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Changelog

All notable changes to Kward will be documented in this file.

[Unreleased]

[0.73.0] - 2026-06-29

Added

  • Added persistent session-backed worker queue job metadata as the first step toward tab-based worker queues.
  • Added experimental /queue add and /queue list commands for enqueueing the current tab session into the worker queue.
  • Added a first session-backed worker queue runner that executes one queued job and marks it ready for review after committing changes.
  • Added clean-workspace blocking for queued workers so jobs do not start on top of existing local changes.
  • Added /queue run to manually drain queued tab worker jobs sequentially until the queue is empty or a job needs attention.
  • Added worker git stash helpers as groundwork for cooperative queue suspension.
  • Added explicit queue runner suspend/resume primitives that stash and restore a running job's workspace changes.
  • Added /queue suspend <id> and /queue resume <id> commands for manually parking and resuming queued worker jobs.
  • Added /queue open <id> to open a queued worker's session for review or follow-up.
  • Added /diff to open the chronological file changes recorded in the current session in the integrated diff viewer.
  • Added /scratchpad [text|markdown|ruby] for opening unsaved editor buffers, including Vibe :w filename save-as support and Ruby :run/Modern Ctrl+R output written after __END__.
  • Added /pty <command> and the ekwsh pty <command> built-in for explicit interactive PTY passthrough sessions, enabling terminal-owned tools such as pagers to run from Kward.
  • Added minimal PTY execution for external ekwsh commands so terminal-aware tools can detect a TTY and terminal width.
  • Added Ctrl+C cancellation for running ekwsh commands and preserved tab-switch actions while shell commands are active.
  • Added quoted path completion and cached $PATH executable completion for ekwsh.
  • Added streaming ekwsh command output in the TUI transcript while commands run.
  • Added separate workspace-scoped ekwsh command history so embedded shell input no longer shares normal prompt history.
  • Added structured RPC runtime/updateSetting defaultModel values so clients can send provider and model separately while keeping the existing string format.

Changed

  • Changed PTY-backed ekwsh commands to refresh terminal window size while running so long-lived commands can adapt to resizes.
  • Changed ekwsh to default GIT_PAGER to cat, while preserving user-provided values, so Git commands do not unexpectedly enter an interactive pager under PTY execution.
  • Improved ekwsh POSIX-oriented built-ins, including exit [status], stricter cd/pwd, export NAME, assignment persistence, unalias, and shared alias-name validation.
  • Changed ekwsh configuration to prefer a POSIX /bin/sh default shell and validate runtime settings for command timeout, output cap, and shell history size.

Fixed

  • Normalized ordinary PTY line endings in ekwsh command output so transcripts avoid stray carriage returns.
  • Added ekwsh timeout and output-limit enforcement for external commands using the shared local command runner.
  • Consolidated workspace shell command execution on a shared local command runner with timeout, cancellation, bounded capture, and optional streaming support.
  • Fixed ekwsh shell output sanitization so unsafe terminal controls are stripped before command output is shown while SGR color is preserved.
  • Split Vibe editor insert/readline key handling into a focused mixin without changing editor behavior.
  • Consolidated compaction message-field reads through the shared message access helper.
  • Consolidated RPC transcript tool metadata normalization with tool event metadata so tool names, args, diffs, and changed files stay aligned.
  • Fixed RPC tool capabilities so changedFiles is advertised when emitted in tool results.
  • Removed a stale count-tests CLI branch that could crash instead of treating the input as a prompt.
  • Fixed tab failures and cancellations so red tab states always emit a runtime message explaining what happened.
  • Fixed model and reasoning changes from CLI/RPC settings so active session runtime metadata is persisted before the next turn.
  • Fixed context_for_task so candidate files with no task matches return a clear no-match message instead of only a header.
  • Fixed workspace file tools so expected filesystem permission and path-type errors are returned as tool errors instead of aborting a turn.
  • Fixed composer Ctrl+C so it no longer exits the app when no process is running.
  • Fixed the Git diff viewer so Ctrl+C and terminal-forwarded Cmd+C copy selected text.
  • Fixed pasted or dropped shell-escaped image paths so the composer hides the path text after adding the image badge.
  • Fixed read_skill tool transcript rendering so skill frontmatter starts on the line after the tool label.
  • Fixed built-in editor soft-wrap vertical movement so moving up or down preserves the visual column across wrapped visual rows and logical line boundaries.

