1.8.0

✨ The 1.8.0 tour

This release is about going back and finding your way: fork or rewind any session, bookmark what matters, see exactly which system prompt a turn ran with, and tune how the timeline looks. Around them come sessions you can move and title your way, several Jira projects in one list, and a long list of smaller improvements, many of them from the community. Here is the tour of what is new since 1.7.3.

🔀 Fork and rewind

Every turn of a session is now a point you can come back to. Fork starts a new session from the turns before it: the source stays as it is, and may even be working. Rewind takes the session itself back, and keeps the turns it removes in a session of their own unless you say otherwise. Either way, the prompt of the turn comes back in the composer to edit and send again.

Open the window with /fork or /rewind, with Fork from here and Rewind to here on one of your prompts, or with Fork… in the menu of a session. It says in plain words what each choice does before you confirm. It works with Claude Code conversations too, and agents can do the same with alta session turns, fork and rewind. Files on disk are not restored: use git or the Changes tab. More → (#104)

🔖 Bookmarks

Mark a message of the assistant, a prompt of yours, or a whole session, and find it again in one place. A bookmark button appears on the messages, a rail of marks along the edge of a timeline shows where they are, and Shift+F3 and Shift+F4 jump from one to the next. The Bookmarks tab (Ctrl+G Ctrl+F or /bookmarks) lists them by project and session, with search, names and filters.

A bookmarked session is never removed by the cleanup of old sessions, and agents read your bookmarks with alta bookmark. More →

🧠 The system prompt, one click away

The timeline keeps one thin line for the system prompt of a session and another each time it changes: the agent prompt, its size in tokens and the lines added and removed. Click anywhere on it. Changes compares the prompt with the one before in the diff editor; Prompt shows the whole system message and the developer instructions, rendered or as source, with a button to copy them. More →

🎨 Make the timeline yours

Let what matters stand out and what is intermediate step back. Settings > Appearance > Entry appearance sets, for each kind of entry (your prompts, final answers, intermediate answers, reasoning, tool calls, file changes, plans and more), its opacity, background tint, border and shadow, at rest and on hover or keyboard focus, with live previews. It is off by default; errors, warnings, requests and failed operations always keep their look. Thank you @windischb for the idea and the pull request. More → (#114, #116)

🗂️ Tabs that stay out of your way

Going through your sessions no longer opens a tab for each. A session you click takes one tab with an italic title, and the next click replaces it; double-click, or type in its prompt, to keep it. A new-session prompt you have typed in keeps its own tab, named after its project, when you click another project. The menu of a tab closes the others, the tabs to its right or the whole pane. More →

➕ Sessions, your way

• A new session in one click. The + of a project opens a small form beside its row: a title, the agent, the model, the reasoning, and the folder or a new worktree. What you choose is remembered for the next session of that project. (#111)
• Titles that respect you. A title you give is never replaced. For the others, choose in Settings > Sessions whether they follow the first prompt, the last message, or are chosen by the model (the default); a session can have its own choice with alta session title. (#107, #108)
• Move a session to another project from its menu, with /move_to_project, or by dragging its row onto a project. Its sub-agents and its Claude Code conversation go with it. Thank you @xen2! (#113)
• Delete a project from its menu, after a small question beside its row. (#110)
• What a whole session costs. The context usage popover has a Current session card with the tokens, the time and the cost of every request. (#112)

More →

🧩 Several Jira projects

A repository that works with more than one Jira project can now say so: projects = ["KAN", "PLAT"] beside project. The Issues tab lists them together, a list picks one project, and a project your account cannot see is named instead of breaking the list. New issues go to project; an agent writes to another only when you name it (alta jira create --jira-project), and never outside the list. Automations watch all of them. More → (#102)

🔎 Find a model in a second

The model list of the prompt bar has a search box: type part of a name or an id, move with the arrows and press Enter.

🎁 And also

• Enter sends or enqueues, Cmd+Enter / Ctrl+Enter sends now, steering a busy turn, in the same way everywhere. (#106)
• The prompt keeps the keyboard after Alt+Tab on Windows: no more clicking to type again. (#115)
• Copy as Markdown copies the Markdown, without the JSON record of the event.
• Escape no longer breaks a session being created from the prompt.
• macOS: Ctrl+click opens the menu of a row without opening the row, the menu key opens the menu of a tab, and the zoom of the window works (NeoAstra 1.3.1).
• Add projects in an empty Explorer opens the folder picker (#109), and the trust question of a folder has its spacing back (#105).
• Narrow Issues and Work items tabs show the list, then the item, instead of drawing one over the other.
• Smaller fixes: a message heading no longer wraps under the Notes chip, the three dots of a session row keep their width, the zoom button of the title bar stays in place, and the file of a plugin build error opens from below a linked folder.

