Backplane 0.15.2

Backplane 0.15.2

0.15.2 makes Backplane faster when the computer is busy, fixes ordering from start to finish and smooths out many first-day annoyances. It also brings Japanese to the desktop app and Google accounts to bots. If you run 0.15.1 or 0.15.0, it offers this update; your threads and settings carry over as they are.

This is the first release we tested end to end with Claude Fable 5.2. We gave five Fable 5.2 testers a fresh Backplane each and a goal in one sentence, such as "design a USB-C lamp dimmer and get it ready to order", "find every feature", "run a small shop with bots and routines" or "use it on a starved machine", and no instructions on how to use the app. They found the annoyances a new user hits, fixed most of them themselves and sketched ideas for the rest. It was very helpful, and most of the fixes below come from that night.

Faster, especially on a busy computer

• Replies stream in as they're written. The desktop showed a streaming reply in jumps every five seconds; it now updates up to ten times a second, and only in the window showing that thread.
• Typing and opening threads stay quick. The hub now does far less work for each picture it sends the window. On a large home, one key press went from about 75 ms of hub work to about 7 ms, and the round trip from 78 ms to 10 ms. A long pasted log or reply in a thread no longer slows every key press in it.
• Long replies can't hog the hub. Streamed steps are paced by how busy the hub is, so a long reply on a starved machine uses about half the CPU it did.
• The sidebar is built once per update instead of once per project.

Ordering

• Buy it works from start to finish. An order thread now gets all of its instructions, so it runs the review checks and asks about quantity and country before exporting the files.
• The Buy it button appears as soon as the design is ready to order, not only after reopening the window.
• Diff no longer drops the connection after an order has exported its manufacturing files.

First day

• Setup's first project and first thread work. Choosing an existing folder now adds it (it used to do nothing and say nothing), and setup ends in your first thread with the message box ready.
• Add project accepts a pasted path.
• New threads get sensible titles. About half of them used to be named after the wrong part of the first message.
• Board, Schematic and 3D show a design as soon as it appears. A viewer opened before the project's first board or schematic used to stay empty.
• The rail's letter keys (B, S, 3, …) work from the Board and Schematic views, as the tour and tooltips promise.
• Pictures in a reply fit a narrow thread column.

Bots, rooms and routines

• A bot answers in the room you asked in, not only in its own chat.
• Routines understand "every 20 minutes", "every 2 hours", "hourly" and "daily at 09:30", and Edit shows the schedule in those words instead of a code.
• Ctrl+K finds rooms and bots by name.
• Gmail and Calendar for bots. Add Google accounts in Settings → Accounts → Google and choose which bots may use them; sending mail and changing the calendar ask for your approval first.

Viewers

• Selecting a trace selects its whole net, and probing works between the schematic and the board again.
• The 3D views have a background that follows the theme, or a colour of your own (Settings → This device), and a lighter scene.
• The Browser tab runs Chromium in a window of its own inside the app on Linux, Windows and macOS.

Everything else

• Japanese in the desktop app (Settings → This device → Language), and on Android and iPhone (Settings → Language). Agents' text and file names stay as they are.
• A thread's cost and tokens update during a turn, not only when it ends.
• Links in messages open: threads, projects, rooms, files and web pages. Nested lists show their levels.
• The message box grows with its text when a queued message sits above it.
• Diff hides Commit when nothing changed, says "Commit & push" for what it does, and explains in one line when git doesn't know who you are.
• History names a shell step by its command.
• &sonnet and the like offer the newest model first.
• Tooltips use the app's font. Renaming a thread keeps the box on one row.
• "That is not on this hub" now says what happened: the thread was deleted, or it is on another machine.
• A bundled skill for designing laser-cut sheet parts and preparing them for ordering.

Installing

• Linux and macOS: curl -fsSL https://github.com/BackplaneWorks/Backplane/releases/download/v0.15.2/install.sh | sh, or press Update in the app.
• Windows: extract the zip and open backplane-gpui.exe, or press Update in the app. Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": choose More info, then Run anyway (the exe is not signed yet).
• Android: install backplane-v0.15.2-android.apk. It installs over 0.15.1.
• iPhone: through TestFlight.

Known issues

• Windows: the programs aren't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns on first start. Managed PCs may not allow running them.
• Japanese on Linux needs a CJK font installed (for example Noto Sans CJK).

Downloads

Platform	Download
Linux x64	backplane-v0.15.2-linux-x64-native.tar.gz
Linux ARM64	backplane-v0.15.2-linux-arm64-native.tar.gz
macOS Apple Silicon	backplane-v0.15.2-darwin-arm64-native.tar.gz
Windows x64	backplane-v0.15.2-windows-x64-native.zip
Android	backplane-v0.15.2-android.apk · backplane-v0.15.2-android.aab
iPhone	TestFlight

install.sh installs the right archive for your Linux or Mac and checks it. The archives named without -native are for 0.14's own updater; you don't need them. SHA256SUMS lists every file's checksum, and manifest.json is signed with Backplane's release key.