Changelog

0.12.8 2026-07-21

bwn has a personality now — it's a partner, not a job title — a shared voice runs ahead of every mode (build, plan, brainstorm, chat): bwn is a coding partner that builds autonomously, brainstorms, or plans with you, plain-spoken and dry. A casual aside like "know any jokes?" gets a natural reply instead of a robotic "I am a planning engineer…" refusal. Wit stays in the conversation and out of error paths.
PLAN mode no longer forces a plan onto non-tasks — greetings, jokes, identity questions, and creative asides get a short natural reply; only concrete workspace tasks are decomposed into steps.

check_work — a one-call "does my change actually work?" check — auto-detects the project (Cargo, npm/pnpm/yarn, Python, Go) and runs its build, tests, and linter, returning a concise pass/fail report. A missing linter is skipped, never a false failure. BUILD mode now checks its work before finishing.

A long BUILD turn lands gracefully — reaching the per-turn step budget used to surface a raw "reached the step limit" error. The budget is larger, a wrap-up nudge fires one step early, and the turn ends with an honest summary of what got done and the next step — never a scary error for simply doing a lot.

The thinking stream renders markdown as formatted text — headings, **bold**, `code`, bullets, and quotes in the model's reasoning showed their raw markers; they now render as real styling, kept in the muted thinking palette so reasoning stays visually quiet.

No more whole-screen flashes, and the queued-prompt bar always shows — the terminal's scroll region is now re-asserted whenever a prompt is queued mid-stream, so streaming output can't scroll over the queued bar (notably on Ghostty) or flash the screen.

A killed TUI restores your terminal — SIGTERM/SIGHUP/SIGINT/SIGQUIT now run a signal-safe handler that leaves the alternate screen, shows the cursor, and restores your terminal settings. No more reset after an external kill.
doctor probes your configured provider live — the same one-token validation /model uses, so a rejected key, wrong model name, or dead server shows up in doctor instead of on your next prompt.

Readable dim text — secondary text moved from 2.76:1 contrast (below the WCAG AA minimum) to 4.93:1, staying in the Tokyo Night comment-color family. Status meaning never relies on color alone.
/undo git and /undo all confirm before destroying work — both state exactly what they're about to do and require [y/N].
"Write a poem" stays in the chat — the explain-vs-act nudge now requires workspace evidence (a path, file, project, bug, …), so creative asks are answered in the transcript instead of being pushed into files.

Every file the binary writes is written atomically — tool edits, settings, the API-key store, memory, history, checkpoints. A crash mid-write can't truncate anything, an edited script keeps its executable bit, and .env.keys is never visible with open permissions, even for an instant.

Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint as a provider — /model <url> <model> (or a guided walk-through) points bwn at vLLM, TGI, LiteLLM, or a gateway; the API key is optional, and a configured key is never sent over plain HTTP to a non-loopback host. Any OpenRouter model works by typing its org/model name.
The letsbeheroes skill collection — eight bundled process skills (/hero-brainstorm, /hero-plan, /hero-execute, /hero-debug, /hero-ship, /hero-wait, /hero-subagents and the /letsbeheroes charter).
Startup tips — one rotating line under the banner: half real tips, half personality. Errors stay strictly business.
BENCHMARKS.md and RECOVERY.md — every performance claim with the command that regenerates it, and the full failure/recovery story including what is deliberately not protected.

/model now swaps providers, not just the model string — every pick maps to the provider that serves it, missing API keys are configured inline, Ollama gets reachability and installed-model checks, and "✓ hot-swapped" only prints after a live one-token probe validates the key, model, and server.
Bare /undo reverts the whole last agent turn — the recovery for a partial multi-file edit. Also fixed: same-millisecond checkpoint ids collided, so fast multi-file batches were silently losing recovery snapshots.
Pending /schedule and /loop workflows survive restarts — persisted on every change, restored at the next launch with a visible notice.
Broken settings files are diagnosed, never silently dropped — exact line and column per unusable file, doctor shows per-file status, and onboarding can no longer overwrite a mistyped config.
Malformed tagged tool calls are reprompted instead of being presented as the final answer — one corrective retry, then an honest stop.

The first-run [y/N] consent prompt now actually waits on macOS. Node keeps a TTY stdin non-blocking, so the prompt previously fell straight through to an error before you could answer. It now reads from a blocking /dev/tty handle.

Auto-update now defaults to notify-only. New auto_update setting: "off", "notify" (default — daily check, startup notice, never installs), or "install" (the previous silent behavior). BWN_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 still works.
First-run binary download requires explicit consent — [y/N] on a TTY, or bwn --bootstrap / BWN_ALLOW_BOOTSTRAP=1 non-interactively.

Bundle analyzers build the package now — a browser field points at a dependency-free stub entry, so tools that webpack-bundle the npm package no longer fail on Node built-ins and platform binaries.
Publish workflow: the crates.io "already published" check now queries the registry index instead of resolving workspace crates locally.

Script-free npm install — the binary ships as five per-platform packages via optionalDependencies; the main package has no install scripts, no network code, no eval. Binaries are SHA-256-verified with build provenance.
Auto-update moved into the binary — daily background check, BWN_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 opts out.
Published to crates.io: cargo install buildwithnexus or cargo install bwn.
Inline image rendering: pasted screenshots and sampled video frames preview in the transcript; .docx paths click open in Word.

Live slash-command autocomplete with one-line descriptions; @path and sub-argument completion; ghost commands removed.
True multimodal input — Ctrl+V clipboard images; ffmpeg-sampled video frames + metadata; per-model vision gating with explicit notices.
Clickable files and links (OSC 8) — edit headers open the file in your default app.
npm auto-update — silent daily background updates, BWN_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 opts out.
Esc interrupts; queued prompts auto-send; prefix-filtered draft-preserving history; double/triple-click selection with copy confirmation; mode-aware cursor shapes.

GitHub-grade diffs — gutters, tinted rows, word-level emphasis; one renderer for previews and applied changes.
Bordered composer with in-box spinner (elapsed + interrupt hint); minimal banner; grouped auto-aligned /help; rendered markdown everywhere; honest telemetry (fabricated cost/tok-s removed).

Denials and failed workflows now render red; silent HTTP retries now visible; alt-screen corruption during /resume; uncapped tool previews.

~215× faster streaming renders — incremental wrap cache, 60fps coalescing, atomic frames; instant startup, no black frames.