v1.15.0 - standalone .exe and a settings panel

Download

EQLCompanion.exe — one file, ~59 MB, nothing to install.

Windows will warn you that it does not recognise the publisher: the file is
unsigned (code-signing certificates cost hundreds a year, and this is a free
hobby project). Click More info → Run anyway.
INSTALL.md
walks through it, and shows how to verify the download yourself if you would
rather not take my word for it.

Prefer the source install? install_companion.bat as before — it adds screen-OCR
position tracking on top of everything here.

---

A standalone .exe — one 59 MB file, nothing to install. Plus a settings
panel, because a downloaded executable has no .env to edit.

Download and run

• build_exe.bat produces dist\EQLCompanion.exe: no Python, no Node, no
  pip. It finds your game through the Windows registry, opens a native
  WebView2 window, and keeps its data in a data folder beside itself
  (or %LOCALAPPDATA%\EQLCompanion when that folder is read-only).
  ~4s first start; everything works except screen OCR — HUD, overlay,
  Atlas 3D with textures, timers, alerts, and LLM counsel all included.
• The build is now verified rather than theoretical, and finding out how
  fixed five defects — four of which were bugs in the source install too:
  • Optional dependencies could abort startup. ocr_system caught only
    ImportError, but a half-present rapidocr raises FileNotFoundError
    when its model manifest is missing, killing the whole app over a
    feature that build does not even ship. The guard is deliberately broad
    now.
  • One bad texture cost the whole zone. A failure in the 3D texture
    export aborted the entire payload; it degrades to an untextured view.
  • Helper windows: /api/overlay ran [sys.executable, "-m", ...],
    which frozen would boot a second server. Flags now (--overlay).
  • No console in a windowed build: sys.stdout is None and uvicorn's
    formatter calls .isatty() on it. Streams adopt a log file, and
    pywebview's main-thread requirement moved uvicorn to a worker, so
    closing the window shuts down through the normal lifespan.
  • Paths: backend/paths.py splits read-only bundled assets from
    writable state, so nothing lands in a temp dir that is wiped on exit.

Settings — the gear in the header

• Game folder with a Test button that reports what it actually found
  ("3 character log(s)") or what is wrong, and a one-click fill from
  registry detection. Saving re-derives the paths and restarts the tailer;
  no restart needed.
• Advisor model, including an API key field. Providers the running build
  cannot support are greyed out rather than silently falling back.
• Keys live in data/secrets.json and nowhere else. Never logged
  (field names only), never returned to the browser (GET /api/settings
  reports booleans), and explicitly gitignored. A key field omitted from a
  save is left untouched, so saving a game folder cannot wipe it; an
  explicit empty value clears it.

Also

• requirements-lite.txt now lists the LLM clients deliberately.
  PyInstaller bundles only what the build machine has installed, so
  omitting them produced an exe whose API key field could never work —
  depending on who ran the build.
• "MCP server not found" was logged on every wiki lookup; said once now.
• README and INSTALL.md cover both installs, including the SmartScreen
  warning an unsigned binary raises and how to verify it yourself.