VARIANT-1 0.1.1-preview.3

VARIANT-1 0.1.1-preview.3

This prerelease packages merged PRs #16 and #17 and the earlier changes since preview.2. All five installers were built from the same application source commit: 573f55c83ceedfb77c2b600cb13440370a1b568c. PR #18 and later work are excluded.

The existing package and qualification jobs passed for Windows, Linux and macOS in CI #122, run 37694872245. All nine jobs are green. The previously stalled Windows backend job passed after a rerun at that same commit; the already-qualified package artifacts were retained without rebuilding or modification.

Changes since preview.2

• On-demand session context: agents retrieve earlier session evidence through session.context(). Settings includes a Session context browser with frozen views, search, source details and JSONL/Markdown exports. Automatic extraction and injection of inferred profile/fact memories has been removed. Cross-session memory remains deferred.
• Goals in the owning chat: the visible parent agent retains its conversation, model route, peer identity and live Python state. Addressed peer requests wake idle/finished sessions or reach busy sessions at their next safe step. Request handles expose correlated native outcomes; explicitly sent replies remain distinct. Completion records the agent's claim and available evidence, rather than independently certifying the result.
• Usage and routing: a durable request ledger records physical requests/retries and available input/output, reasoning, cache and cost fields, with unavailable accounting reported explicitly. Goal budgets act at execution boundaries; defaults remain unlimited. Settings can configure ordered fallback models and separate JSON, summary and vision routes. Recovery remains disabled by default.
• Provider recovery: Settings distinguishes saved accounts from recently checked connections and provides check/reconnect/sign-out controls, including the Hermes/Nous connection. Model listing access does not qualify every model for inference.
• Chat and Review: a chronological activity timeline retains narration, tools and peer-message origins across calls. Run/admission/revision fences prevent stale snapshots from overwriting newer live text. Review has collapsible file diffs, scoped branch/commit history, truthful counts and read-only Git observations.
• Runtime repairs: browser acknowledgements are read independently of serialized commands; a lost display connection no longer terminates backend work. Chat-opening recovery, native running-state reconciliation, bounded browser capture recovery and clearer interrupted/unobserved outcomes address the live swarm failures. Kernel startup cancellation retires partial ownership without replaying the cancelled request. Session tool authoring retains explicit argument/source/alias contracts and remains off by default.
• Packaging: Linux/macOS now have explicit platform dependency locks. The existing package/qualification checks are retained: macOS includes the built Deck and frozen backend, and Linux checks both the installed deb and AppImage startup. Electron advances from 42.5.1 to 42.9.2, including its upstream hidden-view and security fixes.

Downloads and SHA-256

Verify downloads against SHA256SUMS. Checksums establish consistency with the published files; these are unsigned preview packages.

Platform / format	Exact filename	Size (bytes)	SHA-256
Windows x64 / NSIS	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-x64-Setup.exe	783371884	ad9756a68bf913ffe32153a1909d1ec079fb460fc35b4bf0874500f3a42a040f
Linux x86_64 / deb	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-linux-amd64.deb	368989560	a3cf6ff1a2048649dd668d871708559c7a1c3236bfb9ac4d522d6436c7382ba0
Linux x86_64 / AppImage	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-linux-x86_64.AppImage	425884910	c53d656290ae1a43ab4bd126089fbf85793f8d624bee41f2c42708c0ae5171e7
macOS Apple Silicon / dmg	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-mac-arm64.dmg	365497314	81bcec6609afd75865ac2fd51f0d50c78f1f94a7dd73939ea17d1a66d11f8e65
macOS Apple Silicon / zip	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-mac-arm64.zip	367846643	4ecf9d569b18e3d070ce8d58f072dfeb33ae09bd60c26dbcb195a229324ec78c

Signing, requirements, installation and updates

Windows: unsigned; Authenticode reports NotSigned, with no publisher certificate. SmartScreen may show an unrecognized-app warning and an elevation prompt, if one appears, may identify an unknown publisher. Windows 10+ x64 is the Electron baseline; the packaged CI host was Windows Server 2025 (10.0.26100). No Windows ARM64 or 32-bit installer is offered. Quit VARIANT-1 and run Setup.exe as your normal user; the NSIS installer supports a selected installation directory. For updates, back up %APPDATA%\VARIANT-1 and run the new installer. The manual procedure is unchanged; an independent preview.2-to-preview.3 data migration has not been qualified.

