v0.1.5

Upgrading from v0.1.4: run a-stack update, then restart the service (systemctl --user restart a-stack, or Ctrl-C and a-stack serve). The first start copies the database to state.db.pre-v6 and moves it to schema 7. Open browser views lose access once, because old view links are revoked: run a-stack to open a new one. If you set up the systemd unit by hand, run a-stack service install once to update it.

Added

• a-stack new --orchestrator NAME also registers that Agent, with a credential file in a-stack-agents next to the state directory, appoints it as the Orchestrator and prints a brief to paste into the coding agent. It checks the name and the credential file before it makes anything, and refuses a Session that already has an Orchestrator.
• a-stack status prints one line per Session: how many Tasks need you, work, wait and finished. a-stack watch prints that once, then one line per change (new Tasks, status changes, Needs you, answers, reports) until Ctrl-C, and rings the terminal bell on a new Needs you. --notify also shows a desktop notice through notify-send, without the question unless you add --notify-text. Both use the Operator credential, only read, and show the current folder's Sessions, or --session ID or --all. Watch reads a Session's Tasks only when its read revision changed. See Watch from the terminal.
• a-stack statusline prints a line for Claude Code's status line, such as a-stack OAuth login: 1 needs you · 2 working, for the Workspace of the session's folder. It never prints a view URL, and prints nothing on any error. See Claude Code status line.
• a-stack hook install adds hooks for one Agent to Claude Code (settings.json) and Codex (hooks.json), or with --project to the current folder. At session start, also after a compaction, the agent gets a reminder of its a-stack name, its open Tasks and to run mail check. Prompts and tool calls record the runtime state working, a permission request blocked, and a stop idle, when you give --runtime-id. The hook command names the credential file and the IDs explicitly; install takes them from a v0.1.5 credential file when you leave them out. Install keeps all other settings and hooks, and a-stack hook uninstall removes only a-stack's hooks for the folder. The hook exits 0 silently on any error and stops itself after 2 seconds, so it never stops the agent. See Agent hooks.
• The install guide shows go install github.com/mzmzeee/a-stack/cmd/a-stack@latest, which needs a C compiler. contrib/ has an AUR PKGBUILD for a-stack-bin and a Homebrew formula for Linux, both from the release archives and their checksums, with the steps to publish them. They are not published yet.
• Each Agent has a write budget, so a runaway loop cannot fill the disk. A change costs the size of its request; an Agent can spend 8 MiB at once and 1 MiB more a minute. Past that, a change gets the new error code rate_limited (HTTP 429, retryable) with retry_after_seconds. A replay of a committed operation ID and the Operator are never limited. In a rerun of the review's reproduction (16 parallel mail send loops with 64 KiB bodies from one Agent for 20 seconds), the Agent stored 13,835 messages (925 MB) before and 132 messages (8 MB) now; another Agent could still send.
• a-stack service install sets up the systemd user service in one step, so a-stack keeps running after you close the terminal. It writes ~/.config/systemd/user/a-stack.service (or below $XDG_CONFIG_HOME) from the unit in the binary, with the real path of the running binary and the CLI's state directory, then runs daemon-reload and enable --now and waits until the service answers. It refuses while an a-stack serve outside systemd holds the state directory, says when it updated a different unit, and prints the loginctl enable-linger command when linger is off. a-stack service status shows the unit, enabled, active, binary, linger and health; a-stack service uninstall disables the service and removes the unit, and never touches the state directory.
• When a-stack, a-stack -r or a-stack new start the service in the terminal, they say that closing the terminal stops a-stack and how to keep it running.
• storage status reports free_bytes, and low_disk with a warning below 1 GiB of free space. The browser view footer then says that disk space is low.
• a-stack view revoke --workspace ID --session ID ends browser view access to one Session, and --all to every Session. Open tabs say that they lost access at their next refresh. Only the Operator can run it.
• a-stack herdr bind lets an Agent that runs inside Herdr bind itself to its own pane, in place of a hand-written runtime file. It reads HERDR_PANE_ID and HERDR_SOCKET_PATH, asks Herdr for its pane's agent and native session, names an unnamed pane a-<name>, reads the harness version from claude --version or codex --version, and sends the usual agent attach. Without Herdr's integration it fails with the new error code integration_missing and names herdr integration install claude or codex. The agent skill has a short step for it.
• a-stack herdr focus --agent ID shows a bound Agent's pane in the Operator's Herdr. The service checks the binding against Herdr first, as before a notice, then runs herdr agent focus, or herdr tab focus if that fails. Only the Operator can run it.
• contrib/herdr holds a small Herdr plugin: the action "Open a-stack view" runs a-stack open for the Session named in its config file, and the popup pane watch runs a-stack watch for it. Install it with herdr plugin install mzmzeee/a-stack/contrib/herdr.
• --body TEXT works on every command that takes one inline text (task create, task edit, task status, task reopen, task report, task attention set and resolve), like --body-file. The specific flags such as --report stay.
• A mistyped command, help topic or flag gets a suggestion, such as unknown command tsak list (did you mean task list?). A stray word gets unexpected argument abc for task show (did you mean --task abc?).
• a-stack task and other first words alone print the commands of the group, like a-stack help task, and exit with 0. With flags, they fail with invalid_input and list the words that can follow.
• Getting started has a section "Hand your Session to an Orchestrator", with the commands the Operator runs after a-stack new. The README Quick start points to it.
• agent register and agent rebind write the Workspace ID, the Session ID and the Agent name into the new credential file. These fields are not secret. With such a file, Agent commands can leave out --workspace and --session; a flag that is given must match the file. Older credential files keep working with explicit flags.
• mail check has a top-level more, true when more mail is waiting than the response holds. Without --cursor-file, the output then has a hint.

