PCS 0.9.33

PCS 0.9.33

This release brings together the updates from 0.9.25–0.9.33: safer editing, more reliable Local conversations, flexible setup, and better responsiveness across the workspace.

• Safer drafts and saves: Better protection for notebook, bookmark and memory-correction drafts, clearer recovery after uncertain saves, and duplicate-safe notebook creation.
• More reliable Local conversations: Improved Stop thinking and Skip speech controls, cleaner research cancellation, corrected spoken research replies, and better voice recovery after interruptions.
• Improved Local voice and vision: Optional resident NVIDIA GPU Whisper, earlier Recommended vision preparation, and more useful GPU capacity warnings.
• More flexible connections: Manual Google and OpenAI model IDs, setup-only connection tests, and improved Custom GGUF selection and startup checks.
• Better web sources: Paste page text in Local mode, clearer download errors, and more reliable bookmark editing and recovery.
• Stronger privacy safeguards: Better tracking of saved-source relationships, rejection of stale private responses, and cancellation of pending screenshots when Vision is turned off.
• Faster everyday browsing: Less repeated work across Materials, notebooks, Calendar, Map and Library, including faster handling of changed documents.
• More dependable backups: Native Save As, automatic backups and restore now support vaults up to the full 2 GiB limit.

Quit PCS before upgrading, extract into a fresh folder, and keep an encrypted backup. Vaults using newer features may not reopen in older versions. Optional models and AI runtimes remain separate downloads.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.

PCS 0.9.24

PCS 0.9.24

An expanded Local AI, improved voice controls, a more useful Continuity Map, and reliability improvements across the workspace.

• More capable Local AI: Guided Gemma setup, experimental Custom GGUF support with 8K/16K/32K context options, optional OBS vision, and explicitly enabled Brave web lookup.
• Improved local voice: Kokoro CPU and optional NVIDIA GPU voices, reduced repeated speech-loading work, better silence filtering, and a Skip speech button. Ordinary Markdown formatting is no longer read aloud as asterisks.
• Easier setup: Switch between saved Google, OpenAI, and Local connections. Download and verify optional AI components through Settings, keeping them in reusable folders across upgrades.
• Persistent Continuity Map: Save dragged node positions in the encrypted vault, choose Connections, By group, or Circle layouts, and explore records through a clearer inspector.
• Refined workspaces: More readable Conversation, Materials, Calendar, and memory views, plus clearer Research and Practice guidance and expanded searchable/offline Help.
• More reliable editing and saves: Better protection for unsaved notebook drafts, corrected Calendar time-zone edits and Event-to-Task conversion, and separate Local save confirmations that preserve the substantive answer.
• Better responsiveness: Less repeated work when browsing memories, Materials, and the Map; more efficient deletion previews; improved Local request scheduling and longer bounded conversations.
• Clearer safeguards: Stronger permission checks before source delivery, clearer memory-sharing controls, and backup capacity warnings with specific guidance when limits are reached.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.

PCS 0.9.13

PCS 0.9.13 patient conversation and reusable web sources

Built from the checksum-verified 0.9.12 Source and Windows packages. This release retains the pinned runtime, dependencies, native launchers and speech assets unchanged. No native Windows build or live API/audio acceptance is implied by offline testing.

OpenAI turn-taking

• The default now requests semantic VAD with low eagerness and host-owned response creation/cancellation. Settings → OpenAI turn completion also offers balanced semantic detection and a 1.5-second silence-based fallback. Both requested configuration and acknowledgement validation use the selected mode. Apply this setting on the next Start; there is no hidden reconnection/fallback that resends a user turn.
• A 0.4-second speech settling window joins speech that resumes before dispatch. Active speech and this window are checked again at the final transport boundary. Typed input with no pending speech is not deliberately delayed by that window. Original completed transcripts, meaningful short answers, Stop custody, cancellation identity and allowance checks are preserved.
• Playback yields immediately when provider speech detection reports that the user has started speaking. Unheard samples remain bounded in the existing queue and playback receipts stop advancing. A successfully empty utterance can resume those exact samples without another model response. Confirmed speech clears the old audio and uses the existing cancellation/truncation path. A semantic item can span a thinking pause, so elapsed time alone no longer establishes speech duration for that mode. This is not a guaranteed cough classifier. Recognition errors and real provider limits can still cause interruptions or waits.

