Feral v0.2.0

Released 2026-06-12 — Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel), and Linux.

⚠️ Migration notes from 0.1.x

• Updater key rotation. The original update-signing key was exposed in the
  public git history and has been rotated. Upgrading from 0.1.7 or older
  requires either installing the transitional 0.1.8 release first (it
  carries the new verification key) or downloading the 0.2.0 installer
  manually one time. Full plan: docs/UPDATER_KEY_MIGRATION.md.
• Onboarding, conversations, models, and BYOK keys carry over unchanged.

New

• Vision — the agent can finally see your images. Pasted screenshots
  (Ctrl+V) and uploaded image files now reach the model as real pixel data
  (base64 data URLs), not just a [Image attached: …] filename note. Works on
  both inference paths: direct chat (BYOK cloud via OpenAI image_url content
  parts) and the Feral Agent sidecar (OpenAI-compatible, Ollama images, and
  Anthropic base64 blocks). Local llama.cpp GGUF models remain text-only and
  keep the filename note.
• Memory that actually carries over. New conversations no longer start
  cold: the chat tab now injects a "[Memory context]" block (facts from the
  shared knowledge graph) into the system prompt on every send, and runs a
  background extraction pass after each completed turn that writes
  subject–predicate–object triples back into ~/.feral/memory-graph.json —
  the same graph the agent sidecar maintains. The sidecar side recalls graph
  facts at every turn too, extracts from the very first assistant turn
  (previously only every 3rd — short chats never learned anything), and the
  previously-unregistered memory_ops / memory_graph tools are now live so
  "remember X" / "forget Y" take effect immediately.
• Memory Graph page redesign. Cognee-inspired dark visualization: glowing
  neon nodes on a near-black canvas, degree-scaled node sizes, a filter rail
  with per-type counts, relation chips, free-text node search, a labels
  toggle, and a click-to-inspect detail card showing a node's connections.
• MCP Extensions (native connector). Feral now consumes Model Context
  Protocol servers through the official rmcp Rust SDK, managed entirely in
  the Tauri host. New "Extensions" entry in the sidebar (under Skills) with an
  app-store style UI: curated catalog (File Access, Long-term Memory, GitHub,
  Web Search, Browser Automation, Deep Reasoning), one-click install, on/off
  toggle, "What can it do?" tool listing, and humanized errors. No transports,
  JSON-RPC, raw values, internal paths, or API keys ever reach the frontend;
  configs (including keys) live backend-side in ~/.feral/mcp.json.
• Drag & drop + paste attachments — any file type. Files and images can
  be dropped onto the chat input, and screenshots paste straight from the
  clipboard (Ctrl+V). PDFs and Office documents (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .odt)
  are now parsed natively (new Rust extract_file_text command) so their
  text reaches the model; plain-text files of any extension work as before;
  and true binaries are attached as a path reference the agent can open with
  its file tools instead of becoming a dead "Unsupported format" chip. The
  agent path now receives every attachment too — previously files whose text
  couldn't be extracted were silently dropped and never reached the model.
• macOS and Linux releases. The release pipeline now builds and signs
  installers for Windows (.msi/.exe), macOS Apple Silicon + Intel (.dmg),
  and Linux (.deb/.rpm) from a single tag, updater manifest included.
  The agent sidecar resolves its per-platform binary on all five targets.
• Mascot redesign — the real Feral monster. The pixel companion is now
  the brand mascot itself: charcoal-black fluffy monster with orange horns,
  an orange face plate with big black eyes, tiny white fangs, and a round
  orange belly. 55 animated variants across all 22 states, composed from a
  single base sprite so the cast stays consistent (laptop typing, thought
  clouds and lightbulbs, magnifier searches, party hats, heart eyes, a real
  side-run cycle, dissolve-in spawning, and more). It also renders 26%
  larger at a crisp integer 3× pixel scale, so every state, variant, and
  effect is clearly readable without crowding the chat input. A procedural
  pixel-effects layer plays around it per state: confetti on celebrate,
  rising hearts, drifting Z's while sleeping, thought dots, an orbiting
  search ring, a drawn-in green check on done, flashing error cross, work
  sparks during tool calls.
• Sonnet-style agent voice. SOUL.md rewritten (super friendly + ultra
  useful), plus new bundled IDENTITY.md and AGENTS.md companions — each
  user-overridable at ~/.feral/<NAME>.md — composed into the system prompt.
• Contributor guide. docs/CONTRIBUTOR_GUIDE.md: three-runtime
  architecture, IPC protocols, test matrix, build & release flow.

Stability

• macOS/Linux: cloud model selection works in agent mode. The agent
  sidecar binary is now resolved next to the main executable
  (Contents/MacOS/feral-agent in the .app bundle, /usr/bin/feral-agent
  on deb/rpm installs) where Tauri actually places it — previously only the
  resource directory was checked, so the sidecar was silently dead on
  macOS/Linux production installs and picking a cloud (BYOK) model from the
  model selector did nothing. Model-switch failures (sidecar offline,
  provider disabled, missing key) now surface as error notifications
  instead of vanishing silently.

