v19.1.0

A feature and fix release. The brain format (version: 8) and the reply schemas are unchanged; the search cache rebuilds once on first search or read. Upgrade with uv tool upgrade brain-framework (or update a brain's pin) and run bf skills DIR to refresh installed skills.

Added

• Assistant schedules accept wall-clock at: "HH:MM" times with optional IANA timezone and days (mon–sun) alongside interval every schedules, pass context.schedule in {{context}} for scheduled runs, and treat an empty scheduled or triggered reply without output metadata as a silent no-op that advances the schedule without writing an empty record.
• Assistants with read-only harnesses can set idempotent: true to automatically retry pre-delivery harness failures and interruptions up to 5 attempts with exponential backoff (5s to 300s), and bf queue ID --retry resets the retry budget.
• Top-level fields.<name> declarations in bf.yaml accept an optional default JSON Pointer path, used when a sensor does not specify an override in sensors.<sensor>.fields.<name>.
• Sensor, routine, assistant and channel command arguments support {{lines:relative/path.txt}}, expanding non-blank, non-# lines from a brain-relative UTF-8 file (up to 64 KiB and 500 lines) into separate arguments and checking the file during bf validate.
• Sensors can set truncate_text: true (and optional max_text_bytes up to 1 MiB) to truncate oversized record.text on a valid UTF-8 codepoint boundary, stamp attributes.truncated: true and log the record ID instead of failing the whole batch.
• bf.yaml accepts a top-level validate: policy (max_stale_days, warn_stale_days, index_note, required_status and forbid_patterns) enforced by bf validate.
• bf update runs up to four due sensors concurrently while returning windows in configuration order.
• Section search passages include the note's filename stem (when distinct from its H1 title) and declared aliases in their lexical context, so multi-word queries combining a note's stem or alias with a section's body terms match that section directly.
• Zero-result searches record up to 8 unmatched query tokens (up to 64 characters each) in local usage.jsonl, and bf status surfaces the top 10 recurring empty_terms in each usage window.

Fixed

• A channel input no longer stops when a provider edits a message it already admitted: the edit keeps the admitted version and starts no job, and the messages after it are admitted. Before, every poll failed with a channel reused an event id with different content until the edited event expired 35 days later.
• Editing an assistant's schedules, triggers, inputs or keep no longer fails its queued jobs with assistant configuration changed, and once a harness has answered, only removing or disabling its assistant or changing an output channel stops its saved answer from being recorded.
• A harness or channel send command that never started, such as one not on PATH under a timer's shorter PATH, leaves its job failed instead of uncertain, and its delivery retries like an idempotent one instead of waiting as uncertain: nothing ran, so retrying is safe.
• An unresolved bf run no longer holds back the saved answer of a later bf run of the same assistant: each manual run is its own slot.
• With several brains selected, a read's outline refs and a claim's target_ref are bf:// addresses, like sections, so reading them no longer fails with reference exists in several brains.
• A sensor or routine run that waited 120 seconds for a busy brain no longer waits another 120 seconds to record that failure.
• bf register leaves the registry file, and its inline comments, unchanged when the brain is already registered at the same path.
• bf channel rejects invalid arguments with exit code 2 before selecting a brain, as every other command does, and bf skills reports its destination as an absolute path.
• The example Calendar, Drive, Gmail, Git and GitHub sensors ignore a Git hook's repository variables, such as GIT_DIR: started from a hook, the Git history sensor saved the hook's repository commits under every repository's name.
• Search, the retrieval example and the link reference say that tags weigh more than body text and less than headings, as ranking does.

Changed

• bf-use's guarded-write helper replaces a whole note only from --new-file FILE given alone and never reads standard input, which an agent's shell may hold open; its guide writes --old=TEXT --new=TEXT so a passage starting with - stays an argument. Run bf skills DIR to update installed skills.
• The Assistants guide's complete example runs Claude Code with the prompt on standard input, as the page recommends for private messages, and Core concepts lists channels among a brain's programs.
• Development tools: uv 0.13.6, dprint 0.64.3 with the Markdown 0.27.1 plugin, trivy 0.76.1, ruff 0.17.3, ty 0.0.94, pytest 9.2.0, zensical 0.0.73, and the workflows pin mise 2026.10.21, jdx/mise-action v5.2.4 and pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish v1.14.3. The locked environment moves to starlette 1.10.0, sse-starlette 3.6.0, httpx2 and httpcore2 2.16.0 and pycparser 3.12.