v0.3.0 — First run, fixed

Everything here is about the first five minutes. 0.2.0 was the first release under the name Flowkite; installing it, it turned out, was the easy part.

The panel would not take a task until you found two hidden settings

The side panel unlocks when an agent has a model, but its setup screen said "configure your API keys in the settings page". Follow that exactly and you came back to the same screen, with nothing saying that two more picks were needed in dropdowns further down the options page.

• A saved provider is now enough to start. Saving one points the Planner and Navigator at its flagship model and the Fast agent at its cheap tier, when the provider names one. Only ever on a setup with nothing configured, so it can never move a choice you made yourself.
• Setup happens in the panel. Pick a provider, paste a key, and you are in the chat. No second tab, no hunting.
• Ollama sits in that same list, and swaps the key field for a server address. It is the free path and it was buried.

A wrong key is caught immediately

Before, a mistyped key surfaced at the worst moment: the first task, mid-run, as a model error, after you had already approved a plan. Saving now asks the provider whether the key works, using the cheapest request that proves it, which costs no tokens.

Only an outright rejection stops the save. A timeout, a rate limit, a provider that offers no way to check: none of those block you, because none of them mean your key is bad.

Alt+Shift+F opens the panel

There was no keyboard shortcut at all. Rebindable at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

Also

• The end-to-end harness runs again. Chrome 137 removed --load-extension for automated sessions and 151 closed the escape hatch, so pnpm e2e had been starting a browser with no extension in it. It now installs the extension the supported way, on an ordinary Chrome.

Install

Not on the Chrome Web Store yet.

1. Download flowkite-0.3.0.zip below and unzip it.
2. Open chrome://extensions/ and turn on Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked and select the unzipped folder.

Chrome or Edge. Bring an API key for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and the rest, or point it at a local Ollama and pay nothing.

Upgrading from 0.2.0: your providers, models, history and settings are untouched. Nothing here re-configures an install that already works.