v0.12.0

Bots (the new name for Mates) are now on for everyone, the agent can drive a browser you watch and take over live, and two more coding agents join the harness list. Connections, chat, the sidebar, schedules and apps pick up many small controls. Ultra Mode, Explore, Session Environments, Shared Crew and Remote dispatch arrive as previews you can switch on.

Bots for everyone

• Bots without a preview switch: Mates are now called Bots in every screen, prompt and language, the Bots row in the left rail, the /members page and the Bot rows in the command bar are always shown, and starred Bots gather in a Bots group in the rail that you can drag to reorder.
• A desk of its own: each Bot keeps the chats and folders it opens in one sidebar folder named after it, and works in its own git worktree per repository, so two Bots on one repo no longer commit each other's edits.
• Take a Bot with you: the Bot profile card's "Export as file" writes a .kirobot file with an editable lessons draft, and Bots > Import from file reads it back (older .crewjam and .crewmate files still import).

Bots that keep track of their work

• A ledger for handed-out work: a Bot that sends work to workers records each item in a work ledger, and its own chat gets an automatic patrol that watches it.
• Approvals in one place: a Bot's chat shows the approvals and questions from the sessions it started, and its roster row gets a badge.
• A catch-up that checks: when you return after about half an hour away, the card a Bot posts reads the live state of up to five pull requests its open questions name and lists them as pills.

A browser you can watch and take over

• Live view: when the agent uses the browser, the chat shows the page live in the transcript, and you can take it over at any time.
• Sign in without the agent seeing: a sign-in sheet types a secret into the page for you, and nothing typed is saved.
• Settings: Settings > Browser controls which browser is used, the live view and its quality, and recording, and the old browser tool is gone, while browser setup no longer fails on some Python installs.

More coding agents

• Strands: Settings > Agent Harness lists Strands once the Strands CLI is installed, its setup card stores the model provider keys in Settings > Secrets, and changing the model or effort in the picker relaunches it on the same session.
• GitHub Copilot CLI: pick it under Settings > Agent Harness (a session on any Copilot CLI release other than 1.0.100 is refused with the install command), and every harness's model picker now shows that backend's own model names.
• KAS on its own: choosing KAS uses your Kiro Crew sign-in, falls back to the account from kiro-cli login, and runs Kiro Crew's own engine when kiro-cli is missing, while /agent, /context, /help, /mcp, /model, /tools and /usage answer locally on the default KAS backend.

Connections and sign-ins

• Google Workspace: the Connections page adds Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Sheets, Docs and Slides entries that use your own Google OAuth app.
• Sign-ins that stay: on the default KAS backend, remote MCP sign-ins such as Atlassian, Notion and Figma are kept across sessions, and agent.kas_persist_mcp_sign_in turns that off.
• Start from a popular list: the Add Skill and Add Server dialogs open on a Popular list before you type a search.

Knowledge from your own AWS account

• Bedrock Knowledge Bases: under Capabilities > Knowledge > Sources, "Add Knowledge Base" registers an existing Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Base that is queried live and merged into knowledge search (each search is billed by AWS, only the gateway owner can add one, and it needs the optional bedrock extra).

Settings and themes

• Developer settings for everyone: Developer Mode is gone, so Settings > Developer always shows Feature Previews, Logs, System, Telemetry, Storage, Memory, Config, Debug tools and Archive, and Feature Previews switches are saved on the gateway, so they follow you to every browser and the desktop app, and MCP Management now sits below the MCP Servers list on the Connections page.
• Themes and thresholds: "👁 Color-blind safe" and "💜 Amethyst OLED" are under Settings > Display > Theme, and Settings > Chat > Advanced > Auto-compact threshold gains a Custom option for any percent from 5 to 90.
• Shorter Settings rows: each row keeps one short line about its effect in view and moves the longer explanation behind its info tip, and a section's introduction now sits in a tip beside its heading.

