OpenCoven Chat v0.0.2

The first public build of OpenCoven Chat, a desktop app for talking to the
familiars in your local Coven CLI.

This is an early 0.x pre-release. It ships without auto-update, so newer
versions are a manual download from the Releases page.

There is no v0.0.1 release. A v0.0.1 tag was created on 2026-09-16, but its
build never published, and that tag is kept rather than reused.

Before you install

You need the Coven CLI. Chat drives the coven command already on your
machine. It needs no account, no Cave and no pairing. Install Coven and finish
any model-provider setup it asks for before starting a chat.
Tested with: a Coven 0.4.7 build with the coven-code 0.8.0 engine.
Platforms: macOS and Linux. There is no Windows build in this release:
Chat can't yet stop a run's whole process tree safely on Windows, so it
couldn't send there anyway. Windows builds return once that works and Windows
code signing is set up.

One conversation per familiar

The sidebar lists your familiars. Each familiar has one persistent chat:
select it to pick up where you left off.
The list is ordered by recent activity. Search by name, identity or purpose
with Cmd/Ctrl+K, and step to the previous or next familiar with
Cmd/Ctrl+[ and ].
History is read from Coven every time, not copied into a second store, so
what you see matches what the CLI has.
A long chat loads its most recent part first. Load earlier turns reads
further back.
When you continue a Coven Code chat, Chat replays its most recent turns to the
new run, and a note in the thread says how many.

Runs you can follow

Replies render Markdown, tables, task lists and code blocks. Each reply and
code block has its own Copy control.
While a run is going, the thread says what it's doing (waiting, running a
named tool, or stopping) and how long it has taken. After thirty quiet
seconds it says it is still waiting.
Tool calls appear as rows between the prose. Expand one to see its input and
result. Long runs of calls fold up, with a count of how many failed.
Stop ends a run. A failed send offers Try again.
A run keeps going if you switch familiars. That familiar's sidebar row shows
when a reply is waiting, and so does the window title.

Writing messages

Attach up to four UTF-8 text or code files, 64 KiB each, with the +
button or by dropping them onto the conversation. Images and PDFs are refused
rather than silently dropped.
The composer warns before a message Coven would refuse for size (over 32,768
bytes).
Drafts are kept per familiar while the window is open.
Type @name or #project to add a clear reference to a familiar or a
project the familiar has declared access to.

Finding your way

Cmd/Ctrl+F finds text in the conversation.
Keyboard shortcuts, at the foot of the familiar list, lists every shortcut.
The inspector shows a familiar's purpose, workspace and declared project
access, plus activity for the current chat.
Archive chat hides a chat and Restore chat brings it back.
Delete chat removes Chat's own copy of the chat. It never touches the
Coven CLI's records.

Everything else

Show screen views a remote desktop over a noVNC WebSocket address, such
as a sandbox's, view-only until you choose otherwise. The desktop app makes
the connection, and nothing about it is stored.
The app follows your system's light or dark appearance. Text meets WCAG AA
contrast in both.
The window shrinks to 480×520. The side panels fold into drawers as it
narrows.

Check your download against the published checksums:

shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS

No auto-update. Download newer versions from the Releases page.
Replies arrive whole. With the coven-code 0.8.0 engine tested here, a
reply appears in one piece once the familiar has finished writing it, not
word by word. Until then the run status shows what the familiar is doing.
Familiars run read-only. Chat runs them through Coven's coven-code
engine with read-only permissions. It doesn't grant write access, and it has
no tool-approval controls.
Project access isn't enforced by Chat. The Access tab shows what Coven
declares and says so plainly. Chat neither adds a boundary nor widens one.
Text files only. The engine can't take images or PDFs through this app.
No token, cost or timing figures. This integration with the CLI doesn't
report them.
No Windows build yet, as described above.

The preview's local data (the opencoven-chat IndexedDB database) is neither
deleted nor imported.
Chat is now a single app that opens directly on your familiars. The demo modes
and ?demo= links are gone.

There are 913 commits since the 0.0.1-demo.1 preview. Most are correctness,
accessibility and release infrastructure rather than new surface area:

One entrypoint. The demo shell and the Cave-connected app were retired,
and the frontend is a thin view over the desktop app's native runtime.
A narrower window. The main window can call only the runtime and screen
commands it uses. It has no shell, filesystem or network access of its own.
Accessibility. Contrast is measured on the rendered app in both
appearances, keyboard focus is visible on the composer and search fields, and
a run's end is announced to assistive technology.
Release pipeline. Each release is checked before it publishes: a package
verifier runs before every build, a smoke test checks the assembled release,
signing secrets are required, and unsigned rehearsal builds can't be
published.
Windows hardening of the session supervisor, and a real-authority
conformance harness that covers macOS, Linux and Windows.