[0.72.0] - 2026-06-28

Added

  • Added a built-in editor that can be opened from the TUI with $ or directly from the CLI with kward edit <filename>, with modern, Emacs-style, and Vibe editing modes.
  • Added richer editor workflows including syntax highlighting, undo/redo, auto-indent, soft wrap, mouse support, multi-cursor editing, relative line numbers, and an expanded Vim-like Vibe mode with visual selections, text objects, registers, marks, macros, substitution, and Ruby navigation.
  • Added /shell, an embedded Kward shell (ekwsh) for running workspace commands without leaving the TUI, including command/path completion, safe color output, optional global ekwsh.yml configuration, and rbenv shim autodetection.
  • Added /files, a searchable project file browser that can open files in the editor and remembers cursor and folder expansion state per workspace.
  • Added persistent TUI tabs for session-backed conversations, plus tab commands, shortcuts, status colors, and restoration across restarts.
  • Added /git workflows for reviewing changes, viewing diffs, staging or unstaging files, and writing commit messages from inside the TUI.
  • Added TUI composer improvements including @ file mentions, persistent workspace prompt history with Ctrl+R search, and Tab/Shift+Tab reasoning-effort cycling.
  • Added CLI execution modes via --mode auto|chat|oneshot|filter and --filter for transforming piped input.
  • Added context-budgeting tools and workflows, including read_file modes, richer source outlines, context_for_task, context_budget_stats, and restored compacted tool-output inspection.
  • Added interactive plugin commands backed by a Kward-driven canvas render loop.
  • Added experimental agent-worker support behind the existing experimental workflow.
  • Added new and expanded guides for editor usage, tabs, project files, Git workflows, agent tools, context budgeting, workspace tools, web search, code search, plugins, RPC, authentication, memory, sessions, troubleshooting, and releasing.

Changed

  • Changed the built-in editor to use the modern editing mode by default, with smarter indentation and improved keyboard handling across terminal encodings.
  • Improved TUI interaction polish across pickers, tabs, editor rendering, Git workflows, composer refresh behavior, mouse handling, and modal input isolation.
  • Improved embedded shell environment handling so Kward-managed environment values are preserved while workspace shell conveniences still work.
  • Improved RPC and session internals around steering events, session cleanup, worker metadata, session-tree traversal, and config updates.
  • Improved tool-output context budgeting so agents start with focused context, preserve inspectable originals, and report active-conversation savings more accurately.
  • Expanded documentation and generated-doc navigation to better reflect current workflows and configuration options.

Fixed

  • Fixed embedded-shell completion, environment preservation, and rbenv handling issues.
  • Fixed editor and TUI input edge cases involving shifted keys, CSI-u encodings, Command/Ctrl shortcuts, selection preservation, mouse scrolling, tab switching, modal questions, and commit-message editing.
  • Fixed many built-in editor behaviors around selection rendering, cursor movement, soft wrap, indentation, deletion/change operations, undo/search behavior, macro recording, registers, text objects, visual mode, and viewport positioning.
  • Fixed Git overlay staging and commit-message behavior.
  • Fixed session, tab, and worker state issues including tab restoration, session cleanup, worker handoff, foreground write locks, and plugin/test isolation.
  • Fixed RPC steering, tool-output restoration, context-budget statistics, and session-manager lifecycle behavior.
  • Fixed documentation rendering, navigation, tables, quote styling, and generated guide layout issues.
  • Fixed persona time-of-day handling to use the current local time.

