diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index ed7a0dc..d3f66f6 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,6 +2,24 @@
 
 All notable changes to Plan2Code will be documented in this file.
 
+## v1.8.1
+
+### ✨ Added
+
+- **User feedback collection** — Optional 1-10 rating with reason, what went well, and what went poorly
+  - Finalize prompt (Step 5) asks for optional feedback before archival, writes structured table to `overview.md`
+  - Collector parses `## User Feedback` table from `overview.md` into `RunMetrics.user_feedback`
+  - Aggregator computes `avg_user_rating` and `feedback_count` per cohort
+  - CLI offers interactive feedback collection if none found during metrics collection
+  - Analysis and improvement prompts reference `avg_user_rating` metric target (≥ 7.0)
+  - `UserFeedback` type exported from public API
+- **Pipe-safe feedback parsing** — User text containing `|` characters is escaped on write and correctly unescaped on parse using negative lookbehind regex
+
+### 🐛 Fixed
+
+- **Duplicate run files** — Interactive feedback no longer creates a second run JSON; the original is deleted before re-collecting
+- **Finalize step ordering** — Feedback collection moved to Step 5 (before archival at Step 6), ensuring `overview.md` is written while still in the active spec directory
+
 ## v1.8.0
 
 ### ✨ Added
diff --git a/package.json b/package.json
index 67fc44b..6d7615a 100644
--- a/package.json
+++ b/package.json
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "plan2code",
-  "version": "1.8.0",
+  "version": "1.8.1",
   "private": true,
   "bin": {
     "plan2code": "./install.js"
diff --git a/version.json b/version.json
index 0a3f3fb..f770a8f 100644
--- a/version.json
+++ b/version.json
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "Plan2Code",
-  "version": "1.8.0",
+  "version": "1.8.1",
   "description": "A structured 4-step workflow methodology for AI-assisted software development",
   "keywords": [
     "ai",