Chat you can handle more ways

• Take back a steer: a steer the running turn has not read yet can be unsent, edited in the message box or queued from its row's menu, on the Kiro CLI harness.
• Copy what you need: code blocks gain "Wrap lines", quotes gain "Copy quote", right-clicking an image offers "Copy image", and Settings > Chat > Transcript adds an opt-in "Copy on select".
• Attach and read more: iPhone HEIC photos attach from the composer and are converted to JPEG, a box you drag over an image in the file viewer can carry a comment, and "Jump to the bottom when you send" in Settings > Chat can be turned off.

Chat that reads and drives better

• Easier to read replies: rendered markdown spaces paragraphs, lists and sections more clearly and tables lose the grey header fill, all following the chat font size setting.
• Keys and slash helpers: Cmd+O (Ctrl+O on Windows and Linux) pops the current session out to its own window, Tab fills the message box with the first follow-up option, typing /workflow opens a menu of your saved workflows, Up-arrow recalls a prompt whose send never reached the transcript, and the dock terminal can search its scrollback and go fullscreen with Cmd+F on macOS and Ctrl+Shift+F on Linux and Windows.
• Session messages as cards: a message one session sends to another shows as a card naming the sender, with a link to open that session, and the sender's chat shows a "Sent to @name" card once the message is delivered.

A sidebar that sorts itself

• Session menu: every session row's menu adds "Copy session ID" and "Reference in chat", and once you have a folder, "Move to folder" ends with "New folder" to create and move in one step.
• Group and filter: the sidebar Filter menu adds "Group by kind" and a "Not in progress" row, and "Clean up sessions" adds 14 and 30 day windows.
• Color and tabs: a session's color now tints its chat header, the Categorical palette under Settings > Display > Sidebar gives twelve fixed hues, and session tabs drag to reorder.

Pick up where you left off

• Resume them all: while sessions are interrupted by a restart or sleep, the sidebar search dock shows "N interrupted sessions" with a "Resume N sessions" button.
• Pin a folder: a folder's header menu adds Pin folder, which keeps its sessions (subfolders included) listed under the status chips, tag chips and folder checkboxes.
• Start again from the first message: the session header menu's Initial prompt submenu shows and copies the first message, or drafts a new session from it on the same agent, project and folder.

Files and paths

• Upload to the Files panel: drag files onto the panel or use Upload files to add new files to the folder it shows, within the usual extension and size limits.
• Show hidden files: a toggle in the Files rail header lists dot-files such as .env, even when git ignores them, and remembers your choice in that browser.
• Relative paths work: paths in diffs, tool calls and replies open against the chat's project directory.

Notifications that reach you

• Push when closed: Settings > Notifications > Push notifications > "Notify me even when Kiro Crew is closed" delivers to an installed PWA, including iOS after Add to Home Screen.
• Your own sounds: Settings > Notifications > Custom sounds takes a short MP3, WAV or OGG file for any category.
• Missed approvals: an approval that expires unanswered leaves a bell note naming the tool, a chat that stops on an error you must act on leaves a "Chat errors" bell entry linking to it, and on phones the live banner swipes away.

Slack and other channels

• Slack code channels: with slack.code_channels on (it is off by default, and needs your workspace's Slack code channels feature, an updated app manifest and a reinstall), mentioning Kiro Crew in a thread with multi-step work opens a code channel backed by a dashboard session that you can stop with its button or !stop.
• Feishu commands: Feishu gains /stop (alias /cancel) and /help, like the other channels.
• Discord choices: pressing a long choice answers with its full text instead of the cut label.

Hooks and what agents can do

• Your hook files on KAS: the hook files in your Kiro hooks folder now run on KAS turns as they do on the Kiro CLI engine, a pre-tool hook that exits with 2 blocks the tool, and script hooks saved on the Hooks page also run on messaging channel turns and in 1:1 Slack DMs with the bot.
• Reveal a removed credential: when redaction removes a credential from a reply, the owner can Show, Copy or Hide it in the reply, and every reveal is audited.
• Refuse guessed writes: setting hooks.batch_write_guard refuses a write sent in the same parallel batch as a read, because its arguments would be guesses, and it is off by default.

