v1.1.1-alpha

OpenSift Release Notes

v1.1.1-alpha (Proposed)

Release date: 2026-02-17

This patch release focuses on personality customization with a new global SOUL system that applies consistently across UI, terminal, and MCP workflows.

Highlights

• Added global chatbot personality customization via SOUL.md.
• Unified personality behavior across all owners/sessions.
• Added automatic migration from legacy per-owner SOUL entries.

Added

• New SOUL persistence module in backend/app/soul.py with:
  • global style read/write helpers
  • default SOUL file bootstrap and directory creation
  • compatibility support for legacy owner sections
• UI endpoints for global SOUL management:
  • GET /chat/soul
  • POST /chat/soul/set
• MCP tools for global SOUL access:
  • soul_get
  • soul_set

Changed

• SOUL scope is now global by default and applied everywhere:
  • chat UI generation
  • terminal generation
  • MCP sift_generate
• Default SOUL path changed to:
  • ~/.opensift/SOUL.md
• SOUL UI wording updated from owner-specific style to global style.

Migration

• Legacy per-owner SOUL entries are merged into the global style block automatically.
• Migration runs idempotently on SOUL reads.
• Existing users do not need manual migration commands.

Configuration

• OPENSIFT_SOUL_PATH remains supported for custom SOUL location.
• Recommended default:
  • OPENSIFT_SOUL_PATH=~/.opensift/SOUL.md

Notes

• If no global style is set, OpenSift falls back to a neutral/default study style.

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v1.1.0-alpha (Proposed)

Release date: 2026-02-17

This release rounds out OpenSift from a proof-of-concept chatbot into a more complete student study app, with major improvements to launch flow, ingestion reliability, UI/UX, observability, and operational tooling.

Highlights

• Added a unified OpenSift launcher with guided setup and gateway orchestration.
• Upgraded chat UI to a sidebar-first layout with persistent chat/session controls.
• Improved URL/PDF ingestion reliability for long and difficult documents.
• Added centralized, rotating logs across UI, terminal, launcher, and MCP server.
• Added CI pipeline and GitHub badges for release/build/license visibility.

Added

• Guided setup workflow via python opensift.py setup for:
  • API/token configuration (OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN)
  • saved local environment in backend/.env
  • launch mode selection (gateway, ui, terminal, both)
• Gateway runner via python opensift.py gateway [--with-mcp] with:
  • supervised child process lifecycle
  • startup /health checks and timeout handling
  • coordinated graceful shutdown and failure propagation
• Central logging utility in backend/app/logging_utils.py:
  • console + rotating file logs
  • configurable level, directory, retention, and file size
• Access logging middleware in UI API with request IDs and timing metrics.
• MCP server logging for ingest/search/generate tool execution paths.
• CI workflow (.github/workflows/ci.yml) for dependency checks, bytecode compile checks, and launcher smoke tests.
• Project badges in README:
  • build/smoke test status
  • release version
  • release date
  • MIT license

Changed

• Chat UI updated to a more modern assistant-style interface:
  • left-side session history panel
  • larger main chat workspace
  • improved visual system (typography, spacing, panel hierarchy, gradients)
  • reduced modal friction for new chat flow (direct in-UI session creation path)
• Provider defaults updated:
  • OpenAI default model: gpt-5.2
  • Claude default model alias: claude-sonnet-4-5
• Vector store writes now use upsert semantics for safer repeat ingestion behavior.

Ingestion and Reliability Improvements

• URL ingestion hardening in backend/app/ingest.py:
  • retry logic with backoff for fetch failures
  • robust HTML cleanup/noise stripping
  • main-content candidate scoring
  • fallback body extraction when structural parsing is weak
  • content normalization + max-length truncation safeguards
• PDF ingestion improvements:
  • scanned/low-text page detection
  • OCR pass from embedded PDF images
  • OCR fallback via pdf2image + Tesseract for difficult documents
  • merged OCR/plain extraction strategy for better recall
• Retrieval robustness:
  • owner-scoped query with fallback broader scan to recover missed owner matches

Fixed

• Multiple ingestion edge paths that previously returned too little/empty content now have stronger fallbacks.
• Operational blind spots during failures are reduced through structured error logging and request tracing.
• Re-ingesting previously seen sources is less error-prone due to vector upsert behavior.

Developer Experience

• Launcher now exposes clear command surface:
  • setup, ui, terminal, gateway
• README updated with:
  • gateway and setup usage
  • logging configuration variables
  • supported provider flow

Configuration

New logging-related environment variables:

• OPENSIFT_LOG_LEVEL (default: INFO)
• OPENSIFT_LOG_DIR (default: .opensift_logs)
• OPENSIFT_LOG_MAX_BYTES (default: 5242880)
• OPENSIFT_LOG_BACKUP_COUNT (default: 5)

OCR-related note:

• Best OCR results require system/runtime OCR dependencies (pytesseract and optionally pdf2image + Poppler + Tesseract binaries).

Upgrade Notes

• Existing users can continue with current .env; run python opensift.py setup to migrate into the guided flow.
• For gateway-supervised local runs, prefer:
  • python opensift.py gateway --with-mcp
• For logs on disk, ensure the configured log directory is writable.

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v1.0.1-alpha

Release date: tagged in repository

Summary

• Major bug-fix pass across ingestion and runtime flow.
• Added CI and repository badges.
• General quality improvements and cleanup.

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v1.0.0-alpha

Release date: tagged in repository

Summary

• Introduced setup wizard foundations.
• Established early UI + terminal chat workflows.
• Baseline provider integrations and retrieval-augmented generation path.

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