QVAC-22963 chore[skiplog]: backmerge release-sdk-0.18.0 — version bump, changelog, NOTICE, docs

[opaninakuffo]

What this PR does

Lands the release metadata for @qvac/sdk@0.18.0 on main, per gitflow.md "Keep main aligned". No functional changes — tagged [skiplog] so it does not appear in future changelogs.

Companion release PR

• QVAC-22963 chore: release @qvac/sdk 0.18.0 #3960

Files

• packages/inference/package.json — version 0.17.1 → 0.18.0 (anchor)
• packages/sdk/package.json — version 0.17.1 → 0.18.0
• packages/bare-sdk/package.json — version 0.17.1 → 0.18.0 (lockstep)
• packages/sdk-python/.../sdk_version.py — SDK_VERSION → 0.18.0 (lockstep)
• packages/sdk/changelog/0.18.0/ — generated changelog files
• packages/sdk/CHANGELOG.md — aggregated changelog
• packages/sdk/NOTICE, packages/bare-sdk/NOTICE — updated dependency attributions
• docs/website/content/docs/reference/api/**, reference/release-notes/**, src/lib/versions.ts — docs-site API reference + release notes (0.18.x promoted, 0.17.x frozen)

[github-actions]

Review Status

Current Status: ✅ APPROVED
Approvals so far: Team Lead: 1, Member: 3

[github-actions]

License compliance — clean

No new dependency license findings in this PR.

Warn-only (shadow) mode — this check does not block merges yet.

Updated automatically by the canonical license compliance workflow.

NOTICE presence (advisory)

Missing NOTICE (advisory, does not block):

• ./.github/actions/release-merge-guard
• ./docs/website
• ./packages/ggml-coload-smoke
• ./packages/fabric/test/integration
• ./packages/inference-addon-cpp/mobile
• ./packages/sdk/e2e
• ./packages/llm-llamacpp/benchmarks/performance
• ./packages/llm-llamacpp/benchmarks/server
• ./packages/vla-ggml/sim/server
• ./packages/embed-llamacpp/benchmarks/performance
• ./packages/embed-llamacpp/benchmarks/server
• ./packages/asr-ggml/benchmarks/server