Codewhale v0.9.4

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:v0.9.4

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 v0.9.4

Codewhale v0.9.4 ships the release-train harness work: the familiar Fleet roster/setup face with a clear operator-leader and user/folder scope, a work strip that keeps actionable agents instead of a permanent archive, waiting policy that forbids polling without freezing independent work, calmer tool output and session recovery, account/Workflow-search/ automation/handoff surfaces, a shorter translation-ready website, and release-blocker fixes across permissions, DeepSeek Responses, SQLite, File edits, terminal width, and Windows installation.

Added

• Memory maintenance: remember gains revise and retire beside the default append. Both name the exact note they target and both require the evidence for the change. Append-only memory decays — a correction sits behind the note it contradicts and both keep reaching the model — so the model can now keep its own durable notes true instead of only adding to them.

• An audit trail for durable state the model writes about you. Every in-place memory edit is journalled to memory/JOURNAL.md, and every continual-harness refine / remove to a JOURNAL.md beside its state, each with before, after, and evidence. Harness removal previously left no record at all even though the entry leaves state entirely, so the journal is now the only place its content survives.

• A first-run tip that says so: the first time Codewhale saves something durable it points at /memory, translated into all fifteen complete locale packs. This state shaped later sessions and nothing ever mentioned it existed.

• Sub-agent checkpoint resume: agents/followup resumes an interrupted_continuable child from its checkpoint into a fresh agent loop — new agent id, original prompt plus the prior conversation tail — when a runtime is attached, and otherwise keeps queue-only semantics with the continuation_handle returned; a second followup on the same interrupted id returns the existing resumed target instead of spawning a duplicate (PR #5242).

• MCP Registry discovery with Registry-first tool selection: registry_sync surfaces the eligible local stdio catalog as a complete model-side candidate set, connect-failure messages classify early-exit and usage-help output and point recovery at the next Registry candidate, and a bundled mcp-discovery skill documents the flow (PR #5238).

• Progressive fresh-context disclosure: fresh sessions ship a minimal constitutional kernel — ground truth, user intent and scope, truthful completion, guarantees in mechanism, and precedence — with procedural playbooks disclosed on demand, an opt-in project context pack (project_context_pack_enabled) counted in context reports, and load_skill catalogue discovery via name="list"; the measured fresh-context budget drops by roughly 40% (PR #5077).

• Named Fleet store v2: one self-contained TOML Fleet per configuration (schema = "fleet"), with scope-explicit selection (user-global default vs folder override), migration receipts from legacy role profiles, and atomic saves that refuse to clobber a different Fleet on the same slug.

• Scout replaces the user-facing "faster" control: catalog-verified fast siblings only, never a guessed model name; pinned Scout survives operator changes.

• Truthful model-picker rows: vision/tools/limits chips only when the catalog knows, with provider → family → exact model grouping.

• Opt-in product telemetry, off by default.

…