Linux: both formats are unsigned. These packages target x86_64 and were qualified on Ubuntu 24.04.5 with X11/Xvfb. Other distributions and native Wayland workflows are not qualified by this run. Install the deb with sudo apt-get install ./VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-linux-amd64.deb; its package name is variant1 and installed payload is /opt/VARIANT-1. Ubuntu 24.04 uses libasound2t64, alongside the usual GTK3, NSS, X11, AT-SPI, notification and secret-service libraries. Package installation resolves declared dependencies; an AppImage still needs compatible host libraries. For AppImage, first run chmod +x VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-linux-x86_64.AppImage. Launch normally with FUSE2 support, or use APPIMAGE_EXTRACT_AND_RUN=1 ./VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.3-linux-x86_64.AppImage, the path tested in CI. Updating means quitting the app and installing the new deb or replacing the AppImage after backing up the app's user-data directory (normally ~/.config/VARIANT-1). Remove the deb with sudo apt-get purge variant1; remove an AppImage by deleting its file. Downloading does not preserve a Unix executable permission bit: chmod +x must remain in the website instructions.

macOS: both formats are unsigned and not notarized, so Gatekeeper may block an unidentified developer or an app Apple cannot check. Apple Silicon ARM64 only; use macOS 14 or newer. Although Info.plist says 12.0, bundled NumPy binaries target 14.0 and llama native libraries target 13.3. A comparison of the published preview.2 ZIP found the same 14.0 native requirement; this corrects the stated requirement rather than introducing a new minimum. CI exercised macOS 26.6.2, not a clean macOS 14 host. For dmg, open the image and copy VARIANT-1.app to Applications; for zip, unzip and copy the same app bundle. Quit before a manual update, back up ~/Library/Application Support/VARIANT-1, and replace the application bundle. If you choose to approve this unsigned preview after checking its origin and checksum, follow Apple's per-app Gatekeeper instructions using Privacy & Security after a blocked launch. Signing and manual update procedures remain unchanged from preview.2.

All platforms require a separately configured inference account/service or local model. There is no fixed RAM/GPU minimum established by this CI run: local model requirements depend on the chosen model and runtime. Git workbench features require Git. Python and Node are bundled; packaged-app users do not need system installations of them. Automatic updates have no configured feed and remain disabled in the default release configuration. Back up user data before updating; the package-removal checks concern application payloads, not erasing user data.

Qualification evidence

Every entry below is from CI run 37694872245 (#122) at 573f55c83ceedfb77c2b600cb13440370a1b568c.

Platform	Package / qualify job IDs	Backend regression result	Installation / removal checks
Windows	113049575472 / 113049563554	113049530069: 3230 passed, 10 skipped, 1 warning; separate retirement regression: 27 passed	Silent NSIS installation, installed payload checks, packaged Deck startup/workbench smoke; real uninstaller exited 0 and install directory disappeared.
Linux deb	113049532321 / 113049571914	113049532011: 3186 passed, 54 skipped, 1 warning	Actual deb install, native payload checks, packaged Deck smoke under Xvfb; purge of variant1 removed /opt/VARIANT-1.
Linux AppImage	Same Linux package / qualify jobs	Same Linux suite, not a second AppImage-specific suite	Executable/extraction payload check and separate extr...

VARIANT-1 0.1.1-preview.2 — Windows x64, Linux x86_64, and macOS arm64

VARIANT-1 0.1.1-preview.2 — Windows x64, Linux x86_64, and macOS arm64

VARIANT-1 combines durable chats, persistent CPython, local and cloud inference,
browser and desktop tools, and chat-local tool mutation in one desktop workspace.

Offline speech engines and model weights are not bundled. Configure your own
Kokoro-compatible HTTP service, cloud speech provider, or user-supplied Whisper
distribution and model.

What changed since 0.1.1-preview.1

All three platforms in this release were built from the same commit. That is
the main point of this release. In 0.1.1-preview.1 the Windows installer was
110 commits behind the Linux and macOS builds, and all three shared one version
number because the version was never bumped. That ambiguity is gone: CI now
packages and qualifies Windows alongside Linux and macOS, so a version bump
forces a rebuild of all three.