🙏 Thank you

To @sebastienros, @windischb and @xen2 for their pull requests, and to @kindermannhubert, @stefannikolei and @nietras for the ideas and the reports that became fork and rewind, several Jira projects and the keyboard fix.

All changes

Changes

✨ New Features

• Add moving a session to another project (PR #113) by @xen2
• Add confirmed project and session deletion to Desktop (PR #110) by @sebastienros
• Add current session costs to the context usage dialog (PR #112) by @sebastienros
• Add session title modes and keep the titles users give (PR #108) by @sebastienros
• Add a new session popover with remembered choices (PR #111) by @sebastienros
• Add configurable timeline entry appearance (PR #116) by @windischb
• Add session turn index and journal fork/rewind store operations (#104) (9ee0dcd)
• Add fork and rewind of sessions to the runtime (#104) (c3a5ff3)
• Add fork and rewind of Claude Code conversations (#104) (da42299)
• Add desktop RPC for the turns, the fork and the rewind of a session (#104) (70ad2d8)
• Add alta session turns, fork and rewind commands (#104) (8572678)
• Add desktop fork and rewind points, requests and RPC owners (#104) (9f19fa1)
• Add the rewind count to what a session pane keeps by offset (#104) (5b3cefe)
• Add the fork and rewind window to the desktop (#104) (6e53764)
• Add who started a turn and distinct titles for sibling forks (#104) (adc3c7d)
• Add a searchable model list to the prompt (2cb7a0d)
• Add bookmarks of sessions and of their messages (232c105)
• Add a transient tab for the sessions that are looked at (ea4bbfa)
• Add a menu on a tab to close the other tabs of its pane (49bd572)
• Add a window for the system prompt of a timeline row (b715074)
• Add several Jira projects to the Jira of a project (#102) (31e4215)
• Add the choice of one Jira project to the Issues tab (#102) (43e3629)

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fix empty-space Add projects to open the folder picker (PR #109) by @sebastienros
• Fix a rewind leaving the journal header unchanged (#104) (de1d870)
• Fix statistics counting the turns of a fork twice (#104) (9996d68)
• Fix a fork listed as the sub-agent of the agent that created it (#104) (a6e5795)
• Fix the live display keeping the turns a rewind removed (#104) (faa4a27)
• Fix the picker naming the session a rewind keeps before it exists (#104) (81b410d)
• Fix a message heading wrapping under the Notes chip (8f65e8d)
• Fix the title bar zoom button moving with its text (9d0ff3f)
• Fix the file of a plugin build error below a linked folder (c8ce4f0)
• Fix the three dots of a session row drawn four pixels wide (1a97723)
• Fix Ctrl+click on macOS opening the row behind its menu (90ed1e2)
• Fix the menu of a tab not opening from the keyboard on macOS (f322373)
• Fix the menu of a tab opened twice by the menu key on Windows (8b9c213)
• Fix the copy of a timeline card holding the JSON record of its event (41aa190)
• Fix the item read over the list in a narrow Issues or Work items tab (a6cc1b3)
• Fix a draft prompt losing its tab, and Escape ending a creation (f12e4da)
• Fix the prompt losing the keyboard after a switch of application (#115) (43b4e1b)

🚀 Enhancements

• Fix spacing around the folder trust confirmation (PR #105) by @sebastienros
• Fix desktop send and enqueue shortcuts (PR #106) by @sebastienros
• Enhance the notice of an incomplete issue list to a warning (#102) (e065e45)

🏭 Tests

• Add test for the desktop fork and rewind RPC (#104) (a12d70d)
• Fix test failures of the Statistics archive on macOS (e82ff5a)
• Fix test expectations of the session menus for Fork (#104) (efb1e7c)
• Add test support for Edge on macOS and Linux (163d280)
• Fix test race on the connections of a replaced canvas page (fa5c870)
• Fix test browser fixtures waiting on what the browser leaves behind (2257cd1)

📚 Documentation

• Add doc for the fork and the rewind of sessions (#104) (8264adf)
• Add doc for the fork and the rewind of a session (#104) (c26240b)
• Update doc pictures and pages for CodeAlta 1.8.0 (153dd7b)

📦 Dependencies

• Bump NeoAstra to 1.3.1 for the zoom of the window on macOS (ec06288)

🧰 Misc

• Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' (b062cf1)

Full Changelog: 1.7.3...1.8.0

_{Published with dotnet-releaser}