Removed

  • Removed the placeholder message from /status output.
  • Removed unused RPC session helpers and temporarily hid worker labels behind the experimental worker flow.

[0.71.0] - 2026-06-21

Fixed

  • Fixed generated YARD guide links so doc-to-doc Markdown links point at the generated file.*.html pages.
  • Fixed web-tool results with BINARY/ASCII-8BIT response bodies so RPC tool events and TUI rendering receive UTF-8-safe content.

Changed

  • Changed transcript rendering so assistant, reasoning, and tool output starts on the same line as its label.
  • Changed the interactive startup screen to an info block.”
  • Changed shell command output capture to allow larger raw output for Kward's own compactor, preserving stdout/stderr structure and test failure summaries before model-context trimming.
  • Tightened the built-in system prompt wording to reduce repeated instruction tokens.
  • Changed generated runtime system prompts to use a stable timestamp anchor so time-based persona modifiers do not churn provider cache prefixes each turn.
  • Changed tool schema properties to be emitted in deterministic key order for more stable provider request payloads.
  • Changed large source-file reads to return an outline plus a short preview before requiring offset/limit continuation.
  • Changed large search and fetched-content tool results to preserve file, line, URL, and heading anchors during model-context compaction.
  • Changed large tool results to be compacted before they enter model context while preserving full originals in session tool-execution records, reusing existing artifact ids for repeated outputs, avoiding storage for verbatim outputs, preserving short errors exactly, reverting automatically when compaction would not reduce context, and teaching conversation compaction to preserve tool artifact ids.
  • Changed model context-window resolution to prefer cached OpenRouter metadata, infer matching provider models from that metadata when possible, and use conservative fallbacks for unknown selected models.
  • Updated the authentication guide to describe model picker selection and OpenRouter model cache refresh/list commands.

Removed

  • Removed the banner.enabled config setting and /settings toggle for hiding the interactive startup screen.
  • Removed the generated table of contents and source-checkout launch snippet from the RPC protocol guide.

Added

  • Added a Sessions guide covering saved sessions, cloning, forking, rewinding, tree navigation, compaction, and exports.
  • Added Agent Tools documentation pages covering workspace tools, context tools, and token-saving tool-output behavior.
  • Added an API reference overview page and API docs navigation dropdown for generated Ruby indexes and key namespaces.
  • Added Turbolinks-style navigation to the generated documentation site for same-origin HTML links.
  • Added a docs:check Rake task and HTMLProofer development dependency for checking generated documentation links, images, and scripts.
  • Added a docs:serve Rake task and WEBrick development dependency for previewing the built YARD documentation site locally with automatic rebuilds.
  • Added optional compaction telemetry logging for tool-output context savings.
  • Added a summarize_file_structure tool for compact source-file outlines before reading full files.
  • Added a retrieve_tool_output tool for inspecting original outputs that were compacted out of model context.
  • Added kward openrouter refresh and kward openrouter list for caching key-scoped text-capable OpenRouter models in the Kward cache directory.
  • Added /fork for creating a new session from an earlier prompt and pre-filling that prompt for editing.
  • Added f in the /sessions picker to open the fork prompt selector for the selected session.
  • Added /rename <name> for renaming the current interactive session.
  • Added r in the /sessions picker to rename the selected session without closing the picker.
  • Added c in the /sessions picker to clone the selected session and open the new clone, with a cloning spinner while it runs.
  • Added d d in the /sessions picker to delete the selected session after an inline confirmation.

[0.70.0] - 2026-06-19

Added

  • Added /rewind for revisiting earlier user prompts and continuing from there as a branch, while /tree remains the advanced full session tree navigator.

