v2.1.2

Orphus 2.1.2

This release adds the first normal Orphus package for Windows x64.

What changed

• Adds orphus-windows-x64.zip to the same release workflow as the macOS arm64
  and Linux x64 packages.
• Builds the Windows executable on a Windows runner, renames it to orphus.exe,
  and proves it reports the release version before packaging.
• Includes the Windows ZIP in the published SHA256SUMS file.
• Keeps the package intentionally simple: download, verify, extract, and run.
  A managed PowerShell installer and in-place Windows updater are not claimed in
  this release.

Windows x64

Download these two files from the release:

• orphus-windows-x64.zip
• SHA256SUMS

Verify and extract them in PowerShell:

$checksum = Get-Content .\SHA256SUMS |
  Where-Object { $_ -match 'orphus-windows-x64\.zip$' } |
  Select-Object -First 1
if (-not $checksum) { throw "Windows checksum not found" }
$expected = $checksum.Split()[0].ToLowerInvariant()
$actual = (Get-FileHash .\orphus-windows-x64.zip -Algorithm SHA256).Hash.ToLowerInvariant()
if ($actual -ne $expected) { throw "Checksum mismatch" }
Expand-Archive .\orphus-windows-x64.zip -DestinationPath . -Force
.\orphus\orphus.exe

macOS and Linux users can continue using orphus update or the existing shell
installer.

v2.1.1

Orphus 2.1.1

This patch makes the Orphus identity clearer and brings the terminal into line
with the black-and-Matrix-green branding at localhost:4321.

What changed

• Replaced the hard-to-read overlapping wordmark with a compact, plain-ASCII
  ORPHUS mark that stays legible in ordinary terminals and on GitHub.
• Pinned the startup mark to Orphus Matrix green (#00ff41) instead of allowing
  a theme to render it olive.
• Aligned the default dark terminal theme with the Orphus black, Matrix green,
  dim green, off-white, and grey brand palette.
• Kept NO_COLOR, narrow-terminal fallback, startup animation, worker lanes,
  and the v2.1 completion runtime behaviour intact.
• Updated the README, terminal usage documentation, tests, and changelog.

Upgrade

If Orphus is already installed:

orphus update

Or install this exact release:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kelvincushman/orphus/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --ref v2.1.1

Verification

• The exact merged main commit passed the full GitHub Actions suite.
• macOS arm64 and Linux x64 archives were built by GitHub Actions.
• Both archives match the published SHA256SUMS file.

v2.1.0

Orphus 2.1.0

This release makes Orphus feel much less hidden while it works. Substantial
coding tasks now route through native Goal by default, Goal opens its live graph
automatically, and background workers are visible in the terminal instead of
only running out of sight.

What changed

Goal is now the normal path for serious work

For bigger build, fix, refactor, or release tasks, Orphus now uses native Goal
as its core completion loop. Goal plans first, splits the job into owned leaves,
runs a rolling team of workers, verifies each leaf with recorded evidence, then
uses reviewers and a reducer before calling the work complete.

Small direct answers and low-risk edits can still stay inline. The point is not
magic infallibility; it is fewer false finishes because the plan, workers,
checks, and final review are part of the runtime path.

You can see the workers now

Interactive Goal runs now open the existing workflow graph automatically, so you
can see the stages, workers, status, model, elapsed time, and dependencies
without first discovering a hidden keybinding.

Background subagents also show in the terminal as:

ORPHUS HARNESS · workers live
Worker 1/3
Worker 2/3
Worker 3/3

That borrows the useful visibility idea from Fusion Harness-style terminals:
clear live lanes that show work is moving. Fusion Harness is not a dependency,
and Orphus's own workflow runtime stays in charge.

Startup fix for installed v2.0.0 users

The installed v2.0.0 build could fail at startup with:

Cannot find module '@orphus/roundtable/bounded-render.ts'

v2.1.0 includes the installed-runtime alias for that shared roundtable renderer,
so bundled subagents can load again.

REPL correction carried forward

The unreleased REPL fix is included too: live kernel results no longer leak the
completion sentinel echo, and genuine output that merely mentions the sentinel
is no longer stripped by mistake.

Install / upgrade

If Orphus is already installed:

orphus update

Or fresh, pinned to this release:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kelvincushman/orphus/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --ref v2.1.0

Full changelog

See:

• packages/coding-agent/CHANGELOG.md for the REPL correction and installed
  runtime alias fix.
• packages/workflows/CHANGELOG.md for native Goal routing and automatic graph
  attachment.
• packages/subagents/CHANGELOG.md for the visible ORPHUS HARNESS · workers live panel and Worker N/M lane labels.

v2.0.0

Orphus 2.0.0

Many minds, from many makers, argue at one table — the best path leaves the room.