• Agent stop actually stops (this release). The Stop button's signal now
  travels the whole chain: new feral_stop_generation Tauri command → stop
  message over sidecar stdin → AgentLoop.stop(sessionId) aborts the
  in-flight inference fetch and any running tool. Previously the frontend
  called a Rust command that didn't exist, so agent generations were
  unstoppable.

• Agent tasks survive chat/tab switches. A live per-session mirror
  (lib/feralLiveSession.ts) accumulates streamed content, tool bubbles, and
  agent phase even while another chat is on screen; re-opening the in-flight
  conversation rehydrates all of it instead of showing the stale disk
  snapshot (which made tasks look reset during long tool runs).

• Tool-call bubbles behave. The mascot's tool-call stack now grows upward
  from above the mascot (it could previously extend down over the typing
  bar), and each finished bubble fades out on its own after 4s instead of
  piling up until the turn ended.

• Unified stream stop (A2). One stop entry point (lib/streamControl.ts)
  routes Stop to whichever path (chat backend / agent sidecar) actually owns
  the in-flight generation. Previously the Stop button in Agent mode told the
  idle chat backend to stop while the sidecar kept generating. Feral streams
  are stoppable per-session, and a new send interrupts the previous in-flight
  stream on both paths.

• Sidecar supervision (#11). The Tauri shell now watches the agent sidecar
  process, restarts it with backoff on crashes, and shows an "agent offline /
  restarting" banner. Before: a sidecar crash made Agent mode silently mute.

• GGUF chat template (A4). The prompt format is now read from the model's
  own GGUF metadata (tokenizer.chat_template) via llama.cpp's template
  engine; the filename-based guess is only a fallback. A renamed GGUF no
  longer gets a wrong template and corrupted output.

• Real tokenizer endpoint (P3). New /tokenize route on the local API
  backed by the loaded model's actual vocabulary; the agent's context
  accounting no longer relies on GPT-2 BPE guesses, and token counts are
  cached per message text.

• Idle-timeout transparency (#13). A stream that stalls for 300s is now
  reported as an explained error ("model stopped responding…") instead of
  silently ending in a fake "stopped by user" state.

• No more mid-reasoning dead ends. When a completion exhausts its
  per-call token limit while the model is still thinking, the agent loop now
  feeds the partial reasoning back and asks the model to finish — up to 4
  automatic continuations — instead of surfacing "(The model used all
  available tokens on reasoning and produced no answer)". Tasks complete
  end-to-end regardless of the Max Tokens slider.

Error handling

• Root React ErrorBoundary (#9). A render exception now shows a recovery
  screen (try again / reload) instead of a blank window.
• Humanized inference errors (#10). Raw provider errors (401/429/network/
  context overflow…) are mapped to plain-English messages with a fix-it
  action (e.g. "key rejected → Open Cloud Keys"); the raw error stays
  available under "Technical details". Local-engine failures no longer leak
  [Error: …] text into the chat transcript.
• Cron visibility (X3). Scheduled jobs now run through the full agent
  loop (tools, memory, budgets) instead of a bare LLM call, and their results
  and failures surface as toasts. Failed runs emit a cron_error event.

First-run experience

• Zero-models flow (#14). After the first model download finishes, it is
  loaded automatically (when nothing else is loaded), taking a fresh install
  from "empty app" to "ready to chat" without a manual Load click.
• Hardware-aware recommendation (#15). The onboarding wizard's final step
  now reads your RAM/VRAM/Vulkan detection and recommends a concrete model
  size + quantization to download.
• Slow-start indicator (#16). While a model loads (with %) or a long
  prompt prefills, the chat shows an explanatory status instead of silent
  dots.
• Onboarding sequencing (#17). The agent-creation flow now actually
  mounts (it was unreachable) and never stacks on top of the first-run
  wizard.

UI

• Tool-call bubbles (#18) are interactive: finished calls expand to show
  the tool's output (or error), and long-running tools show live
  retry/progress notes.
• Empty states (#19): HuggingFace browse now explains "no results" instead
  of rendering a blank list.
• i18n groundwork (#20): typed EN/RO dictionary wired to the existing
  language setting; chat surface migrated first, the rest moves incrementally.
• Accessibility (#21): the search overlay is a proper dialog (focus
  restore, Escape from anywhere, arrow-key navigation, combobox semantics).
• Window dragging (#22): Models and Settings pages gained drag regions —
  the frameless window is now movable from every page, not just Chat.
• Mascot (#23–26): reacts to ask_user prompts (curious) and sidecar
  downtime (asleep); can be disabled in Settings → Appearance; greets you in
  the onboarding wizard; single-animation states gained cadence variants so
  long sessions don't loop one identical animation.

Docs

• README rewritten for 0.2.0 (install matrix, hardware requirements, BYOK
  quick start, honest privacy section, current screenshots).
• New: SECURITY.md (threat model + reporting), docs/UPDATER_KEY_MIGRATION.md,
  docs/USER_GUIDE.md (Agent vs Chat, tools, skills), docs/CONTRIBUTING.md
  (architecture, tests, builds).