Changed

  • Changed TUI selection search to start only after pressing /, hiding the composer cursor until search mode is active and supporting shell-style editing keys while searching.
  • Changed the /sessions picker to show right-aligned relative timestamps like /rewind.
  • Changed TUI list navigation to keep long /sessions and /tree pickers centered while scrolling, and removed wrap-around at list edges.
  • Changed the saved session picker slash command to /sessions, with /resume kept as an alias.

Fixed

  • Fixed overlay open/close rendering so the interactive composer stays visible instead of briefly blinking away.
  • Fixed interactive session diff totals to show the net workspace diff instead of counting repeated edits to the same lines multiple times.
  • Fixed /sessions picker cancellation so Escape closes smoothly without a blink, while keeping the loading spinner visible as saved sessions are loaded.
  • Fixed root-prompt session tree navigation so it no longer persists an empty active branch that makes cloned sessions resume with a blank transcript.
  • Fixed /resume session picker entries to show cloned session ancestry as a tree.
  • Made /tree branch indentation more visible in the terminal session picker.
  • Fixed Encoding::CompatibilityError crash during compaction when tool results contained ASCII-8BIT (BINARY) strings from HTTP response bodies or shell output. Tool content is now normalized to UTF-8 on append.

[0.69.1] - 2026-06-18

Fixed

  • Fixed /tree session rendering to tolerate malformed cyclic tree records instead of overflowing the Ruby stack.

[0.69.0] - 2026-06-17

Added

  • Added a docs:build Rake task for building the YARD documentation site.
  • Reworked core guide documentation around developer workflows, setup, authentication, memory, personas, extensibility, plugins, web search, and code search.
  • Added fetch_content and fetch_raw web tools for reading specific URLs after search discovery.
  • Added enforce_workspace_agents_file config support for forcing full workspace AGENTS.md injection.
  • Added config-directory PRINCIPLES.md as the preferred global principles file, with AGENTS.md kept as a legacy alias.
  • Added kward sysprompt for inspecting the effective system prompt, with --raw for unannotated prompt content.

Changed

  • Changed workspace AGENTS.md handling to inject a compact read-when-relevant instruction by default instead of the full file.
  • Changed interactive runtime command/status messages to use a Runtime> transcript label instead of the assistant label.
  • Changed terminal tool transcript rendering to show a single Tool> block containing the tool invocation summary and result summary.
  • Changed transcript label colors to a quieter palette, with failed tool calls rendered in red.
  • Separated conversation system prompt state from durable transcript messages; provider request context still includes the current system prompt on every model request.
  • Persisted system prompt snapshots as session audit metadata when the prompt changes, without adding them to transcript messages.

Fixed

  • Fixed custom ask_user_question answers so trailing spaces remain visible while typing.
  • Fixed inferred soft memory learning to canonicalize user preferences and avoid storing near-duplicate memories with slightly different wording.
  • Fixed in-flight steering messages so they appear in the interactive transcript as You> entries.
  • Fixed interactive plugin slash commands and OAuth login so they show the running spinner while executing.
  • Fixed /reload so terminal plugin footers use the newly loaded plugin renderer without restarting Kward.
  • Fixed Codex GPT-5.5 RPC model metadata to report a 400k context window instead of the upstream OpenAI API context window.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented proper context window calculation whenever an image is attached to a session
  • Fixed persona selection so workspace and model personas override the default base persona instead of appending duplicate base personas.
  • Fixed Codex Responses streaming to preserve ordered response items, replay assistant phase metadata, and keep commentary/tool-planning text out of visible assistant output.
  • Fixed Codex multi-turn requests with store: false by not replaying server-assigned response item ids.
  • Fixed RPC session listing to include each session's persisted provider, model, and reasoning effort so pickers can show session-specific runtime state.

[0.68.0] - 2026-06-14

In this release, most changes are under the hood, as it included massive refactors to have an even more robust way forward.

Added

  • Added Anthropic Claude Pro/Max subscription provider support with OAuth login, static Claude model choices, and Anthropic Messages streaming.

