v7.37

Release Notes

This update provides important bug fixes and improvements.

Lecture Videos (Preview)

Note

This release adds new capabilities for Lecture Videos, which remain under active development and are not yet officially supported in Groups. APIs, features, and UI/UX may change before final release.

Lecture Video mode is currently visible only to institutional admins when creating an assistant.

New Features

• Introducing the third generation of Lecture Video manifests. Manifests should now include video descriptions of the lecture material every 30 seconds.
• Using the new video descriptions, PingPong will now provide the model text-only lecture context to speed up response generation.
• Edit the prompt the model uses to reply to user questions in Chat during lecture viewing.
• A new default prompt optimizes model responses for the Lecture Video Chat format.
• Experimental: In an effort to increase cache hits, the current time and date are no longer injected in the system prompt. This change only affects Lecture Video mode conversations at this time, but may expand to other modes in the future.
• A redesigned placement of the Comprehension Checks in the LV view provides more space for chatting.
• When sending a new message, an optimistic message with status "Analyzing lecture context" appears before being replaced with the model response.

Updates & Improvements

• The lecture will be paused only when the user sends a message. Videos will no longer be paused when the user starts typing.
• Audio generation during chats uses eleven_flash_v2_5 for lower latency.
• The speaker's generated voice is now slowed down.
• Playback interactions such as video paused or video started are serialized through a single in-flight slot.
• When a lecture video state conflict arises, the thread state manager will attempt to gracefully refresh the session and continue the experience.
• PingPong will no longer try to generate summary names for Lecture Video chats after 3 messages.
• New placeholder view for "No comprehension checks yet" in the completed session view.
• New placeholder view for "No messages yet" in the chat view.
• New placeholder view for "No comprehension checks yet" in the gallery view.
• The placeholder message for the chat input is "Ask about the lecture" instead of the generic cross-app placeholder.

Resolved Issues

• Fixed: Creating a new lecture-video assistant always triggers an "unsaved changes" warning on navigation.
• Fixed: After sending a message, which now automatically pauses the video, the thread may fail to continue the conversation.
• Fixed: Trying to quickly change the playback state between playing and pausing may fail, with users seeing "Lecture video state is out of date. Refresh and try again."
• Fixed: Recent Lecture Video threads may not be visible in the context of a Group without Lecture Video capabilities enabled.

Internal

Updates & Improvements

• ChatInput now accepts a custom placeholder message for the active state.
• Centralize shimmer style across components.
• Dependency upgrades.

Deployment Information

Schema Upgrade	Migration Script	Permissions Update	Task Definition Update	Configuration Update
No	No	No	No	No

Deployment Details

• N/A

Related PRs

• deps(py): bump the uv-prod-minor-patch group with 4 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #1638
• deps(web): bump the pnpm-prod-minor-patch group in /web/pingpong with 2 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #1634
• deps(web): bump marked from 17.0.6 to 18.0.0 in /web/pingpong by @dependabot[bot] in #1637
• deps(web-dev): bump the pnpm-dev-minor-patch group across 1 directory with 11 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #1636
• deps(gha): bump the github-actions group with 6 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #1635
• deps(py): bump lxml from 6.0.2 to 6.1.0 by @dependabot[bot] in #1642
• deps(py): bump python-dotenv from 1.2.1 to 1.2.2 by @dependabot[bot] in #1641
• feat(lv): allow editing prompt for chat mode by @ekassos in #1643
• feat(lv): introducing manifest v3 by @ekassos in #1644
• deps(web): bump uuid to 14.0.0 by @ekassos in #1645
• fix(lv): compare dirty instructions with default when creating by @ekassos in #1646
• feat(lv): update default prompt by @ekassos in #1647
• feat(lv): do not inject time & date in the prompt by @ekassos in #1648
• feat(lv): move to eleven_flash_v2_5 by @ekassos in #1649
• fix(lv): resolve deadlock by @ekassos in #1650
• feat(lv): pause video when message is sent by @ekassos in #1651
• feat(lv): change voice speed in chat by @ekassos in #1652
• fix(lv): unstable state when changing playback quickly by @ekassos in #1653
• chore(lv): stop filtering LV threads by @ekassos in #1654
• change(lv): do not try to name threads by @ekassos in #1656
• feat(lv): rearrange lecture video view by @ekassos in #1655
• feat(lv): lecture completed empty view by @ekassos in #1657
• feat(lv): chat empty view + placeholder by @ekassos in #1658
• feat(lv): checks empty view by @ekassos in #1659
• feat(lv): add optimistic placeholder message by @ekassos in #1660

Full Changelog: v1229+srv622.web447...v1253+srv631.web462