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@github-actions github-actions released this 21 Jun 22:46
· 337 commits to master since this release
v1.9.4
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TheOrc — Build Complete

TheOrc v1.9.4

100% local AI coding assistant — no cloud, no subscriptions, no data leaving your machine.

What's new in v1.9.4

v1.9.0 — WPF deleted, CodeGraph v1, Native Runtime + HIVE MIND ready for multi-machine testing

The biggest cutover since the Avalonia migration started: WPF is gone. OrchestratorIDE/OrchestratorIDE.csproj and every WPF-only window, dialog, panel, and control were deleted outright — not archived, not stubbed, deleted. Avalonia is no longer "primary," it's the only desktop shell. ModelWikiWindow/ModelCompareWindow were retired rather than ported (their data layer stays; a from-scratch, data-bound rebuild is a real future feature, not a blocker). Everything operators actually use day to day — ask_user, the first-run wizard, sandbox bypass, self-update, model library/downloader, workspace/global agent rules — already had a real Avalonia home going into this release. Shared service code (Core/, Services/, Models/, Trust/) is untouched; only the WPF-exclusive UI layer is gone, which is what made deleting an entire desktop framework in one night tractable at all.

CodeGraph v1 — a Roslyn + SQLite code knowledge graph lets the agent query structure (callers, callees, complexity hotspots, architecture) instead of grepping files for every question. Five tools wired into the swarm; lifecycle-managed (background re-index on workspace open); ships with a codegraph-query dev skill for low-token structural lookups against the underlying SQLite DB directly.

Native Runtime, two layers, both real:

  • The installer already defaults fresh installs to a local llama.cpp server instead of Ollama (IModelRuntime → LlamaCppServerRuntime) — this isn't new in v1.9, but it's worth being explicit about: most new installs of TheOrc have never required Ollama at all.
  • New this release, experimental and opt-in: an in-process LLamaSharp runtime (no server process), AdapterManager for per-role persistent LoRA contexts with hot-swap, RuntimeOrchestrator tying both runtimes together, and OrcScheduler doing real VRAM-budget admission control so concurrent roles don't blow out a GPU. The first live path is an experimental HIVE-worker / main-chat opt-in (ExperimentalNativeHiveWorkerEnabled / ExperimentalNativeMainChatEnabled in Settings) with automatic fallback to Ollama on any runtime fault. Main chat, research chat, and SwarmSession stay on the configured default runtime unless explicitly opted in.

HIVE MIND — fixed a release-blocking startup bug. A pre-release smoke test caught HiveNodeServer.Start() silently failing on every normal-user install: a failed wildcard HttpListener bind (needs admin rights / a URL ACL reservation no normal process has) left the listener disposed internally, and the fallback cleanup code's own property access threw a second exception that masked the first inside an unobserved background task. Net effect: enabling HIVE MIND did nothing — no error, no log line, nothing listening — on every machine that wasn't running elevated. Fixed and verified live (/hive/info returns 200, UDP beacon confirmed listening). This is exactly the kind of bug dotnet test can't catch, since it requires a real socket bind; found by actually launching the built app before shipping it.

Training Pit suitability gate — a deterministic pre-training check that blocks write-task examples mislabeled into TESTER-lane roles before they reach the trainer — the exact contamination pattern that regressed ORC ACADEMY v2 (51.3% of v2's examples had this mislabeling).

Infrastructure fixes that came out of actually shipping this release:

  • .github/workflows/ci.yml was still building the now-deleted WPF project — every push had been failing CI since the WPF deletion commit landed. Fixed, and CI now runs both test suites on every push instead of just build-checking.
  • .github/workflows/release.yml was still publishing and packaging the WPF build as the actual downloaded artifact. Fixed to publish Avalonia with the same output filename, so every downstream consumer (installer, self-updater) keeps working unchanged.
  • OrchestratorIDE.Daemon (the headless cross-platform HIVE node, theorc-warband) had been failing to build since before this release cycle started — a dependency on the heavy native LLamaSharp stack that a lightweight daemon shouldn't need. Decoupled via a new IHiveNativeRoleExecutor interface; the daemon now builds clean without pulling in native-runtime dependencies at all.
  • Internal dev-only docs and scratch files (.grok/ specs, prompts, spike code; loose planning notes) stopped being published to GitHub — they're still on disk for development, just not part of the public repo going forward. README.md, SECURITY.md, LICENSING.md, CLA.md, docs/ROADMAP.md, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, and .grok/PROJECT_TRUTH.md stay public.

v1.9.1 — HIVE MIND actually reachable across machines now

v1.9.0's HIVE fix made the node server start without crashing; it didn't make it reachable. Real multi-machine testing (NewcorePC ↔ HARDCOREPC, both on v1.9.0, one over Tailscale) found that the fix's own fallback path — binding localhost only when the wildcard bind fails — was itself the unfixed problem: a localhost-only listener is invisible to every other machine, even though the app shows no error and looks like it started fine.