Companion direction

• The default is a calm, capable adult peer: accuracy over agreement, fair evidence-backed disagreement, revisable judgments, and no routine approval-seeking or compulsory follow-up question. It should use the established conversation and execute clear authorized tool requests rather than repeatedly asking for a topic.
• Only exact previously shipped default personas migrate. Custom directions remain unchanged. Prompt checks verify the supplied instructions, not a guarantee that a live model will always follow them. Source-based quiz/study behavior explicitly preserves source terminology, organization and gaps; generated additions must be distinguished.

Saved web sources in Materials

• Open Materials → Reference notes → Saved web sources → Add from web, or ask during a cloud conversation with Search and Materials sharing enabled: “Find a public quiz about this topic and save the source to Materials.” The model can search, then submit a returned source address to the bounded capture tool. A routine search does not automatically save anything. Existing retained Wikipedia study notes remain separate.
• Supported capture is one public HTTPS static HTML, TXT or Markdown page, up to 2 MiB transferred and 240,000 text characters. Oversized sources are rejected rather than silently truncated. No JavaScript, interactive quiz execution, linked-page crawl, image extraction, authenticated download, PDF web import or access-control bypass is included. Some sites will refuse anonymous capture or require unsupported transfer encodings. The result is labelled static extracted text, not a certified complete guide or answer key.
• Saved source snapshots are encrypted in the vault, not inserted into personal memories. They retain source/final URLs, title, capture time, hashes, purpose and limitations. Up to 128 snapshots (including refreshed versions) can be retained. Read/find returns at most 6,000 characters per call. Full source content is not automatically appended to every prompt. Previously supplied passages can still accumulate in a live conversation; this release does not provide a new provider-context compactor or eliminate token limits.
• The UI supports inspection, use by reference, an explicitly saved bookmark/note, refresh, export and deletion. Refresh creates an immutable new snapshot when text changes; existing source/progress stays intact. Progress is not automatically graded, inferred, or moved to changed questions. Export is a confirmed unencrypted TXT download. Deletion requires stopping the conversation and removes only that snapshot/bookmark, not other revisions or old backups. Don’t-save mode blocks mutations/exports, and Local mode cannot fetch outside pages. Saved-source reads remain governed by Materials sharing. Lock/Stop/page ownership changes revoke pending access; network and writes retain cancellation ownership.
• The fetcher uses HTTPS-only, anonymous requests without proxy environment, cookies or API credentials; it validates every redirect and pins the actual TCP destination to public DNS-checked addresses while retaining the original TLS hostname. Source text is never executed as HTML in the UI or granted tool authority. These protections have offline regression coverage, not an independent security certification.

Backup and compatibility — important

• The first saved web snapshot marks the vault as requiring PCS 0.9.13 or newer. Older builds will reject that upgraded vault rather than ignore unknown records. This feature marker remains after deletion. Merely opening an older vault in 0.9.13 without saving a web source does not add it. There is no encryption-format migration.
• Web snapshots and bookmarks are included in encrypted vault backups. Original local Materials files still require their separate copy. Before upgrading, Quit PCS, back up the complete stopped data folder including Materials, retain the old installation and passphrase, and extract the new Windows ZIP into a fresh folder. Keep the pre-feature backup for rollback; later work will not appear in that older backup. Follow RESTORE_VAULT.md.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.

PCS 0.9.10

PCS 0.9.10

A focused pre-release based on the matching 0.9.9 source and Windows package. Interface, Help and diagnostic build identity: 0.9.10.

OpenAI conversation flow

• Keep a never-sent answer pending: a preventive allowance wait holds one first response request for up to two minutes. When admitted it is requested once; the question, audio, tool calls and completed actions are not replayed. Stop, Lock, Cancel waiting answer, superseding input, connection changes and revoked authority retire the pending request.
• Calibrate from matching usage: owned positive response receipts replace the initial cold estimate, while preserving later inputs, optional-image accounting, output reserve and safety margin. Missing, zero, malformed, stale or unrelated receipts do not reset known context.
  Wait on blocking windows: reevaluate the numerical limits actually blocking dispatch, including sufficient fresh telemetry. Do not wait for unrelated healthy windows. This does not increase provider limits or assume linear refill.
• Truthful feedback: distinguish pending first answers from provider-rejected responses. Actual rejected/cancelled requests and tool actions retain their no-replay handling. Conversation, memory and indexing receipts have separate labels, with advisory allowance observations shown separately. Bug reports include bounded, content-free decision details.