Two user-facing fixes ship in every platform here, and were not in the
0.1.1-preview.1 Windows installer:

• The Deck could not open the Files, Review, browser, or terminal panes at all in
  a fresh profile. The startup layout named those panes with bare identifiers
  that matched no registered pane descriptor, so the entire right-hand region
  failed to mount. Opening Files by its keyboard shortcut did nothing.
• Browser previews are native views owned by the main process, and the renderer
  only keeps a geometry shim. The Deck smoke had been asserting a <webview>
  element that this architecture deliberately never creates.

Downloads

Verify every file against SHA256SUMS in this release.

Platform	Asset	Size	SHA-256
Windows x64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-x64-Setup.exe	787,271,950	57942cc7e9a44a3f42ffc2ef94ceb3e8d853029f2e3fc297fa9db36d9bcfbc15
Linux x86_64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-linux-amd64.deb	370,675,020	cf62ae9b01c07b1182d1d8881304653f96537dea6341fd09e81a1e1a437d3e57
Linux x86_64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-linux-x86_64.AppImage	428,017,171	db7fd1abde27e6d3b950b3ad19b06dae9634ed0cf4d073d767000f5b9a27f8c4
macOS arm64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-mac-arm64.dmg	366,083,816	467f2c7292a4fcce45e38ceacf445ec4fda8c4ae548e16b077a40d185a0b1a09
macOS arm64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-mac-arm64.zip	368,479,440	5dc2c087b8abc31773dddee44fb1ef614f521daefdc79f91b9a2eea56eaf88a5

All packages are unsigned. No verified signing publisher is asserted for any
platform, so macOS Gatekeeper and Linux desktop environments will warn about an
unidentified developer. Windows may display an unknown-publisher warning.

macOS builds are Apple Silicon (arm64) only. There is no Intel macOS build.

Install

Windows — Run the Setup executable as your normal user and choose an
installation directory. To update, quit VARIANT-1, back up %APPDATA%\VARIANT-1,
then run the new installer. Do not uninstall with a delete-app-data option if you
want to retain settings and conversations.

Linux (deb) — sudo apt-get install ./VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-linux-amd64.deb
installs the variant1 package and payload under /opt/VARIANT-1. The
application needs X11 runtime libraries that are not always present on a minimal
image, including libgtk-3-0, libnotify4, libnss3, libxss1, libxtst6,
libxrandr2, libatspi2.0-0, libsecret-1-0, and ALSA. On Ubuntu 24.04 and
later the ALSA package is libasound2t64; libasound2 is a virtual package
there and has no installation candidate. To uninstall and remove packaged
configuration, use sudo apt-get purge -y variant1.

Linux (AppImage) — Make it executable and run it; no installation required.
chmod +x VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.2-linux-x86_64.AppImage. The same display
libraries are required. The AppImage must come from a release or be transferred
by a method that preserves the executable bit — tools that zip unpacked files,
including CI artifact stores, will strip it and the file will then fail to launch
with Permission denied.

macOS — Open the .dmg and drag VARIANT-1 to Applications, or use the .zip
directly. The app is unsigned, so launch it via right-click then Open on first
run. Only Apple Silicon is covered.

Platform and limits

The Windows build was tested on Windows 11 Home build 26200 with an NVIDIA
RTX 3060; CPU native execution and CUDA enumeration were tested separately.

Every platform in this release was additionally qualified in CI against the
packaged application on a clean runner, not a development tree. Each platform
installs or unpacks its own shipped artifact, asserts the payload and bundled
llama-server and cua-driver are present and executable, runs the Deck smoke
against the installed application, then removes it and confirms nothing is left
behind. The Windows job is new in this release and performs a silent install,
verifies the installed payload, runs the same Deck smoke against the installed
executable, and uninstalls. The Linux AppImage is separately unpacked, launched,
and confirmed to publish a debugging endpoint.

That is packaging and launch qualification. It is not a claim of production
readiness, and it is narrower than real-world use: an independent clean machine
per platform, CPU-only hardware, every GPU and model, cross-version data
migration, and live provider and voice accounts were not qualified. No real
user account was used for any of these checks.

Google subscription OAuth requires an authorized application identity configured
through VARIANT1_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and
VARIANT1_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET. This public build does not bundle another
application's OAuth identity. Other configured inference connections remain
available.

Automatic update delivery is not enabled on any platform. The application uses
your own user permissions; the Python kernel is intentionally same-user and
unsandboxed.

