v8.8.0

Minor release: edits survive a model change, and the code base is consolidated. When the class model of a Spec-Driven app changes, the generated files are regenerated and merged with the edits made since, instead of being rewritten by the LLM. The editor backend, the Spec-Driven Agent and the editor each get one settings layer, one LLM layer, one secret redactor and a typed API contract. Analytics and error reports now start only after consent. Request shapes and routes are unchanged; some error status codes are corrected (listed below).

Edits survive a model change (#659)

• Untouched generated files are regenerated. A modify run that changes the class model regenerates the backend files nobody edited, deterministically, instead of asking the LLM to edit them. Files of removed classes that no one edited and nothing imports are deleted.
• Edited generated files are merged. A file that was both generated and edited is merged three ways (the stored generator output, the edited file, the new generator output) with pygit2. A renamed class moves its file and keeps its edits. Only a conflicting hunk is left to the agent, with the exact lines it needs.
• Measured effect. On recorded model changes, the share that needs no hand edit rises from 31% to 78%.
• Run records travel with the app. .besser_generator_output.json, .besser_attribution.json and .besser_recipe.json ship in the ZIP and the GitHub push, and a push marks them linguist-generated in .gitattributes so GitHub folds their diffs. A repository's own .gitattributes lines are kept byte for byte.
• Limits. Method, is_id and OCL changes alone do not trigger a regeneration; a rename chain (A to B while C becomes A) is left to the agent. Details: the "Regeneration" page of the Spec-Driven Agent docs.

Generated backends

• Association tables with method-like end names work. The router template read many-to-many columns as table.c.<end>, so an end named items, keys, values or get resolved to a ColumnCollection method and every endpoint on that association returned 500; an end named t broke updates the same way through Row. Columns and rows are now read by key (#718).

GitHub

• History reaches back past the move to buml/diagrams.json. A project saved by an older editor keeps its earlier versions in the model history, and they can be restored (#723).
• The latest version can be restored again once the model has unsaved changes, so restoring an older version is no longer one-way (editor #250).
• GitHub errors have real status codes on every endpoint: a revoked token answers 401, a taken repository name 409, an unreachable GitHub 502, instead of 500. /file/exists no longer reads every failure as "missing".

Editor

• What's new panel. A ✨ menu in the top bar lists the latest releases, with an unread dot after an update. An entry can turn on a diagram type a saved project hides, such as the Knowledge Graph editor (editor #252).
• Privacy. Google Analytics, PostHog and Sentry start only after analytics consent and stop on withdrawal; the privacy page and the consent banner name all three, in all six languages. Sentry events carry no IP address, free text, model content or project names. Deploy events no longer send the repository name or owner. The consent banner shows once more for people who accepted the previous version (consent version 1.3). ?study= and ?pilot= labels leave the address bar after they are stored.
• Product analytics on outcomes (editor #253). With consent, each editor action (Spec-Driven runs, the assistant, generators, deploy, GitHub, projects, editors, settings) records whether it succeeded or failed, how long it took and the error type, from one typed event catalog. Events carry only enums, counts, durations, status codes and error class names, never names, prompts, messages, URLs, repositories or keys. Nothing reaches PostHog before consent, and the PostHog id is deleted on withdrawal. The privacy page and the consent banner list outcomes, heatmaps and page-load performance. The app no longer mounts twice on every page load.
• B-UML import keeps the diagram type. Component, Deployment, NN, BPMN and Agent diagrams import as themselves instead of as a class diagram, and a type no project slot holds (GUI, quantum, KG) gets a clear error.
• Dialogs instead of browser alerts, and one error reporter for every toast.

Consolidation (repository review, Phase 4)

Behaviour is preserved and was checked item by item (byte-identical output of all 25 generators, captured responses and redaction results compared before and after).

• Typed settings. BackendSettings and AgentSettings (pydantic-settings) read every environment variable by its exact name, with the same defaults and parsing as before.
• One LLM layer. besser/llm/ holds the transport, the SDK clients, one retry policy, the token prices and the model catalog. The mockup-to-model notations go through it, gaining a 120 s timeout and retries on 429 and 5xx. Claude Haiku 5.5 cache reads and writes are priced at Anthropic's rates.
• One secret redactor, besser/utilities/secret_redaction.py, imported eagerly so it can no longer switch itself off. Logged generator configs, the agent transform's config log and passwords in local database URLs are now redacted.
• One generator registry. besser/generators/registry.py feeds both the editor's generator list and the agent's tools.
• Thin routers. Generation dispatch and GitHub sync live in services; an import contract forbids services from importing routers.
• A typed API contract. Response models state the fields the backend always sends, the editor's API types are generated from the OpenAPI schema, and CI fails when the committed schema is stale.

Behaviour changes

• /generate-output answers 400, not 500, for generators it cannot feed (web_app, react, flutter, terraform).
• A malformed owner, repo or model_path on import-github-run answers 422 before the session check (it was 400 after it).
• A project or version name that resolves to the output folder itself (".") is refused with 400.
• A Spec-Driven run started from the modeling agent with no model picked uses the deployment's catalog default.
• The durable run store opens at startup instead of at import.

Dependencies

• New: pydantic-settings>=2.4,<3 (base install), pygit2==1.20.1 (base install, pinned: a new release bundles a libgit2 whose merge may resolve hunks differently), typing-extensions>=4.12 (editor backend).

Modeling agent

Deploy the modeling agent v8.0.0 alongside (its own release, from develop). It is packaged with pyproject.toml, prices calls from the same price file as BESSER, routes every model call and every image through the user's own key where one is given, and sends images only to models that read them. A user's key with no model picked now runs on the current models (OpenAI gpt-6-sol / gpt-6-luna, Anthropic claude-sonnet-5-5 / claude-haiku-5-5). A parallel plan asks one question at a time instead of losing a confirmation.