# v0.0.7-alpha

## 🚀 The "Plan Before You Ship" Release

- **Release date:** 2026-04-13
- **Previous release:** `v0.0.6` (2026-03-25)
- **Delta:** 944 commits in three weeks

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### A brand-new way to build with agents.

Wallfacer used to be a task board for autonomous coding agents. Now it's a **thinking partner.**

This release ships a chat-first **Plan Mode** that designs your work before it runs. A **native desktop app** with a live menu-bar tray on macOS, Windows, and Linux. **One-click sign-in** that retires hand-edited token files. A **tabbed terminal** that can attach to any running agent. A **workspace file browser** you can edit in. A **pixel-art agent office** where your tasks are little characters at desks. And a CLI toolkit for anyone who lives in the terminal.

If you've been waiting for the release where Wallfacer grows up, this is it.

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## 🧠 Plan Mode — Design first. Ship when you're ready.

The headline feature. Press **P**. A chat opens. You describe a feature. An agent scaffolds a spec, organizes it, and — when you tell it to — sends the work straight to the board with all its dependencies wired up. Every round is saved, so one click rewinds the conversation (and cancels the tasks it spawned).

### A planning agent that stays with you
- A long-lived companion that reads your codebase and freely edits your specs. No permission prompts per turn — it just works.
- **Multi-tab chat threads** per workspace. Archive old ones, rename the active one, pick up where you left off.
- **Per-round cost tracking** — finally see what brainstorming actually costs, separate from execution.
- **Message queue** — edit or drop queued messages before they send.
- **Interrupt** mid-response without losing the thread.

### Twelve slash commands that match how you think
- **`/create`** — start a new spec with sensible defaults and an auto-detected track.
- **`/break-down`** — decompose a big spec into smaller specs or concrete tasks.
- **`/refine`** — re-read the code and update the spec to match reality.
- **`/validate`** — check for missing fields, broken dependencies, orphans.
- **`/impact`** — reverse dependency analysis: what does this change touch?
- **`/status`** — move a spec through its lifecycle.
- **`/dispatch`** — send validated work to the board, all at once, fully wired.
- **`/summarize`** — a structured summary on demand.
- **`/review-breakdown` · `/review-impl` · `/diff` · `/wrapup`** — the long-tail helpers.

### A three-pane layout that grows with your project
- **Left — spec explorer.** The full tree with live progress counts ("4 of 6 done"), status badges, and track grouping. Filter by status, collapse subtrees, pick several at once for batch dispatch. A pinned **Roadmap** at the top.
- **Center — focused view.** Syntax-highlighted markdown, **flow diagrams** that follow your theme, a table of contents with smart scroll behavior, and a big green **Dispatch** button on everything ready to ship.
- **Right — chat.** The planning agent itself, with a modern chat-style composer that understands `/` commands and `@` mentions (specs come first in autocomplete).

### A dependency map you can actually read
Nodes colored by status — complete (green), in progress (yellow), drafted (gray), stale (red). Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, click to navigate. Your view is remembered.

### Chat-first when the board is empty
No specs yet? You get a **centered card composer** with a `/create` hint — not an empty wasteland. As soon as the first spec exists, the three-pane layout lights up. The empty-board composer on the kanban side got the same loving treatment.

### Real undo, with real stakes
- Every planning round is saved to your project history so you can see what changed.
- One click per message = revert. Your in-flight edits are stashed safely and restored.
- **The undo also cancels any board tasks dispatched in that reverted round.** Clean rollback across the whole system — no orphan tasks, no phantom specs.

### Dispatch that knows what it's doing
- **Atomic batch dispatch** with full dependency wiring and rollback on any failure.
- **Leaf-only enforcement** — non-leaf specs must be broken down first. No half-dispatched subtrees.
- **Archive cascade** over subtrees, with a friendly "still dispatched" guard.

### Plan ↔ Board bridges
- A **purple spec badge** on task cards that came from a spec. Click it, land on the spec.
- **"View Source Spec"** link in the task detail view.
- **Dispatch toast** with a "View on Board →" button.
- **Unread dot** on the Board button when new work arrives.
- A subtle **glow animation** on board cards when you arrive from a focused spec — so you always know where you came from.

### Keyboard-first
**P** Plan Mode · **D** dispatch · **B** break down · **C** fold chat · **Enter / Cmd+Enter** send · **/** commands · **@** mentions.

