diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -15,6 +15,88 @@
 
 ---
 
+## [0.17.7] - 2026-09-14
+
+Correctness-hardening point release on the 0.17.x line, consolidating the 0.17.6 breaking batch. It
+closes a family of silent cross-host correctness bugs in the equality, ordering, integer-narrowing
+and string primitives, and adds the systematic test coverage that exposed them. No kernel-surface
+breaking changes.
+
+### Highlights
+
+- **Silent-wrong primitives corrected across hosts**
+  ([#745](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/745),
+  [#742](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/742)): new shared cross-host fixtures
+  uncovered ~a dozen primitives (`equal`/`compare` on collections, float equality, `bigintToIntN`
+  narrowing, `parseUint*` bounds, astral-plane string ops) that returned wrong results on one or more
+  non-Haskell hosts while appearing to pass. All are now correct and verified per-host against the
+  Haskell reference oracle.
+- **Systematic test-coverage hardening**
+  ([#749](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/749)): new kernel coverage for previously
+  untested primitive behavior (equality/ordering collection depth, `notEqual`, `functions.const`/`flip`),
+  which drove wiring those primitives into every host's default-implementation fallback.
+- **Scale-preserving decimals across every lossy-double host**
+  ([#727](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/727),
+  [#719](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/719)): `Literal.decimal` gains a real
+  scale-preserving representation (coefficient + scale) in the Scheme, Emacs Lisp, Common Lisp and
+  TypeScript runtimes and coders, and the generated `Literal.Decimal` `equals`/`compareTo` on Java,
+  Python and Scala stop ignoring scale. The `scaleDistinctTestNames` skip list — which had been
+  masking the gap on five hosts — is deleted, so decimal scale is now verified everywhere rather
+  than excused.
+
+### Bug fixes
+
+- **[#745](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/745)** silent-wrong equality/ordering,
+  `bigintToIntN` narrowing, `parseUint32/64` bounds, and astral-plane `charAt`/`splitOn`/`compare`
+  across the eight non-Haskell hosts.
+- **[#742](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/742)** structural `equal`/`compare` on
+  maps, sets and nested decimals no longer falls back to scale-blind or print-based comparison
+  (including a hand-inlined Scala primitive that shadowed the overlay fix).
+- **[#743](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/743)** kernel JSON decoder now rejects an
+  `Either` object carrying both `left` and `right` keys instead of silently resolving one arm.
+- **[#740](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/740)** the recursive parametric union decoder
+  now emits an explicit type application instead of an untyped lambda, so recursive parametric-union
+  types generate and compile on the Java host; also fixes `update-json-kernel` reconcile to build a
+  complete inference universe so drifted kernel modules re-infer.
+- **[#720](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/720)** Python's
+  `hydra.lib.equality`/`ordering` did not satisfy IEEE `totalOrder` for floats, mis-ordering `NaN`
+  and signed zero.
+- **[#722](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/722)** two `kernelDefaultCoreProfile`
+  correctness defects: rule ids that referred to rules no longer present, and a stubbed
+  `isValidName` that accepted every name.
+
+### Improvements
+
+- **[#749](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/749)** `notEqual`/`const`/`flip` wired
+  into each host's `#609` default-implementation fallback; orphaned Avro coder test suite recovered.
+- **[#730](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/730)** a shared `~/.stack` build slot
+  (`bin/with-stack-slot.sh`) replaces the pgrep slot mechanic, serializing concurrent GHC builds
+  across the fleet behind a real mutex. The wrapper is now portable to macOS: `flock(1)` is
+  util-linux and absent there, so it is emulated via Perl's `flock()` where missing, and the
+  GNU-only `date -Is`/`date -d` calls are replaced with portable equivalents. Its bypass path also
+  no longer re-execs forever. Without these, every entry point that routes through the slot —
+  `bin/sync.sh`, `bin/test.sh`, `bin/run-bootstrapping-demo.sh` and `bin/prepare-release.sh` —
+  failed immediately on macOS.
+- **[#600](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/600)** the five published TypeScript
+  packages are subpath-import-only (uniform export surface).
+- **[#716](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/716)** `hydra.paths` reshaped onto the
+  term-graph model (`TermGraph`/`TypeGraph`), aligning path steps with the term and type grammars
+  and adding the link view of a graph; `mapKey`/`mapValue` collapse into a single `mapEntry` step.
+- **[#701](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/701)** module cache freshness is now a
+  Merkle hash over each module's dependency closure, so a change deep in the closure correctly
+  invalidates dependents.
+- **[#559](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/559)** host-agnostic build: the
+  remaining hand-coded host build logic is promoted into `hydra.build.*`, with Java as the
+  definitive second host.
+- **[#721](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/721)** `checkNestedModuleNames` packaging
+  check enforces the module-namespace no-prefix rule.
+
+### Documentation
+
+- **[#508](https://github.com/CategoricalData/hydra/issues/508)** de-Claude-speak documentation pass:
+  style-guide section added, stale paths and dead links repaired, agent-operations wiki pages moved
+  into `claude/`, and a `getting-started.md` guardrail against re-adding a TypeScript root export.
+
 ## [0.17.6] - 2026-08-30
 
