Newsmonger v0.4.0-beta.3 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Use bounded conditional waits for pueue tasks (NEWS-450) (c0d457e)
• Make the backup interval test use one clock (NEWS-449) (d8c709e)

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.4.0-beta.3 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.4.0-beta.2 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Updated hotsheet settings (6d0683c)
• Authorize updater bridge commands (NEWS-447) (31dca07)

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.4.0-beta.2 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.4.0-beta.1 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Desktop auto-update now retries once on a transient network failure before giving up, so a single dropped DNS/TLS/proxy request no longer fails an update check.
• The Settings → "Check for updates" result now includes the underlying reason when a check fails (e.g. "Could not check for updates: offline") instead of a generic message.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.4.0-beta.1 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.3.0

Initial release

Download

macOS

• Apple Silicon (.dmg) — M-series Macs
• Intel (.dmg) — older Macs

Linux

• Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)
• AppImage — runs on most distros, no install needed
• Red Hat / Fedora (.rpm)

Windows

• Installer (.exe)
• MSI — for managed-deployment environments

Not sure which to pick? On macOS use the Apple Silicon build unless you have a 2019-or-older Intel Mac. On Linux pick the AppImage if you don't recognize the others. If a direct link 404s, the build for that platform may have failed — every shipped asset is also listed under "Assets" below.

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npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.3.0 — works everywhere Node 22.5+ runs, but lacks the native desktop window the installable builds ship with.

Newsmonger v0.2.0-beta.24 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• The feed panel now shows a helpful empty state instead of a blank void. With no topics, it presents a welcome hero explaining what the app does, a button to reopen the setup guide, a "Discover topics" button, and a row of popular topics you can add with one click. With topics but no stories yet, it reassures you and offers a "Check all now" button to run a check immediately.
• The first-run setup guide is now reachable directly from the main feed's empty state, not just through Settings.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.2.0-beta.24 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.2.0-beta.23 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• The section filter bar now scrolls on its own below 860px instead of pushing the whole page sideways — with many populated sections, narrow windows no longer scroll horizontally.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.2.0-beta.23 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.2.0-beta.22 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Fixed the release-assets helper's download-section command silently doing nothing on Windows — its entry-point check compared a hand-built file:// string against import.meta.url, which never matched there, so it produced no output and no error on a bad invocation.
• Windows unit runs get a 30s test/hook timeout instead of the 5s/10s used elsewhere, so a uniformly slow runner stops producing a different set of spurious timeouts each round.
• Temp-dir cleanup no longer retries a removal that cannot succeed, removing a 250 ms per-test penalty on Windows that was itself timing suites out.
• Suites whose subject is POSIX itself (execute bits, #! scripts, :-separated PATH, bash stubs) are now explicitly skipped on Windows with a stated reason, rather than failing or registering an empty suite.
• The recorded-CLI-session replay and the release-script executability check now handle Windows path separators and NTFS permissions instead of asserting POSIX behavior.
• A new tree-wide guard rejects hand-built file://${…} URLs, catching the same class of path-vs-URL confusion as the existing .pathname rule.
• TypeScript, TSX and Markdown files are normalized to LF via .gitattributes, and .bin/.png/.svgz are marked binary so no checkout can corrupt them.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.2.0-beta.22 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.2.0-beta.19 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Newly added topics now wait a minute before their first scheduled check, so guidance written right after creating a topic is used by that first check instead of being missed.
• A topic with its edit or guidance dialog open is skipped by the scheduler until the dialog closes, so a check never runs against guidance you're still typing.
• README now documents the RSS feed at /feed.xml (with ?scope=saved for bookmarks), Markdown/JSON export and import, search and bookmarks, per-topic scheduling and priority, automatic sections and subjects, theme selection, and backup/restore.
• The masthead wordmark now follows the theme you pinned in Settings rather than the OS preference — pinning light on a dark system no longer made the word "News" vanish.
• An expanded story card's detail pane now fills the full height of its grid row, instead of stopping mid-card with rounded corners floating in empty space.
• Fixed five CSS rules pointing at undeclared color tokens: the high-priority star, settings field-label star and review flag now use a themed, contrast-checked color; the restore-row border, muted text and — most importantly — the file-button focus ring all render again.
• The Codex model cache is now validated rather than trusted, so an unexpected shape from the vendor degrades to "no models" instead of crashing with .map is not a function or sorting arbitrarily.
• The topic discovery button beside the add-topic field is now a grid icon rather than a compass, matching the section grid it opens.
• Demo screenshots and the animated hero were recaptured against the current UI.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.2.0-beta.19 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.2.0-beta.18 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Fixed the end-to-end test harness on Windows: the client build step now spawns npm the way current Node requires (npm.cmd through a shell), replacing a spawn that failed before any test could run.
• Fixed test servers failing to launch on Windows with a misleading node.exe ENOENT — working directories are now resolved from file: URLs correctly instead of via a raw URL pathname.
• The real-provider E2E suite now launches its server with node --import tsx/esm from an explicit repo root, so it runs under a command sandbox and on Windows.
• Added a Windows end-to-end CI job that runs on pushes touching the test harness, config, scripts, or the CLI entry point, so Windows-only breakage surfaces immediately instead of at the next release.
• macOS code signing and notarization (FR-5.5) is now documented as shipped and verified rather than partially complete, with the evidence from recent signed releases.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.2.0-beta.18 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.

Newsmonger v0.2.0-beta.15 (beta)

Beta / pre-release. This build is opt-in. The desktop auto-updater keeps pointing at the prior stable release.

• Fixed Codex CLI checks failing outright: the shared JSON schemas now list every declared property in required, as OpenAI's strict structured outputs demand, and topic discovery is fixed the same way.
• CLI failures now show the actual error message and code (e.g. invalid_json_schema: …) instead of the closing braces of a JSON payload, with the detail cap raised from 300 to 600 characters.
• A topic that has been checked but holds no stories now reads checked 1d ago · no stories instead of implying stories are still there.
• New effort comparison in Settings → App → Diagnostics: median duration and median tokens per effort level, fastest first. Only successful runs count, runs from before effort tracking are excluded, and tokens read "not reported" rather than 0 when a provider reports none. It stays silent below two levels and explains what to change instead.
• Checks no longer ask the model to omit category/subcategory; they are always returned, as null when no classification was requested.
• Confirmed and documented that clicking a desktop notification on macOS brings the window forward — courtesy of the OS activating the posting app, not app code. Windows and Linux remain unverified.

Try it out

npm: npm install -g newsmonger@0.2.0-beta.15 (or newsmonger@beta for the newest beta)

Desktop bundles: see Assets below.