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## 🖥️ A Native Desktop App

Wallfacer ships as a real desktop app now — macOS, Windows, Linux. Same Wallfacer you're used to, minus the browser tab.

### The window
- Clean frameless window with an easy drag region.
- **Graceful shutdown overlay** that shows you live progress — including what's still in flight. Cmd+Q, tray Quit, and the app menu all route through it. No more "did it save?"

### A menu-bar tray that actually earns its pixels
- **Health indicator** — three icons (idle / active / attention) reflecting the board at a glance.
- **Live task counts** — in progress, waiting, backlog.
- **Cost today** and **cost total**, in dollars.
- **Uptime** counter.
- **Automation toggles** — Implement, Test, Submit, Catch-up — without opening the window.

### Platform-native behavior
- **macOS:** Cmd+W hides instead of quits, dock-icon click reopens the window, menu-bar icons auto-adapt to light and dark.
- **Windows:** multi-resolution tray icon, left-click to show, optional code signing in release builds.
- **Linux:** left-click shows the window, with a friendly note for GNOME users about enabling a tray-icon extension.

Signed release builds for all three platforms land as downloads every tag. Download, double-click, done.

---

## 🔐 One-Click Sign-In — Retire your token files

No more fiddling with a terminal-based token-setup dance. Click a button, approve in the browser, you're in.

- Sign-in buttons in **Settings** with live progress.
- **First-launch toast** when no credentials exist.
- Buttons hide automatically when you've pointed Wallfacer at a custom endpoint.
- Supports both providers — Claude and Codex.
- Tokens appear masked on screen (`abcd...wxyz`) and are saved safely.
- A **"Test credentials"** button runs a live check and, if the token's expired, offers a one-click **"Sign in again."**

No file editing. No retries. It just works.

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## 💻 Integrated Terminal — Tabs, and attach-to-anything

The host terminal grew up into a real tabbed workspace.

- **Tabbed sessions** — open several, switch instantly, close individually.
- **Attach to a running agent** — dropdown lists every running task; pick one and the tab shells into that agent's environment. From outside the UI, `wallfacer exec <task-id>` does the same thing.
- **Per-session output replay** so switching tabs is instant.
- Colors follow your light/dark theme automatically.
- Cmd+Backspace works like Ctrl+U, Option works as Meta, Ctrl+backtick cycles panels.

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## 🗂️ File Explorer — Read, preview, edit

Press **E**. A clean, keyboard-friendly panel opens over your workspace.

- **Lazy tree** — folders first, dotfiles dimmed.
- **Hand-drawn icons** for the file types you care about.
- **Live refresh** — no polling staleness.
- **Preview** with syntax highlighting across 40+ languages and automatic **Markdown rendering** with a Raw/Preview toggle.
- **Edit mode** with atomic save, size guard, and a dirty-state warning when you close with unsaved changes.
- **Safe by default** — writes outside your workspace are rejected, Git internals are protected.
- **Resizable side panel**, width remembered for next time.

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## 🎨 Pixel Agent Office

Sometimes you just want to watch your agents work.

- A **hand-drawn pixel-art office** with tiles, sprites, and pathfinding across desks.
- Each running task becomes a character. **Speech bubbles** show their mood — waiting, committing, failed.
- Stylish **spawn and despawn** effects on state transitions.
- Camera pan/zoom, a draggable **minimap**, click-to-focus that opens the task.
- Fully live — characters appear and vanish in lockstep with the board.

Toggle via Ctrl+backtick. We dare you not to smile.

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## 📊 Planning Cost — See what you're spending

Planning conversations cost tokens too — and now you can see exactly how much.

- **Per-round usage** captured and kept per workspace.
- **New Planning section** in the Stats window with per-workspace sparklines.
- Separate from task-execution costs; side-by-side in the same dashboard.
- Configurable window (default 30 days).

No more mental math between "brainstorming" and "building."

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## 🛠️ For the CLI crowd

If you live in the terminal, we built you a toolkit.

### Commands
- **`wallfacer run`** — headless single-shot inference.
- **`wallfacer status`** — board state in the terminal (add `-watch` for live updates).
- **`wallfacer exec <task-id>`** — attach to a running agent.
- **`wallfacer doctor`** — prerequisite and config checks.
- **`wallfacer spec validate`** and **`wallfacer spec new`** — spec hygiene from the shell, with JSON output for CI.