Materials workspace

• Documents | Notebooks | Reference notes: documents are visible first instead of appearing below the notebook collection. Folder & help is compact once the library is populated; current sharing controls stay visible.
• Selected-document actions: Read document, Prepare reading notes, related saved preparations and Add to notebook appear together. Preparation retains explicit provider/content review. Adding a reference opens a draft; Save notebook is still required.
• Independent source picker: search and page Documents, Prepared notes and Retained research directly inside a notebook. No need to visit Materials or load more catalog pages first. Exact revisions and unsaved edits are preserved.
• Retire stale results: refresh removes old passage excerpts and invalidates delayed reads. Failed refresh is distinguished from a successful empty library. Old preparations remain accessible in Reference notes after originals change or disappear, with their original coverage.
• Compact responsive lists, notebook search, reference-note filters and an explicit Discard unsaved draft action. Discard does not delete saved records.

Updating

1. Choose Quit PCS and wait for PCS closed. Back up your existing data folder, including its Materials subfolder.
2. Extract PCS-0.9.10-Windows-x64.zip into a new folder. Keep your previous installation intact.
3. Before starting the new version, copy your existing data folder into the new PCS folder, beside Start PCS.exe. Copy it—do not move your only copy or merge separate data folders.
4. Run the new Start PCS.exe, choose Unlock existing, and use your current passphrase. Check your saved records and settings, then refresh Materials while the conversation is stopped.

Re-select your automatic-backup destination if you use that feature, and update any shortcut that still opens the old version. Never run two PCS copies against the same data folder simultaneously.

Verify the download using PCS-0.9.10-SHA256SUMS.txt.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.

PCS 0.9.6

PCS 0.9.6

A cumulative update since 0.9.0 Hotfix 1, adding new ways to explore saved continuity, improved memory handling, targeted conversation fixes, and clearer documentation.

New and improved

• Continuity Map v2: Explore recurring wording and topic labels across memories and notebooks through an interactive graph or list. Includes search, pins, filters, saved-date comparisons, and inspectable paths with supporting evidence. The map is local and read-only; links are shared-record connections, not inferred causes or a history of past beliefs.

• Context-aware memory requests: Requests to remember something can use recent user statements to create a self-contained memory, revise an existing record, or save an explicitly requested verbatim note. Corrections retain history and source links, with clearer saved, revised, pending, and refused outcomes.

• Clearer memory authorship: The inspector separates the revision writer recorded by PCS from any authorship claims inside editable memory JSON. Existing memories are not silently rewritten.

• Local AI and audio fixes: Addressed completed helper failures unnecessarily unloading the shared model, recall interrupting local memory work, microphone startup delays, and a stuck “PCS replying” state after audio finished. Improved microphone handling during renewal and background playback scheduling. Local memory has more output headroom, and the optional startup greeting honors its saved setting.

• OpenAI handling: Improved screen-sharing compatibility, bounded screenshot history, allowance estimates, and rate-limit pause notices. Drafts are preserved during pauses, and rejected requests are not automatically replayed. These changes do not remove provider limits.

• Safer shutdown and clearer diagnostics: Fixed duplicate transcript saves during repeated cancellation and cleanup stalls caused by an unresponsive browser. Bug reports retain build identity and more useful original-error information.

• Tidier folders and updated Help: Current guides, developer documents, and historical notes are grouped under docs. Help and FAQ include updated explanations and example screenshots, plus a searchable offline copy at docs/HELP.html.

Updating

• Use Quit PCS, back up the entire cleanly stopped data directory—including Materials—and extract this release into a fresh folder. Keep the previous installation and follow the included update/restore instructions. Do not run both copies against the same data directory. No vault-format migration is required.

• Most users need PCS-0.9.6-Windows-x64.zip. Matching editable source is provided as PCS-0.9.6-Source.zip; verify downloads with PCS-0.9.6-SHA256SUMS.txt.

Known limitations

• PCS remains a pre-release. Google checkpoint-renewal failures, provider rate limits, and some memory-generation/reference issues remain open.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.

