v0.2.1 — Chronos
Release 004 · August 5, 2026 · Current
VEX 0.2.1
Chronos, refined - the desk gets honest about every satoshi it moves.
Vex 0.2.1 is the largest update since Chronos shipped: five merged pull requests spanning a token launchpad, a rebuilt tool system, and a wave of fixes driven by live trading sessions - every one of them re-tested against real venues before landing. The theme, if it has one, is honesty made mechanical: what Vex executed, what it charged, and what it still cannot prove are now first-class facts in the interface, not things you infer from a block explorer.
01 · Trench Express
A bonding-curve launchpad on Robinhood Chain, built into the desk. Vex can scout new curve tokens, read their trade tape, buy and sell on the curve - and launch a token of your own, image and all.
01 - Launch from a form, not a prayer. The launch flow is a structured form with a preview card showing the exact spend, the Vex fee, and estimated gas before you deploy. The form is the approval - nothing fires without it.
02 - Trench Photos. Launch images live in a locker on the BOOK panel; Vex square-crops and optimizes each one and tells you the byte size, because the picture is stored inside the transaction and its size is gas you pay.
03 - In-flight truth. My Launches shows a broadcast-but-unconfirmed launch as "in flight - no token address yet" instead of pretending a token exists. A launch whose transaction was superseded by another nonce says so - it is never silently dropped.
02 · Execution honesty
The agent-scan ledger now records what actually happened on-chain, with the provenance to prove it.
01 - Executed amounts, not estimates. A confirmed swap or bridge row carries the amounts that really moved - fed straight from the venue's own response the moment the tool returns, with a settlement decoder as the fallback when a response cannot prove them. Where evidence is missing, the row says exactly why instead of showing a stale quote forever.
02 - A real-time pending lane. Transactions still in flight are re-checked every 5 seconds for their first ten minutes, then every 30 - with a durable claim system so two workers can never fight over one row, and live pushes so the Activity panel updates the moment the chain does.
03 - An honest terminal state. A transaction the network no longer knows about ends as "no longer tracking - outcome unproven", never as a fabricated failure. One stuck row also no longer freezes portfolio snapshots for everything else.
04 - Repair loops that converge. The background verifiers that used to warn every 30 seconds forever now classify their reasons (in mempool, RPC unreachable, unreadable receipt), log once per change, and back off on a schedule.
03 · The fee, stated plainly
Vex charges 0.25% on the operations it executes - and as of this release you can see it everywhere it applies.
01 - Itemised on the approval card. Every swap and bridge approval now shows the Vex fee as its own labelled line, computed from the engine's own constants on the same amount you are signing - the model cannot supply or alter it. Bridge cards also gained the moved amount itself, which had never been projected.
02 - Two fees are two fees. Trench curve trades carry the launchpad's own 1% curve fee and Vex's separate 0.25% - the quote names both, and on a sell where proceeds cannot be decoded, Vex takes no fee at all rather than charging a percentage of a guess.
03 - The guide finally says it. "How Vex works" was rewritten top to bottom - 354 lines with a costs section, the fee's three rules, the backup flow, a chains table, a UI-states table, an FAQ, and every number verified against the shipping constants. The word "fee" appeared zero times in the old guide; that is fixed.
04 · Operator control
Stop means stop, in every state the engine can be in.
01 - The Stop button never lies. It is visible whenever the session can actually be stopped - including while the agent sleeps between timed checks - and pressing it cancels the pending wake instead of letting the agent rise again. Three engine paths that could outrun a Stop (approval resumes, chat-form continuations, the moment between lease and turn) are now gated behind it, with the interleavings pinned by database-level tests.
02 - Launch outcomes by status, not by hash. A broadcast that is still pending wakes the agent with an honest "not confirmed - do not retry", never with "deployed". The launch dialog auto-dismisses only on a proven receipt, holds on a revert, and refuses Escape or a backdrop click while your signature is in flight.
03 - Starts respect stops. Starting or recovering a mission while an operator Stop is outstanding now refuses cleanly instead of creating a run the Stop could never reach.
05 · The agent's toolbox
The tool system was rebuilt around one idea: the model should see full, honest tool contracts - and nothing it is not meant to touch.
01 - Manifests as real functions. Discovered tools inject as complete function schemas - parameters, units, enums, examples - so the agent calls venues correctly on the first try. Since the change, live sessions have produced zero invalid-parameter calls.
02 - List, describe, call. Listing a protocol stays cheap; a hidden describe tool turns chosen toolIds into full manifests that are callable on the very next step, up to forty at a time, with anything displaced named rather than silently dropped.
03 - Errors with the real cause. A failed tool call states what actually happened - sanitized, classified, with a remediation - instead of a generic "unexpected error" that sends the agent retrying blind. Slippage defaults to 1% with a hard 10% ceiling that rejects by name, never silently trims.
06 · The desk
01 - vexing… The word "Working" is retired. A fresh message conjures the Vex mark from a feathered cloud of particles in the center of the chat - assembling, holding, dispersing - with the elapsed counter beneath; mid-turn rounds show a compact vexing… pill that never covers your transcript, and everything goes still while a signature awaits.
02 - Quieter chrome. Messages slide into the transcript, scrollbars appear only while you scroll and fade at the panel's true edge, the BOOK panel's cards drag into whatever order you like and remember it, and the session list lost its redundant glyphs.
03 - Tool calls wear their venues again. Every protocol call in the chat shows its venue mark and a human title, and a preview can never render as an execution.
07 · Engineering
Two full multi-agent review cycles (plan review, implementation, adversarial final review) ran end to end before merge; the suite now stands at 11,474 root and 4,855 app tests, with type-ratchet and test-escape gates holding the line. Nine oversized modules were split along responsibility seams, and the icon layer was renamed to tell the truth about its glyphs.
08 · Before you update
Nine database migrations ship in this release (062–070: Trench launches and fees, execution provenance, the pending-transaction lane, and launch-continuation tracking). They run automatically on first start - expect a few extra seconds.
Two changes you will feel: the Vex fee now appears as a line on approval cards (it was always charged; now it is always shown), and the separate "LAUNCH-FEE" row is gone from Activity - the fee rides its parent operation instead. No manual action is required.