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gentle-pi v3.5.0 — The gentle-shell Launcher and Interactive RPC Hosts

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@Alan-TheGentleman Alan-TheGentleman released this 22 Sep 15:24
· 285 commits to main since this release
v3.5.0
ba985f5

Gentle Shell v3.5.0 is a feature release: it adds the gentle-shell command, a launcher that opens Pi with the Gentle Shell package loaded without installing it into your Pi agent or editing its settings.json, and it teaches Gentle Shell to work under an interactive RPC host, which is what the upcoming desktop app uses. The npm package remains gentle-pi and the bundled Gentle AI runtime remains v3.5.0.

Provenance

  • Previous stable: v3.4.0 → a1470f74a723ec1386e3440b49611ffef82399e5
  • Release target: v3.5.0 → ba985f5037a71d7b7c9d53113340c39ffc4b702a
  • Release validation: run 35747111746 passed package verification and published to npm with provenance.
  • Pinned Gentle AI: v3.5.0; the review provider contract remains unchanged.

What's new

The gentle-shell launcher

npm i -g gentle-pi now installs a gentle-shell command. By default it starts Pi in its own home (~/.gentle-shell/agent), so a vanilla Pi setup is never touched; gentle-shell --link reuses the sign-ins, local models and chats of ~/.pi/agent while loading Gentle Shell for that run only, and gentle-shell home link makes that the default. The launcher resolves the Pi runtime from GENTLE_SHELL_PI, a Pi bundled next to gentle-pi, or pi on PATH, checks it against the minimum Pi version, forwards every other argument to Pi (for example --mode rpc or -p), and runs Windows .cmd shims through the shell. The postinstall now writes the global fullscreen setting only for installs managed by Pi's package manager, so a global npm install leaves ~/.pi/agent/settings.json byte-identical. Included work: #1311 integrating #1312, #1313, #1314.

Interactive RPC hosts

When a host sets GENTLE_SHELL_INTERACTIVE_HOST=1 on a --mode rpc process, ask_user_question and ask_user_choice run through Pi's RPC dialogs instead of refusing outside the TUI, and gentle-agents publishes live subagent activity to that host through setWidget frames that follow the documented gentle-agents.activity/v1 schema, scoped to the current session and bounded in size. Without the variable, RPC stays headless exactly as before, and subagent children never inherit it. Included work: #1328, #1329, #1330.

What was fixed

pi subcommands through the launcher

gentle-shell install npm:<package>, remove, uninstall, update, list, config and auth now run pi's own commands against the resolved home; before, the launcher injected its package flags first and pi started a session instead of running the command. Included work: #1339.

Multi-select dialogs and publisher bounds

The multi-select dialog loop could exhaust its round budget on an un-toggle and commit a partial selection silently; it now scales with the option count and cancels instead of committing. The activity publisher truncates long thread items and summary fields so its 256 KiB bound holds, falls back to a summary-only payload rather than exceeding it, and reports its own failures once per session. Included work: #1329, #1330.

Open: gentle-shell --link does not yet recognise a gentle-pi declared as a local path package in the linked settings.json (it then loads the package twice); the fix is in review (#1333, #1334, #1335) and lands in the next patch release.

Pinned runtime

The pinned gentle-ai runtime is unchanged at v3.5.0: same module path, same signed archives for Darwin and Linux, same SumDB-verified source build for Windows, and the review provider contract did not change. No new NATIVE_CLI_CONTRACTS row or capabilities/vN identity was added.

Breaking changes

None. Existing ODD, SDD, review, and package interfaces remain compatible.

Upgrade

pi install npm:gentle-pi@3.5.0

No runtime migration is required: the pinned runtime and its managed assets did not change. To run Gentle Shell without touching your Pi install, use npm i -g gentle-pi and then gentle-shell.

Numbers

15 non-merge commits, 5 merged pull requests, and 1 unique GitHub PR author since v3.4.0.

Verification

  • Local suite on macOS (Node 24): 3168 tests, 3130 pass, 0 fail, 38 skipped (Windows-native cases); provider contract mirror check and runtime harness passed.
  • Package verification: 171 files, 69 byte-pinned contract artifacts for the v3.5.0 runtime; npm pack --dry-run lists bin/gentle-shell.mjs (548 files, 9.3 MB).
  • Native review on every work unit: launcher slices approved (review-779ebba63cdf25be, one bounded correction in review-ec0c1570e4ab56c9), interactive host slices approved (review-d443c371d4ce4a7c, review-111ba052f17eeb78, review-e88198a055c0e95a), subcommand fix approved (review-5b64ed40050c00e8); all findings advisory.
  • Manual: gentle-shell --version, isolated first run, and gentle-shell --link --mode rpc against a real home load without tool conflicts; the desktop app drove a real helper through the interactive host.

Install

pi install npm:gentle-pi@3.5.0

Package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/gentle-pi

Full changelog: v3.4.0...v3.5.0

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