Bowerbird 0.1.2

Closes the gaps in what 0.1.1 promised about notebooks from other people, the server's link guard and quote checks, checks every download against its SHA-256, and adds the files a public project needs.

Changes

• Notebooks: a notebook holding a symbolic link anywhere in its folder does not open, and the error names the link. A link could point a source at another file on your disk, or make saving a note overwrite one.
• Links: the server reaches this machine or its local network only when started with --allow-private-links. It no longer guesses from a loopback address, which every request has behind a reverse proxy. The desktop app is unchanged. If you run bowerbird-server yourself and add links to localhost or your network, add the flag.
• Quote checks: quotes are measured in characters in every script, so a Chinese or Japanese quote needs at least 8 characters. Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters count three times toward how much an ellipsis may skip, which keeps it to about two sentences in every language. The citation rules ask models for at least 8 characters in Chinese or Japanese.
• Downloads: every model file, and the PDFium archives the builds use, is checked against a recorded SHA-256, and a download that doesn't match is discarded. Kokoro and Whisper come from fixed revisions. Files you already downloaded aren't checked again.
• Privacy: the README lists everything that leaves your machine, where it goes and when.
• Project: SECURITY.md with private vulnerability reporting, CONTRIBUTING.md, issue forms, rust-toolchain.toml (Rust 1.99.1) and a minimum of Rust 1.95.
• Android: the APK is signed with the release key in CI, so 0.1.2 installs over 0.1.1.
• Dependencies: genai 0.7.2, text-splitter 0.33.1 and zip 9.1.3.

Downloads

Platform	File
Linux	.deb or .AppImage
macOS 13.4 or later (Apple Silicon)	Bowerbird_0.1.2_aarch64.dmg
Windows	bowerbird-windows-x64.zip (portable, unzip and run Bowerbird.exe)
Android	app-universal-release.apk (64-bit ARM)

Updating on Android: 0.1.2 installs over 0.1.1. If you have 0.1.0, uninstall it first: it was signed with a temporary key, and uninstalling deletes the notebooks, settings and models kept in the app.

First launch on macOS: the app is signed ad hoc, not notarized, so macOS blocks it. Allow it under System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway.

Known limits

• OCR reads Latin script only; Cyrillic and other scripts aren't read yet.
• The macOS app isn't notarized and the Windows build is unsigned, so both warn on first launch.
• There is no iOS build.

Full Changelog: v0.1.1...v0.1.2

Bowerbird 0.1.1

Tighter quote checks, safer handling of notebook files and links, a macOS build, a release-signed Android app and a new icon.

Changes

• Quote checks: a quote is looked up only in the source its citation names. A quote shortened with an ellipsis counts only when each piece has at least 10 characters and the pieces sit within 300 characters of each other.
• Notebooks: a notebook whose notebook.toml names a file outside the notebook folder does not open.
• Links: when the server listens on a network address, links added through the app may only point at the public internet. A page fetched from a link stops at 200 MB, a picture at 4 MB.
• Search: a question that shares no keyword with the sources still gets the passages closest in meaning, and search by meaning is faster in large notebooks.
• macOS: a build for Apple Silicon, macOS 13.4 or later.
• Licenses: each build carries the licenses of the software and models it uses, in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and licenses/.
• Icon: a new app icon.
• Dependencies: Svelte 5.57.3, prosemirror-view 1.42.8 and prosemirror-markdown 1.13.9 (#2); taiki-e/install-action 2.88.0 (#1).

Downloads

Platform	File
Linux	.deb or .AppImage
macOS 13.4 or later (Apple Silicon)	Bowerbird_0.1.1_aarch64.dmg
Windows	bowerbird-windows-x64.zip (portable, unzip and run Bowerbird.exe)
Android	app-universal-release.apk (64-bit ARM)

Updating on Android: uninstall 0.1.0 first. 0.1.0 was signed with a temporary key, and Android updates an app only from an APK signed with the same key. Uninstalling deletes the notebooks, settings and models kept in the app.

First launch on macOS: the app is signed ad hoc, not notarized, so macOS blocks it. Allow it under System Settings, Privacy & Security, Open Anyway.

Known limits

• OCR reads Latin script only; Cyrillic and other scripts aren't read yet.
• The macOS app isn't notarized and the Windows build is unsigned, so both warn on first launch.
• There is no iOS build.

Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v0.1.1

Bowerbird 0.1.0

First public release of Bowerbird, a local-first research notebook.

Add your sources, ask questions, and get answers where every quote is checked against the passage it cites. Quotes that aren't in the source are marked unverified, and clicking a citation opens the passage (or the printed PDF page) with the quoted words highlighted.

Highlights

• Sources: PDF, Word (.docx), EPUB, Markdown, plain text, web pages, YouTube captions and audio recordings. Scanned PDFs are read with local OCR (PP-OCRv5, Latin script), recordings are transcribed locally with Whisper.
• Search: SQLite FTS5 keyword search fused with EmbeddingGemma vectors, so differently worded or cross-language questions still find the passage.
• Any model: everything genai supports, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Groq, xAI, OpenRouter and Ollama. Default is deepseek-flash.
• Study tools: notes, reports (study guide, briefing, timeline, FAQ, custom), flashcards with Anki export, quizzes, mind maps, data tables (CSV), slide decks (PPTX), infographics (SVG, PNG) and audio overviews voiced locally with Kokoro.
• Finding sources: web search through DuckDuckGo, SearXNG, Brave, Tavily or Exa.
• Your data: each notebook is a plain folder in ~/Bowerbird. Copy it to back it up or move it.

Downloads

Platform	File
Linux	.deb or .AppImage
Windows	bowerbird-windows-x64.zip (portable, unzip and run Bowerbird.exe)
Android	.apk (64-bit ARM, debug-signed)

Local models (search 200 MB, OCR 12 MB, speech) download on first use. Add a model API key in Settings.

Known limits

• OCR reads Latin script only; Cyrillic and other scripts aren't read yet.
• The Android APK is signed with the debug key.
• The Windows build is unsigned, so SmartScreen may warn on first launch.
• There is no macOS or iOS build.

About 80% of this code is vibecoded. Bug reports welcome.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/jolovicdev/bowerbird/commits/v0.1.0