v7.3.0

AX Code v7.3.0

Released July 26, 2026 · Full changelog

v7.3.0 adds non-blocking background shells, a richer hook lifecycle, and built-in
slash commands for commit and PR workflows — alongside two new default-login
providers and a round of release-pipeline and session-reliability hardening.

Highlights

• Background shells — the bash tool now runs long commands without blocking the
  agent. Start dev servers, watchers, and slow builds with run_in_background, then
  collect output with bash_output and stop them with kill_shell. Background shells
  are hardened against output corruption, resource leaks, and orphaned processes.
• Lifecycle hooks — UserPromptSubmit, PreCompact, and SubagentStop add
  automation hooks at the moments just before a prompt is sent, before a session
  compacts, and when a subagent finishes. UserPromptSubmit now also runs before
  revert cleanup, so prompts are never lost on a reverted turn.
• Built-in /commit and /pr — opinionated slash commands for staging and
  committing work and for opening a pull request, drawn from project templates.
  User-defined /commit and /pr commands continue to take precedence over the
  built-ins.
• Free-tier-friendly providers — Hugging Face and UnoRouter join the default login
  providers, with small-model routing, setup parity, and a free-tier quickstart.

New features

• feat(tool): background shell support — run_in_background, bash_output, kill_shell.
• feat(hooks): UserPromptSubmit, PreCompact, and SubagentStop lifecycle events.
• feat(command): built-in /commit and /pr slash commands.
• feat(provider): Hugging Face and UnoRouter added to the default login providers.

Improvements

• refactor: collapsed duplicated helpers onto existing boundaries across the core runtime.
• docs(providers): free-tier quickstart and Hugging Face serverless clarification.
• docs(crates): corrected the native crate license to Apache-2.0.
• Built-in skills now parse full frontmatter and surface allowed-tools.

Fixes

• Sessions: auto-generated session titles are now reliable and queue metadata is
  cleared cleanly; UserPromptSubmit hooks run before revert cleanup.
• Storage: the migration marker is read as text rather than JSON, avoiding startup
  parse failures on older markers.
• Tools: background shells hardened against output corruption, resource leaks, and
  orphaned processes.
• Providers: Hugging Face / UnoRouter setup parity, small-model routing, a login
  typo guard, and correct OpenRouter attribution.
• ax-engine: minimum supported version raised to 6.11.0; a server exit during the
  final health probe is now classified as a start failure instead of a hang.
• Install / deploy: removed a stale broken Dockerfile and corrected the install.sh
  port; removed dead signing-key-probe code.

Release pipeline

• Consolidated Homebrew distribution and declared desktop-cask compatibility up front.
• Switched macOS Desktop notarization to a supported config, and kept desktop uploads
  in draft until verification passes.
• Unblocked the repo-structure and coverage-baseline CI jobs, and refreshed self-scan
  baseline fingerprints after source-anchor drift.

Install and verify

Signed archives are attached to this release for darwin-arm64, windows-x64, and
windows-arm64, plus install.ps1. Verify any asset against the published
ax-minisign.pub using the steps in the release verification guide.