Sift 0.4.0

Sift 0.4.0 is the first release under the Sift name. The repository, executable, configuration, installers, integrations, formula, and release assets now use sift.

Sift reduces the text sent to coding agents through reversible encodings and conservative command-aware views. Enable original-output retention when full native bytes may need recalling later. This release adds faster embedded token counting, more lossless text representations, command-aware Git and Cargo views, explicit read/JSON/summary/error/test views, and broader automatic integration and migration support.

The final Linux x64 artifact is faster than RTK 0.49 on every row in the release's ten-workload synthetic benchmark. On the seven substantive workloads, median Sift time ranges from 2.3–12.8 ms, compared with RTK's 3.5–16.2 ms. Sift used 1,518 tokens versus 2,662 raw tokens across those rows, a 43% reduction. RTK used fewer tokens on several narrow command-specific rows, so the benchmark reports both measurements rather than claiming a universal token win.

An optional recoverable semantic selector can further reduce large Pi built-in grep results. It is off by default and requires an explicit project allowlist plus TYPESAFE_API_KEY. Eligible passages are selected with TypeSafe Jev; the complete original remains local and can be restored with sift recall. Timeouts, malformed responses, missing configuration, or insufficient savings keep the deterministic local output. Ordinary Sift compaction makes no model calls.

Install on Linux or macOS:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ctxrs/sift/main/install.sh | sh

Install on Windows PowerShell:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ctxrs/sift/main/install.ps1 | iex

To replace recognized RTK integrations during installation, add --replace-rtk on Unix or -ReplaceRtk on Windows. Existing installations can run sift init --replace-rtk.

Release assets include standalone Linux x64/arm64, macOS x64/arm64, and Windows x64 binaries, per-binary CycloneDX SBOMs and third-party notices, and SHA256SUMS. The release factory notarized and Developer ID signed the macOS binaries and Authenticode signed the Windows binary. Native macOS and Windows execution/trust checks were skipped for this release at the maintainer's direction; those checks are not claimed as passing.