in agent type definitions.', 'Replace filesystem in on-host agent-type definitions with an explicit, recursive, tagged-kind tree: every entry declares `kind: file | dir | dir_content_from_map`, and `dir` entries nest via `entries:`.', 'On-host filesystem entries now accept a `persistent` flag (default `false`): ephemeral entries are deleted on sub-agent stop, persistent entries survive until the agent is removed from the fleet. Reconciliation across writes is driven by a `.ac-managed-paths.json` manifest (reserved filename — agent types must not declare it) so paths Agent Control no longer owns are deleted while sub-agent-created files are preserved.', 'Include new ''shared-filesystem-dir` variable for Agent Types.', 'Extend internal `fs` crate with a copy operation.', 'Removed the filesystem manifest-based prune mechanism; Agent Control no longer deletes previously-declared paths that a config later drops. Agent-managed files are reclaimed only when the agent is removed from the fleet.']
+enhancements: []
+bugs: ['On-host self-update: an empty `version: ""` pushed from Fleet Control now behaves the same as an absent `version` field (no-op, no update attempted). Previously it silently triggered a pull of the `:latest` OCI tag.']
+security: ['Updated rust crate config to 0.15.25', 'Updated rust crate syn to 2.0.118', 'Updated alpine/helm to v4.2.2', 'Updated rust crate bytes to 1.12.0', 'Updated rust crate serde-saphyr to 0.0.29', 'Updated rust crate actix-web to 4.14.0', 'Updated rust crate quote to 1.0.46', 'Updated kubernetes crates (major)', 'Updated rust crate opentelemetry-semantic-conventions to 0.32.1', 'Updated rust crate mockall to 0.15.0', 'Updated rust to v1.96.1', 'Updated rust crate aws-lc-rs to 1.17.1', 'Updated rust crate rustls-pki-types to 1.15.0', 'Updated rust crate opamp-client to v0.0.41']
+---
+
+### New features
+
+- Adds exponential backoff + jitter retries to OCI artifact fetches via a new `BackoffPolicy` (configurable under `self_update.download_retry`), replacing the old `with_retries(usize, Duration)` API.
+- add post-download script support for OCI packages.
+- Hardens service restart policies on Linux and Windows (systemd rate limiting: 5 restarts max in 60s) to prevent crash-looping from saturating CPU.
+- Added support for remote agent type definition retrieval from OCI registries.
+- Agent type definitions now tolerate unknown fields for forward compatibility.
+- On-host agents: now it is possible to avoid specifying a health check in the agent type definition, in which case the agent health will be not reported.
+- On-host agents: removed command-based version checking. Agent version is now determined from OCI package metadata, eliminating the need for `deployment.version` configuration in agent type definitions.
+- Replace filesystem in on-host agent-type definitions with an explicit, recursive, tagged-kind tree: every entry declares `kind: file | dir | dir_content_from_map`, and `dir` entries nest via `entries:`.
+- On-host filesystem entries now accept a `persistent` flag (default `false`): ephemeral entries are deleted on sub-agent stop, persistent entries survive until the agent is removed from the fleet. Reconciliation across writes is driven by a `.ac-managed-paths.json` manifest (reserved filename — agent types must not declare it) so paths Agent Control no longer owns are deleted while sub-agent-created files are preserved.
+- Include new 'shared-filesystem-dir` variable for Agent Types.
+- Extend internal `fs` crate with a copy operation.
+- Removed the filesystem manifest-based prune mechanism; Agent Control no longer deletes previously-declared paths that a config later drops. Agent-managed files are reclaimed only when the agent is removed from the fleet.
+
+### Bug fixes
+
+- On-host self-update: an empty `version: ""` pushed from Fleet Control now behaves the same as an absent `version` field (no-op, no update attempted). Previously it silently triggered a pull of the `:latest` OCI tag.
+
+### Security updates
+
+- Updated rust crate config to 0.15.25
+- Updated rust crate syn to 2.0.118
+- Updated alpine/helm to v4.2.2
+- Updated rust crate bytes to 1.12.0
+- Updated rust crate serde-saphyr to 0.0.29
+- Updated rust crate actix-web to 4.14.0
+- Updated rust crate quote to 1.0.46
+- Updated kubernetes crates (major)
+- Updated rust crate opentelemetry-semantic-conventions to 0.32.1
+- Updated rust crate mockall to 0.15.0
+- Updated rust to v1.96.1
+- Updated rust crate aws-lc-rs to 1.17.1
+- Updated rust crate rustls-pki-types to 1.15.0
+- Updated rust crate opamp-client to v0.0.41
+
+For a detailed description of changes, see the [release notes](https://github.com/newrelic/newrelic-agent-control/releases/tag/1.18.0).