Very unfortunately, in the beta version 3.0.9 this correction seems to have regressed.
First off, I would like to go back to beta 3.0.3 and use Claude to test this again on that version. I can’t find a link to in the previous versions list, only V2 of Elements.
I’ve retested on 3.0.18 (build 24628) using the same publishbug pack from post #17 — publishing to a local-folder destination and editing only shared/assets/version.php unless noted.
Publish
What changed beforehand
How it was triggered
Deployed version.php
1
nothing (first publish after updating to 3.0.18)
MCP
refreshed — but rw/version.txt was rewritten too (24622 → 24628), so this was the post-update full republish, not the fix
2
version.php edited while Elements was running
MCP
stale
3
template edited in the same pack (visible HTML comment)
MCP
stale — though the comment did appear in the published index.php
4
quit and relaunched Elements, no edits at all
MCP
refreshed, with rw/version.txt untouched — so not a forced full republish
5
version.php edited while Elements was running
Publish button
stale — identical to row 2
On the trigger: rows 1–4 were published through the new Elements MCP server (I’ve been driving this project with Claude Opus 5 via MCP), so I added row 5 as a control — pressing Publish in the app myself, same conditions as row 2. Same outcome, so the trigger isn’t a factor.
I ran the same sequence on 3.0.17 with identical results, plus one extra case there: closing and reopening the documentwithout quitting the app changed nothing.
So the “source newer than export” comparison looks like it runs when the dev pack is loaded at app launch, rather than at publish time: any shared/assets edit made while Elements is running doesn’t reach the server until the next relaunch.
One other thing that looks like a regression: previously, changing a template in the same pack forced that pack’s assets across in the same publish — that was the workaround I’d been relying on. On both 3.0.17 and 3.0.18 it no longer works (row 3): the template change reaches the page, the assets don’t.
The pack and project are unchanged from the ones you have apart from the version string, so the repro is: edit version.php, publish (stale), quit and relaunch, publish (fresh). I’ve left mine in the mismatched state (source v2.3, deployed v2.2) if that’s useful.
refreshed — but rw/version.txt was rewritten too (24622 → 24628), so this was the post-update full republish, not the fix
stale