## Houston 0.4.8

The "tutorial demo that actually lands" release. The first-run flow now opens with a single, repeatable mission, "Plan my next working day", that exercises Gmail, Calendar, and Sheets in parallel and finishes with a 4-tab Google Sheet plus a follow-up email. No more morning-only chips that felt broken at evening demos. The success card has been re-skinned with the same running-glow comet border the Activity Board uses, so the next-step CTA actually gets clicked. Plus a real fix for the silent zero-result you'd see when installing certain skill repos.

### What's new

- **Single, parallel-tools tutorial mission.** The 6 personal-assistant chips ("morning brief", "meeting prep", "weekly recap", etc.) are gone. The new flow uses one "Plan my next working day" mission that runs two subagents in parallel against Gmail + Calendar + Sheets, cross-references their results for the "I didn't notice this" moment, and produces a real 4-tab Google Sheet (Schedule / Replies needed / Commitments / Don't miss) plus a sent follow-up email. Re-runnable any day, every day, regardless of what time you open the app.
- **Comet-glow success card.** The end-of-tutorial card now wears the same animated card-running-glow border the Activity Board uses for in-flight missions. People were missing the success card and the "start the tour" CTA on it; the comet treatment fixes that.
- **Repos with a single root `SKILL.md` install correctly.** Skills like `refero_skill` (underscore in the repo name) or any repo whose canonical skill is at the root would silently install zero skills with no error. Now they install. Skill authors' declared `name:` in frontmatter is preserved as the slug; we no longer overwrite it with a slugified version of the repo name.
- **Skill install failures are visible.** Errors from the install path no longer get swallowed by an internal `tracing::warn!` and turned into "installed 0 skills". They propagate up and render in the dialog as real error copy, so when something fails you can actually see why.
- **Download for Windows on the website.** The marketing site has a "Download for Windows" button next to the Mac download in the hero and pricing card. Clicking opens a beta-disclosure modal with a button to join the Windows waitlist (same form as the Mac one). Doesn't change the app itself, but it's how we'll size Windows demand in PostHog.

### Reliability

- **No silent failures, codified.** Houston's CLAUDE.md now bans the patterns that produced the "installed 0 skills" bug, namely catching errors with `tracing::warn!` and returning `Ok`, plus `let _ = x.await` for ops that can fail. New code in the engine has to surface failures through `?` to the route layer. We're going to be auditing the rest of the codebase against this rule over the next releases.

### Before you upgrade

- **Mac:** quit Houston before installing. macOS does not always replace a running app cleanly. If in doubt, remove `/Applications/Houston.app` and drag the new copy in.
- **Windows:** auto-update from 0.4.7 should pull you forward automatically. The MSI is still not OS-code-signed (SignPath is still pending). One SmartScreen "Run anyway" prompt on first install only.

### If you are on 0.4.5 or later

Houston should detect 0.4.8, download it, install it, and relaunch into the new version on its own.

### If you are on 0.4.2 or earlier (Mac)

Auto-update will not pull you forward from those builds. Quit Houston, drag a fresh DMG over `/Applications/Houston.app`, and reopen. After that one manual step you are back on the healthy updater path and future versions apply automatically.

### Known limitations

- **Windows ARM64 not yet shipped.** v0.4.8 is x64-only on Windows.
- **Windows MSI not yet OS-code-signed.** SignPath integration still pending. One SmartScreen "Run anyway" click on first install only.
- **"Continue with Microsoft" sign-in remains hidden** while we reconcile the Supabase Azure provider with the production callback URL. Google sign-in is unaffected.
- **Mobile companion is still beta.** Expect occasional reconnect hiccups. Keep your Mac awake while using it.