 Point release on the 0.17.x line, and the last backward-incompatible batch before the 1.0 surface
diff --git a/hydra-java.cabal b/hydra-java.cabal
--- a/hydra-java.cabal
+++ b/hydra-java.cabal
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
 -- see: https://github.com/sol/hpack
 
 name:           hydra-java
-version:        0.17.6
+version:        0.17.7
 synopsis:       Hydra's Java coder: emit Java source from Hydra modules
 description:    Hydra is an implementation of the LambdaGraph data model, which takes advantage of an isomorphism between labeled hypergraphs and typed lambda calculus: in Hydra, "graphs are programs, and programs are graphs". Java support for Hydra
 category:       Data
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@
   build-depends:
       base >=4.19.0 && <4.22
     , containers >=0.6.7 && <0.8
-    , hydra-jvm ==0.17.6
-    , hydra-kernel ==0.17.6
+    , hydra-jvm ==0.17.7
+    , hydra-kernel ==0.17.7
     , scientific >=0.3.7 && <0.4
   default-language: Haskell2010
diff --git a/src/main/haskell/Hydra/Java/Coder.hs b/src/main/haskell/Hydra/Java/Coder.hs
--- a/src/main/haskell/Hydra/Java/Coder.hs
+++ b/src/main/haskell/Hydra/Java/Coder.hs
@@ -1972,7 +1972,7 @@
 
       let fname = Core.unName (Core.fieldTypeName ft)
           ftype = Core.fieldTypeType ft
-      in (Logic.ifElse (isBinaryType ftype) (arraysEqualsClause tmpName fname) (Logic.ifElse (isBigNumericType ftype) (compareToZeroClause tmpName fname) (equalsClause tmpName fname)))
+      in (Logic.ifElse (isBinaryType ftype) (arraysEqualsClause tmpName fname) (Logic.ifElse (isBigIntegerType ftype) (compareToZeroClause tmpName fname) (equalsClause tmpName fname)))
 
 equalsClause :: String -> String -> Syntax.InclusiveOrExpression
 equalsClause tmpName fname =
@@ -2327,11 +2327,10 @@
         javaSerializableType,
         javaComparableType] [])
 
-isBigNumericType :: Core.Type -> Bool
-isBigNumericType typ =
+isBigIntegerType :: Core.Type -> Bool
+isBigIntegerType typ =
     case (Strip.deannotateType typ) of
       Core.TypeLiteral v0 -> case v0 of
-        Core.LiteralTypeDecimal -> True
         Core.LiteralTypeInteger v1 -> case v1 of
           Core.IntegerTypeBigint -> True
           _ -> False