Schedules and apps

• Quieter failures: the job dialog's "Send the failure message after N failures in a row" (and kirocrew cron add --alert-after N) rings only the bell for earlier failures, and a run the security gate partly refused shows "Partial" (creating a job over the REST API now keeps the limits you send).
• More ways to say when: one-shot times for kirocrew cron add --at accept days and weeks ("in 2 days", "in 1 week"), a cron job with no zone follows the default time zone setting, which is the computer's current zone shown as "Local" in the job form (or "Local (zone not detected, runs in UTC)"), and kirocrew cron add --project-path <dir> runs the job's agent session in that directory so the repo's steering files load.
• Apps in their own window: an app page's "Pop out app to its own window" control opens it separately, right-clicking an app row in the sidebar opens Details or Unpin with an update badge, and Apps > Library lists enabled apps first.

Apps that reach into chat

• Rows in the + menu: an installed app can add up to two rows to the composer's + menu that open a popover and hand text back into the empty composer.
• A row on one message: an installed app that declares a message action adds a row to a finished chat message's More menu, and the owner approves which messages it may receive.
• Selected text: an installed, approved app can add items to the button on the toolbar that appears when you select chat text.

Desktop and command line

• Desktop app: Settings > Display > View > Desktop app turns off "Keep running in the background after closing the window", and kirocrew://chat?sid=<key> or kirocrew open opens a session in the desktop app.
• Phone sign-in: the session-expired banner can scan the sign-in QR with the phone camera in the page, and Connect your phone shows a QR for any external address.
• Update an app from a folder: kirocrew app update <name> --source <dir> updates an installed app from another directory and remembers it as the app's source, and the command now prints how many agents and skills it re-registered.

Updates and scripts

• Safer updates: if the dashboard build fails, an update stops before restarting and tells you why, every update path installs the KAS engine the release pins, kirocrew doctor names the installed and needed engine versions, and a second gateway started while the first is still booting no longer shuts it down.
• Scripts can trust exit codes: kirocrew knowledge stats and dedup, kirocrew app, agent and workspace with a missing or unknown sub-action, and cron update with nothing to write now exit non-zero.
• Platform touches: the Linux AppImage adds its own launcher entry and icons the first time it starts, a Windows desktop build with managed updates shows a "Kiro Crew update ready" notice at shutdown, and the installers say so when a host cannot run the built-in KAS engine instead of telling you to retry.

Lighter and faster

The dashboard stays responsive while many sessions stream, the gateway no longer stalls on file reads, and boot is faster. The first message in a new chat starts sooner, the Skills page, the model picker and the session documents list load faster, and tabs stop re-reading the Older Sessions list at the end of every turn. Memory use drops by about 110 MiB from the entity graph and more from a capped transcript cache, and Linux arm64 embeddings run about five times faster.

Previews you can turn on in Settings > Developer > Feature Previews (Preview)

• Ultra Mode: the "Ultra Mode" chip on a new chat, or on an ongoing plain chat, runs it on a conductor that hands each task to its own worker chat, and the side panel's Board tab shows the crew by what needs you, stalled or running, with a catch-up message when you come back.
• Explore: the "Explore" pill in the top bar opens one panel that lists features you have tried and not yet tried and is the only place feature videos show, and a new chat shows a "Try today" card; once the preview is on, turn both off with the Explore row in Settings > Display.
• Agent harness per Bot: a Bot's profile gains an "Agent harness" row, so one Bot can run on Claude Code while the rest stay on KAS.