PCS 0.9.0 — Hotfix 1

PCS 0.9.0 Hotfix 1

Fixed

Oversized sources no longer block later memory processing

A source that exceeds the selected memory worker’s size limit no longer prevents later eligible sources from being processed. The oversized original stays intact and pending—it is not deleted, truncated, or marked as processed. Status feedback identifies size-related deferrals, and eligibility is checked again on subsequent attempts, including after a restart or a change of memory worker.

Notebook save confirmations now reflect the final result

Completed notebook saves no longer retain the earlier “Queued locally; not saved yet” message. Confirmations distinguish between saving source links and saving generated suggestions. Pending, refused, and uncertain outcomes remain separate and are not presented as successful saves.

Local memory and runtime timeouts are now aligned

Local memory formation and recall now use the local worker’s operation budgets rather than the shorter cloud deadlines. The personal local runtime’s HTTP read and native-server timeouts are also aligned with its existing inference allowance.

Local formation allows 100 seconds, and recall allows 150 seconds total across its passes. The existing 90-second individual inference limit and 240-second overall local conversation-turn limit remain. Cloud deadlines and standalone-preview settings are unchanged. Stop, Lock, and cancellation handling remain in place.

License and source

Copyright (C) 2026 Courtney Dickson. First-party PCS code is licensed under GNU GPL version 3 only (GPL-3.0-only). Third-party components retain their own licenses and notices. PCS is provided without warranty.

The matching source is supplied as PCS-0.9.0-Hotfix-1-Source.zip alongside the complete Windows download. It includes the PCS Python/JavaScript source, launcher source and build recipe, tests, bundled speech assets and notices. The complete Windows ZIP also contains the PCS source. Use PCS-0.9.0-Hotfix-1-SHA256SUMS.txt to verify your download.

Known limits

PCS remains under active development. Physical microphone/noisy-room and long-session acceptance, broader memory quality, and the previously observed Google renewal disconnection remain open. Local vision and network research are unavailable. The Local conversation model and its matching runtime are separate downloads. Keep an encrypted vault backup before adopting a new release.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.

PCS 0.9.0

PCS 0.9.0

Calendar action buttons now wrap as whole buttons, keeping their labels readable when manually editing a task. Help has been checked against the current features, and the PROTOTYPE badge has been removed.

Local voice now uses bundled Whisper base.en English speech recognition instead of Windows dictation. The Windows David or Zira desktop voice still speaks replies. The speech files are included in this ZIP; Gemma and its matching runtime remain separate downloads. Recognition runs on the CPU with no API request, cloud fallback, microphone substitution or audio recording file. PCS retains a short audio lead-in to avoid losing quiet initial sounds. Listening still pauses while a turn is processed and spoken.

Controlled tests used the same generated audio for both recognizers: Windows dictation made 10 word errors in 38 words; Whisper made none after the same time-format normalization. This is a small synthetic comparison, not an accuracy guarantee for a physical microphone, accent or noisy room. Check important requests in the transcript and the saved-result notice.

Bug reports now include bounded local speech attempt/result counts, recognition time, audio duration, signal level and clipping. They include no speech text or audio. The supplied b8 report confirmed connection and completed local turns but lacked this quality evidence.

Calendar request/edit saving and notebook suggestions retain the behavior confirmed working in b8. Existing vault compatibility requirements are unchanged. Use a fresh extraction of the complete ZIP; do not overlay individual files onto an older version. Your current installation and vault are not changed by downloading this ZIP.

License and source

Copyright (C) 2026 Courtney Dickson. First-party PCS code is licensed under GNU GPL version 3 only (GPL-3.0-only). Third-party components retain their own licenses and notices. PCS is provided without warranty.

The matching source is supplied as PCS-0.9.0-Source.zip alongside the complete Windows download. It includes the PCS Python/JavaScript source, launcher source and build recipe, tests, bundled speech assets and notices. The complete Windows ZIP also contains the PCS source. Use SHA256SUMS.txt to verify your download.

This candidate adds licensing documents and release information to the previously tested 0.9.0 program. Python packaging metadata now explicitly selects the PCS package and declares its license. Application code, executables, models, runtime libraries and pinned dependencies are unchanged.

Known limits

PCS remains under active development. Physical microphone/noisy-room and long-session acceptance, broader memory quality, and the previously observed Google renewal disconnection remain open. Local vision and network research are unavailable. The Local conversation model and its matching runtime are separate downloads. Keep an encrypted vault backup before adopting a new release.

Support PCS

If PCS is useful to you, you can help support its development. Support is optional.