The public application source is MIT licensed. Bundled third-party components
retain their own licenses, included with the package; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
in the source repository.

Build and checks

Source 55a23def9d79bba4e6c135a33d1919f2def09a96, merged to main as 347543b
via PR #7. The merge commit
differs only by a test file, which is not part of any packaged artifact.

• CI run 36322514965:
  all nine jobs green — backend, backend-linux, frontend-scripts,
  windows-package, windows-qualify, linux-package, linux-qualify,
  macos-package, macos-qualify.
• The Deck smoke covers a single IPC socket, the split workbench, the Files pane,
  dynamic browser tabs, a durable terminal, settings, and the absence of the
  legacy panel. It runs against the installed application on every platform.
• Package-name assertions target what electron-builder actually emits rather than
  hardcoded names: the deb package and installed executable are variant1 while
  the product name is VARIANT-1. On Windows the installed executable and the
  uninstaller are discovered from the install directory rather than assumed.
• Backend: 2,893 passed, 10 skipped, on Linux. One work-scheduler regression test
  that depended on a 5-second wall-clock budget was given an explicit budget; it
  asserts completion and ordering, not latency, and had failed on a loaded runner
  despite passing locally in 0.80s.

The previous release, v0.1.1-preview.1, remains available, but its three
platforms were built from different commits. Prefer this one.

VARIANT-1 0.1.1-preview.1 — Windows x64 preview

VARIANT-1 0.1.1-preview.1 — Windows x64, Linux x86_64, and macOS arm64 preview

VARIANT-1 combines durable chats, persistent CPython, local and cloud inference,
browser and desktop tools, and chat-local tool mutation in one desktop workspace.

This preview removes the Live2D cat and bundles the Main Deck, Python backend,
persistent kernel, and verified llama.cpp CPU/CUDA runtime. Offline speech engines
and model weights are not bundled. Configure your own Kokoro-compatible HTTP
service, cloud speech provider, or user-supplied Whisper distribution and model.

Read this first: the three builds are not the same code

The Windows installer in this release was built from an earlier commit than the
Linux and macOS builds. All three carry the same version number because the
version was not bumped, so the version does not distinguish them.

Asset	Source commit	Position
Windows x64 Setup	82aded5	110 commits before the others
Linux deb / AppImage	8a176ae	current main (merged as 92d8395)
macOS arm64 dmg / zip	8a176ae	current main (merged as 92d8395)

The Linux and macOS builds include 110 commits of changes that the Windows
installer does not, including two user-facing workbench fixes: the Deck could
not open the Files, Review, browser, or terminal panes at all in a fresh profile,
because the startup layout named those panes with bare identifiers that matched no
registered pane descriptor. Anyone filing a bug against this release should state
their platform and build, because behaviour differs between them.

Downloads

Verify every file against SHA256SUMS in this release.

Platform	Asset	Size	SHA-256
Windows x64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-x64-Setup.exe	764,486,266	45a8e7abd5a546052a8200e288853a4b186d49d1b00a76ab63d3b6682ffd3765
Linux x86_64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-linux-amd64.deb	370,676,148	f493d999e6342d232431096774476db46930f0657d8b8a511b506fa4e53cb622
Linux x86_64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-linux-x86_64.AppImage	428,013,016	fb85b025abf484cbed075be86ed8f2ee150190eb3084285078e0f92ae7619266
macOS arm64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-mac-arm64.dmg	366,082,184	bacda25b1fd54b2f6b7292976b8f8480273db6a19aa575e0dde7fd02655dd1a6
macOS arm64	VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-mac-arm64.zip	368,479,442	ce6c9c49e89cb86c1220b7024f84eb4dbd63303603b0b35ee5ab7fa7ecbb713a

All packages are unsigned. No verified signing publisher is asserted for any
platform, so macOS Gatekeeper and Linux desktop environments will warn about an
unidentified developer. Windows may display an unknown-publisher warning.

macOS builds are Apple Silicon (arm64) only. There is no Intel macOS build in
this release.

Install

Windows — Run the Setup executable as your normal user and choose an
installation directory. Python and Node.js are included where the application
needs them. To update, exit VARIANT-1 from its tray menu, back up %APPDATA%\VARIANT-1,
then run the new installer. Do not uninstall with a delete-app-data option if you
want to retain settings and conversations.

