Release Alpha 1.8 · devycarol/Emilla

Changes since Alpha 1.6

You can now add search engines to the Web command in settings with a tacky CSV syntax. The UI for this will improve in a future release.
- If the entry's URL has a '%s' placeholder, the assistant will treat as a search engine that accepts suffixed input—similar to any old command. Otherwise it'll be treated as a bookmark—only an exact case-insensitive match will open the bookmark.
A rudimentary system for custom commands has been implemented, also based on CSV. It's in the 'commands' sub-screen.
Added an "action box" system! Now some commands make use of that empty space above the input fields to offer things like lists, etc.
Contact search! The Call, Text, Contact, and Email commands now show a helpful list of contacts which you can search through with the instruction. Multi-selection is allowed when applicable, and you can select someone immediately by double-tapping their entry or searching specifically enough that they're the only contact in the list.

Added:

Snippets! keeps a 'drawer' of named snippets of text. Now you can easily note and recall the date of that concert or that person's name ;)
Tasker! You can trigger Tasker tasks by name. This unlocks a whole lot of potential, you can now program pretty much any command yourself if you're willing to deal with the somewhat cumbersome syntake (which will improve in the future ;)
- You can also pass parameters along with the data field.
Roll! You can now roll virtual dice using dice notation e.g. "Roll 2d8". The base command is a simple coin-flip :)
Random number! Spits out a random number between 1 and whatever you give it.
Bits! This is like 'calculate' except it can perform bitwise integer arithmetic. This is mainly useful for the computer scientists out there ;)
Notify! Posts a notification with the given title and text. You'll be able to schedule these in the future.

Improved:

Pomodoro: now implemented using notification pings instead of timers.
Calculate: more accurate, natural-language syntax like "3 plus 3" is no longer supported for now. A postfix "%" operator is now supported—it converts the number to the decimal representation of the percentage. This lets you do calculations like "12 % 100", which computes twelve percent of a hundred (12..)
Contacts: now has a 'send' subcommand which allows you to send someone's contact card to any app that will handle it.

The 'call' command no longer chimes upon submission, since it tended to be cut off by the initiation of the phone call.
Revised permission requests to perform actions more immediately upon granting.
The generic contact selection dialogs are now more specifically tuned to the type of contact info that is needed (card, phone number, email, ..)
Phone-word dialing in the 'call' command now has a confirmation dialog to guard against typos. The 'message' command now also supports this feature.
Contact search is no longer delegated to an external app. If you use AOSP contacts or any other app that supports it, this functionality can be attained with its app-command.
Replaced most of the fleeting 'toast' messages with more-helpful message dialogs, which you can dismiss whenever you want ;)

Added a temporary patch to prevent the corner-swipe gesture from flagrantly triggering the double-assist action for some reason.
Fixed a crash when necessary 'retriever' apps such as contact or file pickers don't have an app on the system that fills that role.
Fixed the "unknown error bug report" dialog disabling the UI.
Fixed the assistant prematurely closing when a "no such app" error occurs.
Fixed the "contact edit" command failing when not given input.
The basic 'nav' command ("open your maps app") is now a bit more reliable at detecting various navigation apps. A more foolproof way of detecting these sorts of things will be necessary in the future.
Subcommands are no longer case-sensitive.
Fixed erroneous 'resume' chime when retrieving a contact triggers an immediate action.
Fixed the 'back' button wrongly triggering 'cancel' actions in the assistant when you cancel your press by dragging away.

Disabled the 'settings' command until it can be made more useful—all it did was open the settings app, which can already be done easily assuming your device has an app called 'Settings'.
The "run in background" setting has been removed until I'm more confident about what I'm doing. This probably means slower start times for now if you're not using the accessibility button service :(.

A lot of structural improvements that continue to make development much easier.
Some utility classes are now written Kotlin. Java's still my bread and butter, but I understand Kotlin is what Google would prefer us to move towards 😅