Backplane 0.15.1

Backplane 0.15.1

0.15.1 brings back most of what 0.15.0 left out from 0.14, makes the desktop app faster and fixes many bugs. If you run 0.15.0, it offers this update; your threads and settings carry over as they are.

What's new

• Search everything that was said. Ctrl+Shift+F finds messages across all threads, and Ctrl+F opens a find bar inside a thread. Ctrl+K finds any thread by its title. On both phones, the home search finds messages too, and a thread has a find bar.
• Messages reach a working agent at once. A message sent while an agent is working now goes into its running turn instead of waiting for the turn to end. It waits in the queue only when it can't be delivered. A message written while the hub is unreachable waits in an outbox, on the desktop and the phones, and is sent when the hub is back.
• Handing work to another thread. /give sends a summary, references and a note to another thread, which shows them on a card with a way back. A thread that's working gets the handoff straight away.
• Subagents. Open a subagent to watch its own steps live, with Back to its parent. Stop a subagent or a background shell on its own. Finished subagents stay listed for a day with what they reported. On the phones, subagents are nested under their parent.
• Your machines. One list of every linked machine, with full threads from other machines. Rooms span any number of machines, and ~machine mentions name one. Links keep working when a hub moves, for example behind tailscale serve.
• The sidebar as in 0.14. The Archived shelf and Unarchive, Move under…, a project's Intent… page, the 44 px folded strip, Newer/Older for long thread lists, and faded quiet projects.
• The Browser tab runs the embedded Chromium on macOS and Windows too, not only on Linux.
• Ctrl+L puts the keyboard in the message box from anywhere except the terminal and the Browser tab. You can rebind it in Settings → Shortcuts.
• One chip for model, effort, account and usage in the composer. Its menu lists every installed agent's models in 0.14's three columns, and each Claude login's usage is read with its own token.
• Images in replies draw in the desktop app and on the phones.

Viewers

• Design history: the bar shows the thread's steps as 0.14 did. Clicking a design step's row in the thread shows that change, and stepping through history keeps the camera. A comparison's either side can be any version, a commit, branch or tag can be typed in, and BOM lists the parts that changed.
• Board and Schematic open already laid out while the plot loads. A probed part or net stays lit across pages and openings. A schematic pin probes its part, and a part on another sheet says where it is, with "Open it". Split's panes can be put away one at a time, and their dividers resize them.
• 3D and Mech:
  • The view uses 0.14's controls and draws a model in layers, so arriving parts no longer rebuild it.
  • A board's model is cached by the file's content: a large board reopens in about 0.2 s instead of 1.5 s, across restarts and worktrees. STEP meshes are cached the same way.
  • While loading, the view says what the hub is doing, with the time running and an estimate for STEP files. Retry appears when a model couldn't be made.
  • Part models embedded in KiCad 9 boards are read.
• FreeCAD runs headless. It no longer opens a window on your screen while meshing.
• The viewer opens and closes the moment you press the rail. Its width is saved, and the viewer, thread and sidebar share a narrow window by 0.14's rules.

Faster desktop app

• The sidebar, the messages and the viewer are drawn as cached views. Typing, hovering or the caret's blink no longer redraws them, and an open board no longer repaints on every hover.
• Icons are drawn as sprites, and the "Working…" row and the cat animate at a fixed rate instead of every display frame.
• Long threads load their earlier pages as you scroll, and reopening deep in a thread fetches pages back to it one after another.
• The app uses less GPU memory: pictures leave the GPU once they're off screen, and message images are capped at 2048 px.

Phones

• Android: a built-in QR scanner (Settings → Devices), subagents, Buy it, the queue, Search in thread, the camera, and taps in the viewer that light the part and net across Split's panes. Threads keep running alerts while they work, and a thread is fetched ahead when its row comes into view.
• iPhone: Settings → Devices (pairing link and QR, Revoke), subagents, Buy it, Search in thread, and Take a photo in Attach.
• A thread's alert reaches your phone unless you're looking at that thread on a desktop.

Fixes

• The desktop app no longer crashes when its window is closed under X11. It quits when the display goes away instead of logging the error in a loop. A window that can't open exits with a message.
• A subthread's chevron responds across its whole row, the sidebar's Search button unfolds a sidebar folded for lack of room, and the viewer's rail buttons light up on hover.
• Holding Ctrl shows the shortcut keys again, and Ctrl+Shift+[ / ] and Esc work from a real keyboard.
• Buy it: quotes include US sales tax and the duty-paid parcel fee; buy threads ask for the US state; the files' approval survives a hub restart; and a busy or failed quote is reported correctly to the agent.
• Import from 0.14: buy threads keep their quotes and orders, subagent threads land under the threads that started them, and a large import no longer stalls requests.
• Your own threads no longer settle on their own by default.
• backplane --headless starts the hub alone in the background again, and backplane pair prints its QR code again.
• QR codes in Settings are dark on white in either theme.
• Many smaller fixes to the composer, Settings, setup and pairing.

Installing

• Linux and macOS: curl -fsSL https://github.com/BackplaneWorks/Backplane/releases/download/v0.15.1/install.sh | sh, or press Update in 0.15.0 or 0.14.
• Windows: extract the zip and open backplane-gpui.exe, or press Update in 0.15.0. Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": choose More info, then Run anyway (the exe is not signed yet).
• Android: install backplane-v0.15.1-android.apk. It installs over 0.15.0.
• iPhone: through TestFlight.

Known issues

• Windows: the programs aren't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns on first start. Managed PCs may not allow running them.
• Android: if you installed a test (debug) build of the app before, uninstall it once; the signed app won't install over it.

Not supported yet

• Google sign-in for bots and the Gmail and Calendar tools.
• Japanese in the desktop app.
• A project home on the phones, and a browser-based app.

Downloads

Platform	Download
Linux x64	backplane-v0.15.1-linux-x64-native.tar.gz
Linux ARM64	backplane-v0.15.1-linux-arm64-native.tar.gz
macOS Apple Silicon	backplane-v0.15.1-darwin-arm64-native.tar.gz
Windows x64	backplane-v0.15.1-windows-x64-native.zip
Android	backplane-v0.15.1-android.apk · backplane-v0.15.1-android.aab
iPhone	TestFlight

install.sh installs the right archive for your Linux or Mac and checks it. The archives named without -native are for 0.14's own updater; you don't need them. SHA256SUMS lists every file's checksum, and manifest.json is signed with Backplane's release key.