Changed

  • Changed known context windows and reasoning effort choices to use provider/model-specific metadata for Codex, OpenRouter, Copilot, and Anthropic models.
  • Changed the default Anthropic model to Claude Sonnet 4.6 and expanded direct Anthropic model choices to include newer Claude Opus/Sonnet releases.
  • Changed resumed sessions to restore the session's last-used provider, model, and reasoning effort without rewriting default config.
  • Documented the tool contract: schemas define strict generated/returned payloads, while runtime accepts tolerant incoming tool-call input for compatibility.
  • Expanded RDoc coverage past 50% across message compatibility, tool-call normalization, session persistence, session tree helpers, model/client boundaries, config paths, workspace operations, telemetry, RPC, plugins, memory, auth, compaction, search internals, CLI mixins, and prompt interface components.

Fixed

  • Fixed session tree editing and RPC fork text so prompt-template turns use the original visible slash command instead of expanded model content.

[0.67.1] - 2026-06-14

Fixed

  • Fixed RPC session listing so it no longer deletes the active empty session file while UI clients are starting a first turn.

[0.67.0] - 2026-06-13

Added

  • Added optional startup resume for the last active session in each workspace through sessions.auto_resume: true, including immediate restored transcript/persona data for RPC clients.
  • Added tools.workspace_guardrails: false config support for allowing file tools to access paths outside the active workspace.
  • Added banner.enabled: false config support for hiding the interactive terminal banner.
  • Added colored CLI help/version commands, command-specific help, and stricter command precedence over one-shot prompts.
  • Added --working-directory PATH as a global option for running any CLI mode from another workspace.
  • Added kward init for installing the starter pack; --install-starter-pack remains as a compatibility alias.
  • Added kward doctor to check local config, workspace, auth hints, Pan credentials, and writable directories.
  • Added -- as a prompt delimiter so option-like text can be sent as a one-shot prompt.
  • Added kward auth status and kward auth logout for checking and clearing saved credentials without printing secrets.
  • Added /reload and RPC runtime reload support for reloading installed plugins without restarting Kward.
  • Added Session Tree support with a CLI /tree command plus RPC persisted entry IDs, labels, label timestamps, and branch navigation.
  • Added RPC ui/footer notifications for Kward plugin footers.
  • Added ! shell commands in the interactive CLI composer.
  • Added the active persona label to RPC runtime/state responses.

Changed

  • Expanded the interactive /settings command into categorized settings for model, accounts, memory, interface, tools, compaction, personalization, logging, and advanced config info.
  • Changed RPC session deletion to use the OS trash/recycle bin when available before falling back to permanent file deletion.
  • Changed automatic session naming to persist the first visible user turn, keeping slash prompt names unexpanded while still saving expanded prompt content.
  • Changed Pan mode to start with the kward pan command; --pan-mode remains as a compatibility alias.
  • Changed memory retrieval and listing to use a global core, workspace core, workspace soft hierarchy, and added /memory relax for downgrading global core memories to the current workspace.
  • Changed session tree rendering to match Pi's active-path-first branch display, markers, tool rows, and connector prefixes.
  • Changed session tree navigation so all persisted entry points are selectable without automatically running anything.

Fixed

  • Fixed RPC session deletion so empty unnamed sessions are explicitly deleted instead of being consumed by unused-session cleanup first.
  • Fixed the TUI /tree selector to start on the current tree position, or the last item for a fresh tree.
  • Fixed the normal session list/resume picker to stay in recent modification-time order, delete empty unnamed sessions, return the full list by default, and avoid test-created session pollution.
  • Fixed RPC model selection to accept lowercase provider IDs from UI clients.
  • Fixed cloned sessions to keep the current session name after renaming.

Removed

  • Removed the obsolete /crew command reservation and unreleased RPC compatibility aliases.

[0.66.0] - 2026-06-12 - Codename: Order

Added

  • Initial public release.
  • Prepare RubyGems packaging for the initial public release.