Echo v0.1.0-alpha.4 · less interruption (bubbles don't repeat, permissions don't nag)

Echo v0.1.0-alpha.4 — less interruption

A small release that exists because of one piece of feedback: "it asks for permission again every time, and the interruptions are too much." Both halves were real bugs, and both are fixed.

Download

File	What it is
Echo-0.1.0-alpha.4-macos.dmg	macOS installer — universal binary (Apple Silicon + Intel), macOS 13+; Echo.app + double-click installer + uninstaller + README (中文/EN)
Echo-0.1.0-alpha.4-macos.zip	same payload as a zip, if you prefer
echo-assistant-0.1.0-alpha.4.tar.gz	source tarball (any platform, needs Node ≥ 20)
SHA256SUMS / SHA256SUMS-macos	checksums — shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS-macos

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What was wrong, and what changed

1. The same bubble kept coming back

When a bubble auto-faded after 12 seconds it stayed in the server's pending queue, so the next poll (every 20 seconds) floated it again — the same card, over and over. Now:

• auto-fade marks the bubble expired — it never reappears, and it does not count toward the "you kept ignoring me" back-off (you didn't reject it, you just didn't look);
• /api/companion/pending accepts since=<timestamp>, and the menu-bar app only asks for bubbles created after it started — so restarting Echo no longer resurrects old cards.

2. macOS kept asking for Screen Recording

Screen Recording is granted per app identity. The menu-bar app was running from a path that got rebuilt during development, and an unsigned binary that changes is — as far as macOS is concerned — a different app. Fixes:

• the app now installs to a fixed path (~/Library/Application Support/Echo/Echo.app) with a fixed bundle id, ad-hoc signed by the installer and by the packaging script;
• ./install.sh skips rebuilding the binary when an installed app is present (rebuilding is what triggers the re-prompt; the docs now say so plainly);
• Echo never initiates a permission dialog: without the grant it skips captures, logs that fact, and shows a single ⚠️ item in the menu — nothing pops up until you click it.

3. Quiet by default

Screen awareness and companion mode are both off in this release's defaults (they had been switched on during testing). Turn either on from Settings or the menu-bar menu when you actually want it.

Verification

• Offline suite: 98/98 — including three new lifecycle checks: an expired bubble is not re-presented, expiry does not feed the dismiss back-off, and pending?since= filters correctly.
• Live suite: 104/104 (--live).
• The DMG is verified by its own build script: mount → install into a temporary HOME → run the evaluator from the installed copy → assert echo.env is mode 600.

Read the longer story in docs/permissions.md (§2b–2c) and the iteration log (docs/rsi-log.md).

Everything else is unchanged from alpha.3: companion mode, prompt polish (⌘⇧P), layered memory with explainable forgetting, proactive bandit loop, BYOK onboarding, pluggable search. Interfaces and data formats may still change during alpha — back up data/ before upgrading.