Orphus 2.0 is the release where the runtime becomes verifiable: every provider request is recorded exactly as sent, the assembled runtime can be inspected and diffed, three context boundaries are now bounded by code rather than convention — and the full inherited test suite (3,084 tests) is green and gating every change.

Highlights

The harness records what it actually sent

Every provider request is written to the session at the last point before dispatch — after every hook, after sanitization — with the exact body, its SHA-256, retry attempt, and turn. A request whose record cannot be written fails before it reaches the network, because a dispatch nothing recorded is a dispatch nothing can replay. Responses, tool-call audits, and per-tool context accounting close the loop. Credentials are never recorded; only a credential's label can ever appear. orphus inspect runtime --json prints a deterministic report of the resolved model, tools, extensions, hook order, and system-prompt section hashes — two runs of the same configuration are byte-identical, so a diff is a real difference.

Three bounded boundaries, one core

The room digest's contract — a fixed budget spent newest-first, the rest degraded to headlines and a count — now also bounds a parallel subagent fan-out's return and a chain step's {outputs.name} splice, through the same boundedRender core so the boundaries cannot drift apart. Four children emitting 100 KB each reach the parent as roughly 1.7 KB with every task named, failures ordered first, and every line pointing at the full output on disk. Subagent nesting now defaults to two levels (the ceiling stays five, one opt-in away).

Fleets deliberate without holding the orchestrator hostage

A deliberation now runs async: the orchestrator gets a run id, ends its turn, and wakes on completion to pull one bounded digest — its context during a long argument is a run id, a few pings, and one digest. Teams accept deadlineMs, so a stalled panelist finalizes the run naming who never finished instead of hanging it forever. The ponytail discipline skill ships bundled in every session.

Browser operation, twice-gated

An action-dispatched browser tool behind ORPHUS_ENABLE_BROWSER — each session gets its own throwaway Chrome that carries none of your cookies. Login is a second, separate switch with an origin allowlist, per-origin human approval, and OS-keychain storage; an unattended run cannot authorize its own credential use. With the switches off, the tool does not exist.

A second terminal renderer, opt-in

ORPHUS_TUI_BACKEND=termdom runs startup selection and the --resume picker on termDOM (real HTML/CSS layout in the terminal), with structural parity to the pi renderer through one shared selector model. The default remains pi; the chat shell is unchanged.

Local dictation, honestly not enabled

@orphus/transcribe lands the full worker/helper protocol, ABI verification, and a consent-then-checksum model catalog — and both channels fail closed until the native artifacts are built. The guard is the feature: nothing loads a model you did not verify.

Hardened by audit

The security/robustness audit (#85) closed out across five PRs: the roundtable broker socket comes up owner-only (0600), a wedged broker startup names the stale lock and its dead owner, /fleetsetup strips credentials from git remotes before briefing, self-update follows release channels (a stable install is never dragged onto a beta), and the installer keeps the previous version for rollback while pruning older ones.

A suite you can trust

The coding-agent workspace suite — 385 files, red since the fork began — is fully green and now gates every pull request, through a wrapper that enforces per-test duration budgets. Test runs are hermetic against ambient provider credentials (a configured AWS CLI can no longer make "no models available" fixtures see a 114-model catalog). Two real bugs the suite caught are fixed: the in-app changelog no longer rewrites upstream attribution links into dead ones, and OpenRouter attribution identifies Orphus rather than Atomic's site.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kelvincushman/orphus/main/install.sh | sh

macOS arm64 and Linux x64 (glibc 2.27+) archives, checksum-verified. Upgrading later is orphus update. Pin this release with install.sh --ref v2.0.0.

Try the context-window contract with no model and no API key: clone the repo and run npm run demo — a late-joining reviewer catches up on a 9-message discussion for a third of the transcript's cost, asserted, not narrated.

Full changelogs

Per-package details live in packages/*/CHANGELOG.md under the 2.0.0 sections — the coding-agent changelog alone carries fifty-plus entries for this release.

Lineage

Orphus builds on Atomic (MIT), itself a fork of the pi agent harness. The vendored tree stays close to upstream so improvements keep flowing both ways.

v0.1.0 — the first stable Orphus

The first stable Orphus release. Many minds, from many makers, argue at one table — the best path leaves the room.

Orphus is an agent harness where fleets of agents across providers deliberate in rooms that live outside every context window, and converge on a decision of record. Everything below shipped and hardened across the 0.1.0-alpha and 0.1.0-beta lines.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kelvincushman/orphus/main/install.sh | sh

Upgrades are orphus update from then on — transactional, checksum-verified, prior versions kept for rollback. Channels: a stable install tracks stable releases only; a prerelease install tracks the newest release of any kind.