### Twelve purpose-built skills for driving specs
`wf-spec-create` · `wf-spec-refine` · `wf-spec-breakdown` · `wf-spec-review-breakdown` · `wf-spec-validate` · `wf-spec-dispatch` · `wf-spec-implement` · `wf-spec-review-impl` · `wf-spec-diff` · `wf-spec-impact` · `wf-spec-status` · `wf-spec-wrapup`.

Full lifecycle, end to end.

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## ⚡ Reliability — The unsexy wins

Dozens of subtle issues fixed — the kind that won't make a demo sing but will save your day:

- Solid behavior when you switch workspaces mid-run. Tasks in the old workspace finish cleanly; the new one opens right away.
- Cancellations on in-flight work are now completely safe. No more "did it actually stop?"
- `CLAUDE.md` never sneaks into your project repo by accident.
- macOS symlinked directories resolve correctly during conflict resolution.
- The circuit breaker can't overflow, no matter how long a failure streak runs.
- Windows line-endings in specs no longer surprise you.
- A handful of Plan Mode edge cases hardened — index read errors, archived-thread undos, stream handling.
- Many small UI glitches smoothed over: crossfade races, chat reloads on workspace switch, diagrams that didn't follow a theme change.

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## 🎛️ UI Polish

Hundreds of small edges, smoothed.

- **Collapsible sidebar** replacing the top header. Docs & Settings pin to the bottom. Cmd+K palette preferred.
- **Command palette** — unified fuzzy search across specs, docs, and tasks, with view-aware ranking.
- **Shared autocomplete** for `@` mentions and `/` commands across every composer.
- **In-app confirm and alert dialogs** replacing native browser popups.
- **Smart chat auto-scroll** that respects when you've scrolled up to read.
- **Inline diffs on task cards** with file-split view, rich markdown rendering, and a subtle "thinking" animation on agent blocks.
- **Task event timeline** in the detail view with edit/preview tabs.
- **Board composer** — chat-style textarea, auto-grow, templates, runner picker, dependency picker, and a satisfying lift animation into Backlog.
- **Full dark mode** across every panel — including the terminal and diagrams.

**Shortcuts:** `/` search · `E` explorer · `P` Plan Mode · `S` Spec mode · backtick cycles Terminal / Office / Dep-graph.

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## 🐳 Operator Notes

### New configuration knobs
- `WALLFACER_TERMINAL_ENABLED` — toggle the integrated terminal (default on).
- `WALLFACER_TASK_WORKERS` — reuse long-running worker environments (default on).
- `WALLFACER_DEPENDENCY_CACHES` — persistent caches for npm / pip / cargo / go-build (default off).
- `WALLFACER_PLANNING_WINDOW_DAYS` — default analytics window for planning (30; `0` = all time).
- `WALLFACER_TOMBSTONE_RETENTION_DAYS` — how long to keep deleted tasks recoverable (7).
- `WALLFACER_CONTAINER_CPUS`, `WALLFACER_CONTAINER_MEMORY` — resource limits.
- `WALLFACER_MAX_TEST_PARALLEL` — test concurrency cap.
- `WALLFACER_OVERSIGHT_INTERVAL` — periodic oversight cadence while running.
- `WALLFACER_ARCHIVED_TASKS_PER_PAGE` — archived task pagination.
- Per-activity routing: `WALLFACER_DEFAULT_SANDBOX`, `WALLFACER_SANDBOX_IMPLEMENTATION / TESTING / REFINEMENT / TITLE / OVERSIGHT / COMMIT_MESSAGE / IDEA_AGENT`.

### Structural changes
- **Specs reorganized** into `specs/{foundations,local,cloud,shared}/`. The flat numeric-prefix layout is gone. Update any scripts pointing at old paths.
- **Agent environment images** moved to the **`latere-ai/images`** repo. `make pull-images` handles the switch.
- **Data upgrade** runs automatically the first time you open this build. Nothing to do.

### Desktop downloads
- **macOS:** `Wallfacer-darwin-universal.zip` — extract and drag to Applications.
- **Windows:** `Wallfacer-windows-amd64.exe` — run directly; approve the first-launch warning.
- **Linux:** `Wallfacer-linux-amd64` — make it executable; a modern webview library is required.

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## One more thing.

**944 commits. Three weeks. A thinking partner, not just a task runner.**

Open Plan Mode. Type `/create`. Watch an agent scaffold your next feature — validate it, break it down, send it to the board.

Then get out of its way.

[Tell us what you build. →](https://github.com/latere-ai/wallfacer/issues)