Linux (deb) — sudo apt-get install ./VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-linux-amd64.deb
installs the variant1 package and payload under /opt/VARIANT-1. The
application needs X11 runtime libraries that are not always present on a minimal
image, including libgtk-3-0, libnotify4, libnss3, libxss1, libxtst6,
libxrandr2, libatspi2.0-0, libsecret-1-0, and ALSA. On Ubuntu 24.04 and
later the ALSA package is libasound2t64; libasound2 is a virtual package
there and has no installation candidate. To uninstall and remove packaged
configuration, use sudo apt-get purge -y variant1.

Linux (AppImage) — Make it executable and run it; no installation is
required. chmod +x VARIANT-1-0.1.1-preview.1-linux-x86_64.AppImage. The same
display libraries are required. The AppImage must be downloaded from a release or
transferred by a method that preserves the executable bit — tools that zip
unpacked files, including CI artifact stores, will strip it and the file will
fail to launch with Permission denied.

macOS — Open the .dmg and drag VARIANT-1 to Applications, or use the .zip
directly. The app is unsigned, so launch it via right-click then Open on first
run. Only Apple Silicon is covered.

Platform and limits

The Windows build was tested on Windows 11 Home build 26200 with an NVIDIA
RTX 3060; CPU native execution and CUDA enumeration were tested separately.

The Linux and macOS builds were qualified in CI by launching the packaged
application on a clean runner — not the development tree — and driving the
installed binary over a debugging endpoint under a virtual display. For Linux
this included installing the deb, asserting the payload and bundled
llama-server and cua-driver binaries were present and executable, running the
Deck smoke against the installed executable, unpacking the AppImage and
asserting it launched and served a debugging endpoint, then purging the package
and asserting /opt/VARIANT-1 was gone. The macOS job built the Deck bundle and
frozen backend, asserted both were present inside the .app, launched it, and
ran the same Deck smoke.

That is packaging and launch qualification. It is not a claim of
production readiness, and it is narrower than real-world use: an independent
clean machine per platform, CPU-only hardware, every GPU and model,
cross-version data migration, and live provider and voice accounts were not
qualified. No real user account was used for any of these checks.

Google subscription OAuth requires an authorized application identity configured
through VARIANT1_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and
VARIANT1_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET. This public build does not bundle another
application's OAuth identity. Other configured inference connections remain
available.

Automatic update delivery is not enabled on any platform. The application uses
your own user permissions; the Python kernel is intentionally same-user and
unsandboxed.

The public application source is MIT licensed. Bundled third-party components
retain their own licenses, included with the package; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
in the source repository.

Build and checks

Linux and macOS — source 8a176ae, merged to main as 92d8395 via
PR #4.

• CI run 36314901683:
  all seven jobs green — backend, backend-linux, frontend-scripts,
  linux-package, linux-qualify, macos-package, macos-qualify.
• The Deck smoke covers a single IPC socket, the split workbench, the Files pane,
  dynamic browser tabs, a durable terminal, settings, and the absence of the
  legacy panel. It runs against the packaged application, not a dev server.
• Package-name assertions target what electron-builder actually emits: the deb
  package and installed executable are variant1, while the product name is
  VARIANT-1.

Windows — source 82aded51016a31f5affe03ee07ccfe85b31d84b0.

• Windows CI:
  frontend checks passed; backend 2,829 passed, 5 skipped, with one existing
  Starlette/httpx deprecation warning. The dedicated worker-lifecycle checks
  passed 25 tests before the full suite.
• Frozen backend health/readiness/identity, local stdio MCP, missing optional
  speech setup, and external HTTP WAV fixture passed. The fixture tests speech
  transport, not a live Kokoro model's synthesis quality.
• Frozen persistent-kernel checks: 3 passed. Frozen ASTB checks: 8 passed.
• Actual per-user installation, isolated installed-app startup/settings, and
  uninstallation passed. Installed application/backend/kernel/archive hashes
  matched the packaged files. Uninstallation preserved all 20 isolated profile
  data files byte-for-byte. No real account was used for these checks.
• Package audit passed: 27 pinned native files verified; private data, Live2D,
  offline speech engines/weights, source maps, and Arrow test data excluded.
  CPU matrix execution passed at one and four threads; CUDA enumeration passed.
• Installed payload is approximately 1.54 GB, before user data, optional
  tools, and model downloads.