Codewhale v0.9.8

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, both entrypoints)

npm install -g codewhale

The wrapper downloads the matched codewhale and codew command assets from this Release. Both contain the same compiled runtime.

Docker / GHCR

docker run --rm -it \
  -e DEEPSEEK_API_KEY="$DEEPSEEK_API_KEY" \
  -v codewhale-home:/home/codewhale/.codewhale \
  ghcr.io/hmbown/codewhale:v0.9.8

The image exposes the same runtime as both codewhale and codew. The latest tag is also updated on release.

Cargo (Linux / macOS)

cargo install codewhale-cli --locked

The Cargo package installs codewhale. Cargo cannot create a second command alias from one binary target; users who want the shorter spelling can add a codew symlink to that installed executable. The npm, Homebrew, archive, shell-installer, and container channels install both command names directly.

Manual download — platform archives (recommended)

Each archive below contains the same runtime under the codewhale and codew command names, 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 and codew.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 codewhale-<platform> and codew-<platform> assets. The seven codewhale-tui-<platform> filenames attached to v0.9.5 are byte-identical compatibility copies used only to let already-installed v0.9.4 clients discover and cross this single-binary transition; current installers do not expose a third runtime. 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 v0.9.8

Codewhale v0.9.8 ships the remaining assigned finish. Remaining web settings polish moves to v0.9.9. Prefab third-party templates that have a published OpenAI-compatible host ship here (#5350).

Fixed

• sudo (and su/setuid helpers) work again for wheel-group administrators who want Codewhale to be able to escalate: the Linux startup hardening's irreversible PR_SET_NO_NEW_PRIVS flag — inherited by every child process — is now skippable with CODEWHALE_NO_NEW_PRIVS=0 (#5413). The flag stays on by default; the no-ptrace and no-core-dump measures are never skipped.

• Abort-class process deaths no longer poison the terminal (#5424). A stack overflow, allocation failure, or double panic skips the panic hook and every cleanup guard, which is how a v0.9.7 user's mid-turn exit left mouse capture leaking SGR sequences into their shell. An async-signal-safe handler now restores the terminal modes and appends a one-line cause marker to ~/.codewhale/crashes/last-fatal-signal.log before re-raising, keeping the honest 128+signal wait status. A SIGKILL (OOM killer) remains uninterceptable by design.

Changed

• Prompt-cache prefix is pinned for the session. The tool loop no longer recomposes the system prompt from disk on every model step, so an agent writing a file no longer busts the provider KV prefix cache mid-turn. The system prompt and tool catalog are re-composed only on a declared header change (/model, mode, goal, session resume), which re-pins under a logged reason; an undeclared change is reported as drift and the original pin is kept instead of silently becoming the new baseline. Workspace, AGENTS.md, skills, memory, and goal drift now reaches the model as one bounded <context_update> user message at the next user turn — a history append, not a header rewrite. /cache stats shows the pin reason, the last-miss reason, the undeclared-drift count, and the context-update count. See docs/CACHE.md.

• Plugin compatibility is now per-component. A reviewed, trusted, enabled bundle that mixes Skills or MCP with unsupported commands, agents, hooks, LSP, native, filesystem-roots, or lifecycle-mutation declarations keeps the supported adapters active and reports the rest as inactive (full / partial / unsupported). All-unsupported bundles still cannot be enabled. The capability hash is now v2 and binds this build's activation policy, so older v1 receipts and any later adapter-enablement change fail closed as needs-review. Skills and each MCP transport re-request their own capability at the consumption boundary.

Added

• Composer multiline mode is available in /settings. When enabled, Enter inserts a new line and Shift+Enter sends the message (#5345, reported and tracked by @AiurArtanis).

• /plugin marketplace add|list|show|remove|install completes the federated marketplace journey (#5311). add reads one LOCAL catalog document in the real published schemas (Kimi, Claude, Codex, or Codewhale native) — no network, regular files only — and persists it beside the plugin state with the same hardened, fail-closed store. list/show render every candidate with per-entry diagnostics, display-only tiers, and honest install plans that say when Codewhale cannot fetch a source; install routes through the existing reviewed installer, so installed bundles still enter disabled and untrusted. Foreign auto-install policy (Codex INSTALLED_BY_DEFAULT) is visibly ignored; nothing is auto-installed, auto-trusted, or granted vendor trust.

• /rc attach now includes an observed owner/name

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