v0.27.0

Watcher 0.27.0 focuses on reliability for live monitoring — including Codex compatibility and large-session upload fixes — alongside headless sign-in, Analyzer performance improvements, and expanded self-host image availability.

Live

• Added: Sign in from headless or browser-less machines with the new watcher login device-code flow — approve from a browser on any other device.
• Fixed: Watcher now works with current Codex CLI releases; enforce-mode approvals route through Codex's own sandbox escalation instead of hitting a startup-blocking configuration error.
• Fixed: Live monitoring is more resilient under stress — very large session transcripts no longer get stuck failing to upload, and actions awaiting review no longer hang for minutes if the backend is briefly unreachable.

Analyzer

• Added: Tab now indents in the Advanced settings YAML editor (Shift+Tab outdents) instead of moving focus to the next control.
• Changed: The session list and search pages load faster, especially for accounts with long-running or grade-heavy sessions.

Other

• Added: Self-hosted Watcher images are now also available from an eu-west-1 registry mirror, in addition to eu-west-2.

v0.26.1

This release restores Codex support on Codex 0.149.0

Breaking changes

• Live: In enforce mode, Codex commands now run inside Codex's own workspace sandbox and reach Watcher as escalation requests rather than through blanket approval routing. Existing installations reconcile on the next Watcher start, and uninstalling reverses it. Observe and paused installations get their own sandbox setting back instead of the broader access an older Watcher applied. No action is required.

Live

• Fixed: Codex sessions could fail to start entirely on recent Codex CLI versions, because Watcher wrote a setting those versions reject.
• Fixed: Live grading could switch itself off for a minute at a time during ordinary use, leaving tool calls ungated, after three slower-than-usual reviews. Grading now allows a slow review to finish rather than abandoning it, and only genuine grading failures count toward switching off.

v0.26.0

This release adds admin controls for data retention in the Analyzer.

Analyzer

• Added: Administrators can now manage data retention from a new admin settings tab: configure the retention window (7 to 365 days) and scrub an individual session by ID, with validation, confirmation, and status feedback. Session scrubbing now requires general administrator permissions rather than a dedicated scrub permission.

v0.25.1

This release improves reliability of Watcher's live monitoring for long-running coding agent sessions.

Live

• Changed: After a coding agent session is compacted, live policy checks now evaluate the agent's retained context instead of the full session history, reducing grading time and cost for long sessions.
• Fixed: Fixed an issue that could cause the Watcher client hook to become unresponsive instead of exiting cleanly in certain situations.

v0.25.0

Analyzer

• Changed: The dashboard now groups metrics into Coverage and Findings sections, with the severity filter moved into the Findings section header so it's clear it only affects severity-based figures. The date range remains a page-level filter that applies to everything.
• Fixed: The daily trend chart now shows both the total sessions per day and the portion that met the selected severity threshold, instead of only the unfiltered total.
• Fixed: The Sessions to Review card and its "view all" link now consistently apply the selected severity threshold, so the list no longer shows the same blocked sessions regardless of which severity is selected.

v0.24.0

Breaking changes

• None in this release. Existing Watcher clients and self-host deployments remain compatible.

Analyzer

• Added: The dashboard now leads with the tool calls Watcher cleared or blocked on its own, giving a clearer picture of prevented risk at a glance.
• Added: The critical-sessions dashboard card now shows results immediately, with a separate indicator for reviews still in progress, instead of hiding the outcome while any review is pending.
• Changed: Session detail pages now indicate when a session's content has been removed under data retention, while still showing its history and grading results.
• Fixed: Corrected wording in the pending deep-review empty state message.

Other

• Added: Organizations can now set a time-based retention policy to automatically remove old session content, for both cloud and self-hosted deployments.
• Added: Watcher now supports running inside development containers, reusing your existing desktop sign-in without requiring you to sign in again.
• Changed: Self-hosting documentation is now split into focused pages by task (setup, client deployment, AWS, operations, security, and supply chain) instead of one long page.
• Fixed: Database stability fix.

v0.23.0

This release focuses on keeping Watcher clients up to date automatically.

Live

• Added: The Watcher client now checks for updates on a regular schedule and automatically installs the version the server (or an MDM-configured pin) specifies, upgrading or downgrading as needed.

v0.20.0

Live

• Changed: The installer now gives upgrade instructions matched to the client version already installed, telling older clients to uninstall and reinstall and newer clients to run watcher update.

v0.18.0

Watcher 0.18.0 changes how the packaged client starts by default, refines the Managed Settings and Monitors pages in the Analyzer, and fixes issues with stuck approvals and sign-in for proxied deployments.

Breaking changes

• Live: Running the packaged watcher command with no arguments now starts Watcher in the background and enables start-on-login, instead of running attached to the terminal. Use watcher --foreground to keep the previous behavior.

Live

• Added: The client now accepts WATCHER_API_KEY as the organization API key, alongside the existing XYLON_API_KEY, and Watcher can now run inside a Docker container alongside a coding agent; see the new client documentation for a validated setup.
• Fixed: Escalation decisions in Claude Code no longer get stuck showing "approval needed" indefinitely when grading is slow. An escalation left unanswered for over an hour now resolves as timed out instead of waiting forever.
• Fixed: Proxy-based authentication deployments no longer misread an authentication error as "never signed in," which could block a tool call behind a sign-in the user had no way to complete.

Analyzer

• Added: A new Managed Monitors page lets admins enter org-wide custom instructions that managed monitors will apply; existing custom monitors are now grouped separately as deprecated.
• Changed: The Managed Settings page now leads with the two most common controls, enforcement mode and default profile, with everything else moved into a collapsible "Advanced settings" section.

Other

• Changed: Newly created organizations, including fresh self-host installations, now have Watcher distribution enabled by default, so the first managed settings document saved in the Analyzer reaches machines automatically. Existing organizations and installations keep their current setting. New MDM customers should explicitly turn distribution off when setting up a new organization to avoid two systems managing the same file.

v0.16.6

The Watcher client and Analyzer now show a friendlier sign-in error screen, and this release includes two infrastructure changes for the API and self-host deployments.

Breaking changes

• The API's production Web Application Firewall now blocks matching requests instead of only logging them. This applies to production only and targets scanner/bot traffic with no overlap with legitimate client traffic; no action is needed for normal API usage.
• Self-host deployments: the Terraform module's ami_id variable is now required instead of automatically resolving the latest Ubuntu AMI. Set ami_id to the AMI your instance is already running (see the updated self-hosting documentation for the lookup command) and confirm your next terraform plan reports no changes before applying, to avoid the instance being replaced.

Live

• Changed: Sign-in failures now show a friendly error page with a "Retry sign in" button and a "Copy error report" link, instead of raw technical error text.

Analyzer

• Changed: Sign-in failures now show a friendly error page with a "Retry sign in" button and a "Copy error report" link, instead of raw technical error text.