- Deprecate `msgspec.from_builtins` in favor of [`msgspec.convert`](https://jcristharif.com/msgspec/api.html#msgspec.convert). The new `convert` function provides a superset of the functionality available in the old `from_builtins` function. See the [converters docs](https://jcristharif.com/msgspec/converters.html) for more information (#431).
- Add a `from_attributes` argument to `msgspec.convert` for allowing conversion between object types with matching attribute names. One use case for this is converting ORM objects to `Struct` or `dataclasses` types (419).
- Support passing generic `Mapping` objects as inputs to `msgspec.convert`. These may be coerced to `dict`/`Struct`/`dataclasses`/`attrs` types (427).
- Add a new `strict` keyword argument to all `decode` functions, `Decoder` classes, as well as `msgspec.convert`. This defaults to `True`, setting it to false enables a wider set of coercion rules (e.g. coercing a `str` input to an `int`). See ["Strict" vs "Lax" Mode](https://jcristharif.com/msgspec/usage.html#strict-vs-lax-mode) for more information (434).
- Allow any of msgspec's [supported types](https://jcristharif.com/msgspec/supported-types.html) as inputs to `msgspec.convert` (#431, 418).
- Passthrough input unchanged when coercing to `typing.Any` type in `msgspec.convert` (435).
- Support parametrizing `Decoder` types at runtime (415).
- Support encoding subclasses of `UUID` (429).