Root cause: binding the wildcard prefix (http://+:port/, all interfaces) as a normal, non-admin process requires an http.sys URL ACL reservation (netsh http add urlacl). Nothing — not the installer, not the app — ever created one. So on every non-elevated install, the wildcard bind was silently denied and the app fell back to loopback-only, with no indication to the user that the node had effectively not started for HIVE's actual purpose.

Fixed:

  • The installer's HIVE enrollment step now reserves the URL ACLs for both HIVE ports (7078, 7079) alongside its existing firewall rules. Everything is tried unelevated first (no-op if already granted); anything still missing is batched into a single UAC prompt instead of one popup per item.
  • HiveTaskQueue (the Warchief's distributed-task-queue listener, used by Phase 3 Distributed Swarm) had the identical listener-reuse bug as HiveNodeServer did in v1.9.0 — fixed the same way, found by code review of the parallel class rather than waiting to hit it live.
  • The gated Phi-4 Mini boss-model download (HTTP 401 on every fresh install since that HuggingFace repo got gated after the manifest was written) now points at a working, non-gated mirror.

If you installed v1.9.0 and HIVE MIND only ever seemed to discover other nodes one-directionally (or not at all), this is why — update to v1.9.1.

v1.9.2 — pairing actually works now

Validating v1.9.1's reachability fix across three real machines (not just a single dev box) surfaced the next real gap: pairing — the step where two machines agree to trust each other — never had a way to actually start. The "approve" side was fully built (the responder endpoints, the approval prompt), but nothing in either UI, current or the now-deleted WPF one, ever called the endpoint that initiates a pairing request. It wasn't a bug so much as an unfinished feature nobody had hit yet, because nothing could reach it.

Added: a "Pair with this node" action on any reachable HIVE node card, building the missing initiator side end to end — request, approval polling, shared-secret derivation.

This one went through real adversarial review (two independent AI reviewers, multiple rounds) before shipping, and it caught genuine problems with the first draft, not nitpicks:

  • The approval-polling endpoint is unauthenticated by design, and the first version trusted a new peer as soon as it got an "approved" response — before the one real check (comparing a human-readable fingerprint between the two machines) ever happened. Fixed: trust is no longer written until the operator explicitly confirms the fingerprint matches what the other machine displays.
  • A newly-paired peer was being granted enough standing to become eligible for real Warchief authority later, regardless of whether it should be. Capped to a safer default — becoming Controller-eligible is now a separate, deliberate decision, not a side effect of pairing.
  • A few smaller correctness/cleanup fixes alongside those.

Also: the code-review tooling used throughout this project's development kept falsely flagging legitimate security-related code as a risk and refusing to review it. Switched the underlying model, confirmed by direct comparison that the new one doesn't have this problem.

Looking ahead to v2.0

v2.0's defining change: Native Runtime becomes the default, Ollama becomes fully optional. That flip is explicitly gated on multi-machine HIVE MIND validation of this release's native opt-in path across a real LAN/Tailscale network — not a fixed date. Also planned, not yet started:

  • Promoting the experimental RuntimeOrchestrator/AdapterManager/OrcScheduler layer out of opt-in status once the v1.9 HIVE testing round validates it under real concurrent multi-role load.
  • HIVE MIND Phase 3B — full multi-step AgentLoop-style tool execution on remote workers (file writes, shell commands, web search running on the worker machine itself), not just single-pass LLM calls.
  • A cross-platform CI publish matrix for linux-x64/osx-arm64 Warband (daemon) binaries — the daemon itself is already cross-platform; nothing currently builds/ships those binaries automatically.
  • A from-scratch, data-bound Avalonia rebuild of the Model Wiki/catalogue browsing experience retired in this release.

⚡ Quick start — one-click install (recommended)

  1. Download OrchestratorSetup.exe below
  2. Run it — the wizard detects your GPU, downloads the right runtime and model, configures everything
  3. Launch from the Desktop shortcut or Start Menu

📦 Portable install — works on fresh machines

Download TheOrc-1.9.4-win-x64-portable.zip — contains both OrchestratorIDE.exe and OrchestratorSetup.exe.

  1. Extract both files to the same folder
  2. Run OrchestratorIDE.exe
  3. If no AI runtime is detected, the app offers to launch the setup wizard automatically — no prior AI tools required

🖥️ System requirements
OS Windows 10 / 11 (x64)
.NET Not required — fully self-contained
GPU NVIDIA RTX (CUDA 12) · AMD (Vulkan) · CPU-only (AVX2 / baseline)
RAM 8 GB minimum · 16 GB recommended

Full changelog: v1.9.2...v1.9.4

Built from v1.9.4 · .NET 10 · Source · Support the Orc ☕

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