Sonderr v1.6.0 — the biggest update yet

v1.6.0 — The biggest update yet

Announcements and visuals

• Every launch now opens with the Sonderr v1.6 announcement card (AI-generated key art, release highlights, and a direct link to the new Release Center); the Sonderr-v1 SLM film no longer interrupts startup and remains permanently available in the sidebar announcements archive.
• Add a dedicated Release Center page at /update — a standalone hub with the full v1.6 notes, security summary, Studios specialization showcase, and update instructions, linked from the launch announcement, the archive, and the README.
• Generate v1.6 art assets: key art with the otter companion, an otter mascot portrait, and Swarm 2.0 network art (web/assets/sonderr-v16-*.png), plus new Studios visuals — the Studios hero scene, the two-specialist crew art, and the four-craft board (web/assets/sonderr-studios-*.png).
• Add the otter companion: while Sonderr works — including through the final streamed response — the status line shows a gently swimming otter chip with a ripple animation and "Sonderr is working…" text, honoring reduced-motion preferences.
• Update the sidebar brand to v1.6.0 and refresh Studios branding to release-candidate status.

Swarm 2.0

• Collaboration rooms support up to six read-only workers (previously three) drawn from sixteen personas across eight roles; Builders, Testers, Documenters, and Strategists join the roster, and saved rooms restore their full-sized rosters.
• The AI lead now ends every room with a published synthesis pass — a structured verdict separating agreement, contradictions or gaps, and up to three recommended next steps; a failed synthesis never blocks the room result.
• Raise collaboration ceilings: six shared findings per worker, four risk flags per worker (sixteen per room), twelve live help threads, a 160-entry transcript, and two anonymous helper calls per room.
• The synthesis entry renders in the Alt+5 agent room with a distinct "LEAD SYNTHESIS" style, and the room subtitle mentions the synthesis pass.

Marathon workflow (S1–U10)

• Extend U-tier quality budgets to a 72-active-hour maximum (U1–U10 = 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 18, 24, 30, 48, 72 hours); U7 and above are labeled multi-day engineering tasks, so a U10 can span one to three working days.
• Raise U-tier run limits to 80–350 bounded provider chunks to sustain marathon tasks.
• Restate authoritative time facts on every Build turn: humanized active-work duration (for example "1d 4h 20m"), remaining budget, task start time, and wall-clock span — with explicit instructions to treat these numbers as the only trustworthy clock and never estimate elapsed time from memory.
• Add marathon discipline rules: U-tier tasks keep every edit the size and care of an H1-H4 pass, must produce new evidence in every pass, and checkpoint an honest pause instead of idling, hallucinating progress, or manufacturing filler work.
• Update the long-running-work skill, quality_checkpoint schema text, and Build/Ask system prompts to match the 72-hour scale and the anti-idle, anti-hallucination rules.

Task lists 2.0

• Todo items support an optional evidence note: the next concrete action for open items or the verifying evidence for completed ones, persisted through the store sanitizer and rendered inside the live task card.
• Todo guidance now requires milestone-sized items for multi-hour and U-tier tasks — each item an independently verifiable outcome sized like a complete H-tier slice.

Studios

• Sonderr Studios graduates from beta to release-candidate branding across the sidebar and Studios home.
• Go specialized: add the Document Studio (print-ready PDFs and documents) and Design Studio (posters, brand systems, and design kits) alongside Website, App, Project, Developer, and Bounty studios — seven specialized starting points with track-specific milestones and canvas hints, plus a new generated craft board and Studios hero art.
• Add the Studio Crew: every real Studios work turn fields exactly two track-matched specialists (Site Architect + Interface Designer, App Engineer + Experience Designer, Document Architect + Page Designer, Design Lead + Craft Specialist, Project Planner + Build Specialist, Code Researcher + Contribution Guide, Scope Analyst + Safety Reviewer). The crew is phase-aware — plan, build, review, and advise turns hand each worker a different specific task for what needs to happen right now — the lead synthesizes both reports, and the lead — never a worker — performs all edits and checks. The studio rail shows the crew with their live phase chip, per-phase assignments, and a two-specialist phase art card, and the spawn_subagents tool is always supplied for Studios work turns.
• Add per-craft playbooks with a definition of done: each studio carries five professional rules (for example print-ready output for documents, mobile-first layouts and accessibility for websites, palette discipline and export completeness for design) that the lead applies while working and as the final acceptance check; the studio rail shows the craft standard chips and the definition of done inline.
• Add a "What the crew makes" showcase to the Studios home — generated deliverables flat-lay art (bound report, design posters, site on laptop and tablet) with the four output chips — plus new phase-aware crew art (two specialists advancing through plan, build, and review stages) and a cinematic v1.6 finale hero on the Release Center.
• Premium visual polish: animated aurora wash over the announcement hero, a rotating conic halo behind the working otter chip, shine sweeps on crew task chips and the announcement CTA, hover lift and glow on crew cards, craft chips, path cards, and hero art, and a sheen sweep on the deliverables showcase — all honoring reduced-motion preferences.

Security

• Keep the fail-closed release gate, size-capped release metadata fetch, and timestamped update backups that anchor the managed-update flow; document the v1.6 posture on the Release Center.
• Swarm rooms remain strictly read-only for workers, and the synthesis verdict is labeled an AI assessment that never authorizes user actions.

Internal

• Bump the application version to 1.6.0. The npm package name and bin/sonderr-1.5.js entrypoint intentionally stay unchanged so the managed one-click updater and install paths keep working for existing 1.5.x installs.

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Install / update: run the installer or use the in-app updater — the npm package name and entrypoint are unchanged, so existing 1.5.x installs update in one click.

Full notes: see the in-app Release Center at /update.