More previews you can turn on (Preview)

• Session Environments: Settings > Session Environments connects Coder, Fly.io Sprites or boxd workspaces, with an environment chip in the composer and a remote Files panel, Git panel and terminal; the gateway also needs KIROCREW_DEV_MODE set.
• Shared Crew: the Shared Crew card (owner only, applied after a gateway restart) turns on People, where a two-step card shares this machine over Tailscale and copies an invite message, and teammates appear from your Tailscale peers.
• Remote dispatch: the Remote dispatch switch lets an Ultra Mode chat run tasks on machines connected under Remote Crew, and a task whose machine stays unreachable for 30 minutes is released and shown as due for redispatch, which you start with a new message.

Notable fixes

Chat and sessions. A message sent while nothing is running is queued instead of leaving the chat stuck on thinking, a reply keeps its footer however the turn ends, regenerate that ends empty keeps the previous reply, a message sent while a session is still starting joins that start, and sessions with only sub-agents running stay under the In progress filter. On the default KAS backend, a hung MCP tool call is judged by its own server's activity instead of the engine's background work, turns are recorded with the model they ran on (an Auto turn is named in the reply footer), the wait countdown and its End button now show, and a restored chat keeps MCP servers whose env uses a ${NAME} reference. Page shortcuts no longer act behind the open command bar, a session with no title yet is named "Untitled session", the @-mention file picker no longer shows the previous project's files after you switch chats, a failed workflow counts as blocked in the Command Center for 24 hours and then shows as stopped, and continuing a sub-agent that was started without a project directory works.

Bots and channels. Bots you created are listed even with an empty chat, and a Bot stays silent when it has nothing to say. Slack replies post only the final answer, Slack Socket Mode works behind a SOCKS proxy, the Atlassian connection's Jira and Confluence tools work again, and a sub-agent's finished report is no longer sent twice to a channel conversation whose first attempt timed out. A Bot bound to a shared agent spec starts on Kiro CLI even when the spec lists a tool your policy denies, and a Bot whose template allows an MCP server that is also in your own MCP config starts workers again instead of refusing every one.

Schedules, memory and desktop. A cron's wall-clock time holds across a daylight saving change, and a memory backup folder with an extra file no longer deletes real backups. Memory search finds markdown you edited directly on disk, an update you put off is never installed behind your back, fewer ordinary commands are wrongly denied, and an agent adding a schedule into a folder that does not exist yet creates the folder instead of failing. The job form's schedule fields and the Vector Memory card's text boxes now have labels, a selected weekday is announced as pressed, screen readers hear whether cron run history rows, review comment collapse buttons and Knowledge file groups are open, and one corrupt line in a job's run history no longer breaks the history pages.

Your files stay put. A settings or data file that cannot be read is kept aside instead of being overwritten with defaults, including the notifications, tips, folders, pins, tags, global MCP list and meeting task files. Files saved with a leading byte order mark by some Windows editors load again, and kirocrew setup leaves a global MCP list that is not valid UTF-8 untouched instead of stopping with an error.

Windows and Linux. On Windows the gateway no longer freezes on slow process starts, Claude Code starts reliably, and files saved while another program holds them are retried. On Linux the background service finds Node versions installed by mise, and the installer raises a distro Node below the supported floor.

Sign-in and tools. A Builder ID sign-in made in Kiro Crew works for model calls and shows its email and type in the account panel, and a hook naming one MCP tool asks only for that tool. kirocrew doctor stops asking for Node on the bundled KAS route and accepts a standalone kiro-cli 3.0.0 install, a mistake in the security policy file prints one clear line with a doctor hint instead of a traceback, the Task Runner page runs one action per run at a time, and skills that a second package also ships are found again. A stdio MCP server whose command or environment value uses ${HOME} now starts instead of timing out, and with Kiro CLI 3.0.0 a usage-limit error shows the provider's own sentence and a temporarily unavailable model is retried again.

Apps. In an app's embedded chat, a message the app's page posts to the chat shows at once instead of after the next refresh, and the message box keeps keyboard focus after you send.

Security. This release includes several security hardening fixes, covering deny rules that could be overridden for a whole session, governance for cron and unattended runs, Salesforce sign-in endpoints, redaction rules, command allow-list parsing and app registry cloning.