Highlights of the 0.1.0 line

• Rooms and the context-window contract — the roundtable and memory tools in every session: bounded digests, broker-side cursors, lossless export into durable memory. A verbose peer cannot inflate your context.
• Fleet orchestration — /fleet <name> <task> runs a shareable blueprint of teams (dispatch, deliberate, or deliberate-then-dispatch), /fleetsetup authors one by interview offering seats only from your configured providers. Ships with the fleet-orchestration protocol skill, a final-gate protocol (automated reviewers complete → triage → fresh-context verdict → merge), and six example blueprints.
• Named subagent identities — fleet members join rooms under their own names with their own cursors, and per-seat tools grants let read-only agents deliberate.
• Skills as an ecosystem — orphus install <git-url> consumes community skill packs (mattpocock/skills, cli-printing-press); the minting-clis skill teaches agents to find or mint an agent-native CLI before reaching for MCP.
• The external bridge — orphus-roundtable-mcp lets any MCP-capable CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI) join a room as a peer with a pinned role.
• A managed install everywhere — the installer detects your platform, verifies SHA256SUMS, keeps versioned installs under ~/.local/share/orphus, and self-updates in place.

Platforms

macOS arm64 (Apple silicon) and Linux x64 (glibc ≥ 2.27 — Ubuntu 18.04+). Windows, Linux arm64, and musl are not built yet; open an issue if you need one.

Full detail: the [0.1.0] sections of packages/coding-agent/CHANGELOG.md, packages/fleet/CHANGELOG.md, and packages/subagents/CHANGELOG.md.

v0.1.0-beta.4

The toolkit extends itself: every session ships the minting-clis skill (community CLI library first, mint with Printing Press second, MCP only when a CLI cannot exist), and fleet orchestrators gain the toolsmith move — dispatch a member to mint the missing tool, then re-dispatch the task with it. Linux requires glibc 2.27 or newer; the archive verifies this exact floor before staging.

v0.1.0-beta.3

The media-team fleet now prefers kie-pp-cli (the community Printing Press CLI for Kie.ai) when installed, and the skills docs cover community packs, the writing-for-agents authoring standard, and CLI minting. Linux requires glibc 2.27 or newer; the archive verifies this exact floor before staging.

v0.1.0-beta.2

The deliberation spinner (themed working verbs, live elapsed + token stats), repo-adaptive fleet blueprints via docs/agents/ config, and the new slogan in the startup banner. Linux requires glibc 2.27 or newer; the archive verifies this exact floor before staging.

v0.1.0-beta.1 — Orphus enters beta

Orphus enters beta 🎛️

Orphus is an agent harness whose agents deliberate in rooms that live outside their context windows — a verbose peer cannot inflate your context, because what enters it is bounded by the runtime, not by prompt discipline. This first beta marks the point where the whole loop works end to end and updates itself.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kelvincushman/orphus/main/install.sh | sh
orphus

macOS arm64 and Linux x64 (glibc ≥ 2.27). Checksums verified, versioned installs with rollback, and from then on orphus update is the only upgrade command you will ever run — it checks these releases, reinstalls in place, and keeps prior versions on disk.

What the beta brings

Fleets. /fleet <name> <task> runs a shareable blueprint of agent teams — dispatch fan-outs, room deliberations with per-member briefs and models, or both in sequence. /fleetsetup authors a blueprint by interview, offering model seats only from providers you have actually configured. Six example blueprints ship in the box, from a coding team to a blog-from-YouTube pipeline.

Deliberation that holds. Panel members join rooms under their own broker identities, argue across bounded digests, and settle with FINAL: positions the orchestrator synthesizes into a decision of record. Joining the room is a member's mandatory first act — a panelist that researches brilliantly but never speaks is reported as a defect, not silently absorbed.

A model ladder, not a monoculture. The orchestration protocol routes each piece of work to the cheapest seat that can do it well — frontier models direct and verify, bulk and spinner seats execute — and verification crosses model families on purpose.

Headless works. orphus -p "/fleet design-team <question>" runs a full panel from a script and prints the decision. Rooms are reachable from external MCP-capable agent CLIs too, via the bundled stdio bridge.

MCP 2026-07-28, self-updating installs, and the digest contract — the bundled demo still proves a late-joining reviewer catches up on a 9-message discussion for ~32% of the raw transcript cost, with the decision messages verbatim.

Known edges

• Windows has no archive yet; the installer names what is supported on unsupported hosts.
• GitHub's release list can lag ~a minute right after a release is published; an orphus update in that window may briefly see the previous version.

Feedback

Issues and PRs welcome — the repository's AGENTS.md describes how changes are made here: smallest correct change, evidence over assumption, and every fix lands with the regression test that proves it.

v0.1.0-alpha.7

Linux x64 and macOS arm64 builds. Linux requires glibc 2.27 or newer; the archive verifies this exact floor before staging.