Codewhale v0.9.1

Codewhale is the public product from Shannon Labs. The codewhale command, npm package, and release-asset names remain lowercase technical identifiers. The legacy npm package deepseek-tui is deprecated and receives no further releases. Users coming from v0.8.x legacy deepseek / deepseek-tui names should migrate with docs/REBRAND.md.

Install

Recommended — npm (one command, all three entrypoints)

npm install -g codewhale

The wrapper downloads the matched codewhale, codew, and codewhale-tui binaries from this Release and places them in the same directory.

Docker / GHCR

docker run --rm -it \
  -e DEEPSEEK_API_KEY="$DEEPSEEK_API_KEY" \
  -v codewhale-home:/home/codewhale/.codewhale \
  ghcr.io/hmbown/codewhale:v0.9.1

The image ships the codewhale dispatcher, codew shim, and codewhale-tui runtime. The latest tag is also updated on release.

Cargo (Linux / macOS)

cargo install codewhale-cli codewhale-tui --locked

Both crates are required — codewhale-cli produces the codewhale dispatcher and codew shim, while codewhale-tui produces the interactive runtime that the dispatcher delegates to. Installing only one crate will fail at runtime with a MISSING_COMPANION_BINARY error.

Manual download — platform archives (recommended)

Each archive below contains the codewhale dispatcher, codew shim, and codewhale-tui runtime, plus an install script:

Unix (Linux / macOS):

tar xzf codewhale-<platform>.tar.gz
cd codewhale-<platform>
./install.sh

Windows:

• For the installer path, run CodeWhaleSetup.exe; it installs codewhale.exe, codew.exe, and codewhale-tui.exe under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\CodeWhale\bin and adds that directory to the current-user PATH.
• Extract the archive for your machine: codewhale-windows-x64.zip or codewhale-windows-arm64.zip
• Run install.bat (copies to %USERPROFILE%\bin)
• Add %USERPROFILE%\bin to your PATH

The portable Windows archive skips the install script — extract and run from any directory. The NSIS installer is currently unsigned and may trigger Windows SmartScreen until a signing certificate is wired into the release pipeline.

Each platform also has bare, unarchived binaries attached below (codewhale-<platform>, codew-<platform>, and codewhale-tui-<platform>) — the npm wrapper and the in-app codewhale update download the matched runtime binaries, whereas the .tar.gz / .zip archives above are the recommended manual download and additionally bundle an install script. The legacy npm package deepseek-tui is deprecated and is not republished. For migration from v0.8.x legacy binary names, see docs/REBRAND.md.

Verify (recommended)

Download the checksum manifests from this Release and verify:

# Linux — archive bundles
sha256sum -c codewhale-bundles-sha256.txt --ignore-missing

# Linux — individual binaries
sha256sum -c codewhale-artifacts-sha256.txt --ignore-missing

# macOS
shasum -a 256 -c codewhale-bundles-sha256.txt --ignore-missing
shasum -a 256 -c codewhale-artifacts-sha256.txt --ignore-missing

What's in v0.9.1

Dogfood follow-ups (2026-07-24)

Added

• /compact [focus]: the manual compaction command now accepts an optional focus argument that is injected into the summary prompt, and the compaction summary itself becomes a structured nine-section successor briefing (primary intent, key concepts, files and code, errors and fixes, problem solving, user messages, pending tasks, current work, next step) that carries earlier compaction summaries forward and explicitly forbids tool use — replacing the free-form "under N words" instruction. Codewhale's pin/working-set and V4 prefix-cache-aligned machinery are unchanged.

• Saved workflows become slash commands: *.workflow.js files under <workspace>/.codewhale/workflows/ and ~/.codewhale/workflows/ are discovered as /name commands that accept custom arguments (forwarded to the run's args), launch through the workflow tool in the background, and report their run id. Hand-written .md commands with the same name always win. The workflow tool's source_path now also accepts the user-global ~/.codewhale/workflows/ store, and every settled run leaves a durable synthesized report under .codewhale/reports/<run_id>.md (status, goal, gates, progress, result, verification).

Fixed

• Disambiguate the two Kimi K3 model-picker rows, which read as an unexplained duplicate: bare k3 is now labeled "Kimi Code plan route" with its default 262K window annotated as the plan-tier floor (raisable via the provider context_window setting for plans that include 1M), and kimi-k3 is labeled "Moonshot direct route" with its 1M window. Both remain distinct, valid routes for the same underlying model.
• Close the model-facing agent tool role schema: the type property now publishes the canonical JSON Schema enum ["worker", "scout", "planner", "reviewer", "builder", "verifier", "custom"] instead of describing the accepted values in prose. Legacy aliases are no longer advertised to models; they remain accepted only at replay/deserialization boundaries. Provider schema sanitizers (Chat Completions, strict mode, Anthropic Messages / OpenAI Responses, Moonshot/Kimi) are pinned by test to preserve the closed enum.

Changed

• Rework the ambient idle ocean: the water now holds exactly one loose wedge school of fish, jellyfish, bubbles, and the rare whale cameo — seaweed and bio-dust are removed. Fish swim on a wrap-around path and always face the way they move (direction can only change while the school is off-screen); the lead fish carries an eye (><o>). Jellyfish become a pulsing bell with a lagging swaying tentacle. All ambient marks now glow via background→ink color lerp: a travelling sin² wave through the school, a floor-bounded pulse for jellyfish, and occasional raised-cosine glints on bubbles, with deliberately non-matching periods so nothing strobes in sync.

• Consolidate Anthropic Messages and OpenAI Responses stream opening through the shared client/stream_entry.rs transport seam already used by Chat Completions: one bounded response-header wait, shared dual/HTTP-1.1 client policy selection, at most one HTTP/1.1 fallback retry on a classified HTTP/2 header stall (never after a stream body has begun), and the shared idle-timeout diagnostics format. Both adapters gain the bounded open wait and CODEWHALE_FORCE_HTTP1

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