Changed

• Schema 7 adds an expiry to credentials and a table of unused view links. It deletes every existing browser credential, because their secrets are in browser histories. After the upgrade, open views lose access once: run a-stack or a-stack open again.
• The Working status icon turns three times when a Task starts working, then stays still, and waits while the tab is hidden. An endless spin kept the browser busy: about 6.5% of a CPU core with 150 Tasks open.
• serve runs SQLite PRAGMA quick_check before it says ready. On a damaged database it stops with exit code 4, names the database file and points to the restore steps. On a 940 MB database the check adds about 0.2 seconds to the start.
• A state database with a newer or unknown schema also stops serve with exit code 4. The message names the schema version it found and the newest one it supports, and says how to get back: update a-stack, or restore a backup. The systemd unit now has RestartPreventExitStatus=3 4, so it does not restart in a loop. Run a-stack service install to update the unit.
• Before a schema migration, serve writes a private copy of the database, state.db.pre-vN, with VACUUM INTO. It never replaces an earlier copy, and it does not migrate when it cannot write the copy.
• The restore steps check the backup with PRAGMA integrity_check first.
• When the service is not running, cannot be reached or its response is cut off, the CLI error has retryable: true, because the change may have been made. The message also says to ask the Operator to start the service, which is what an Agent must do.
• a-stack update syncs the new binary to disk before it renames it into place, and syncs the folder after, so a power cut cannot leave an empty binary.
• a-stack update --version with an older version warns that the older a-stack may not open the current database, and says how to go back.
• The release notes say to run a-stack update.
• scripts/build-release.sh pins the versions of the Alpine packages it installs (gcc, musl-dev, binutils).
• Mention notices accept a harness release in the minor line of a fixture-verified version, from that version up: Codex 0.164.x from 0.164.0, where only 0.164.0 was accepted. Herdr is accepted when its running server reports protocol 22 and a compatible CLI and endpoint (herdr status server --json), not only when the CLI prints herdr 0.9.5. A Herdr that is not running is now herdr_unavailable. Claude Code stays mail-only: a partial check with Claude Code 2.1.310 showed bind and focus work, and a mention parks as unsupported_harness until a full fixture run. See Claude Code: partial fixture.
• With Herdr notices on, an Agent without a complete binding (binding_incomplete) or with an unsupported harness (unsupported_harness) is no longer checked again every 30 seconds. Its notices wait until its binding is attached or changed, or the service starts, and notifications status shows next_attempt_unix_ms: -1. Each check was a committed write: on the 2,000-Task fixture with 23 such Agents and no clients, the idle service wrote 3,809,280 bytes in 120 seconds before (the WAL grew from 94,792 to 473,832 bytes, 13.7 wakeups a second), and now writes 0 bytes (2.7 wakeups a second).
• invalid_input errors name what is wrong: the flag that does not apply to the command, the unknown flag, the bad value (invalid value "abc" for --expected-revision), and the missing or bad text field (--reason is required for --progress waiting, title is required, reason exceeds 2048 bytes).
• A bad operation ID gets operation ID must be 8–128 letters, digits, _ or -, also on agent register, instead of a generic or misleading message. The --operation-id help states the rule.
• A mail with a mention that is not a current assignee names each such mention and lists the assignee names.
• An ID flag (--workspace, --session, --agent, --task, --from, --to, --reference) with a value that cannot be an ID fails before the CLI contacts the service, for example --agent takes an Agent ID; 01-orch looks like a name; see a-stack agent list. The CLI still never looks a name up.
• a-stack new opens the open Session of the same name in this folder's Workspace instead of making a second one. Another name still makes a new Session.
• A flag given twice is rejected, except --mention. version and --version reject flags that do not apply to them. help version no longer lists credential flags.
• The help lists session snapshot and session page with the Session commands.
• mail check --cursor-file FILE now writes the file: it merges the returned cursors and the Task scan position into it, atomically and with mode 0600, and creates it if it is missing. The same command run again shows only new mail, and the output lists only the Tasks with new mail. Before, a plain mail check started at message 1 every time and stopped at 100 messages, so an Agent on a busy Task never saw its newest mail (in the review's reproduction with 105 messages, messages 100–105 never appeared), and every check put old mail back into its context. Now the second check reaches message 105, and a third shows nothing. Two checks with the same file at once leave a whole file; the last write wins. --cursor-file - still only reads.
• The agent skill uses mail check --cursor-file in its work loop, and its me helper needs only the credential file. It no longer reads the Task before every change: it uses the revision of the Task it read or of its last receipt, and reads again only after a conflict, so the revision check catches changes by others again. One full work loop takes 8 commands instead of 11. The rev and grev helper scripts are gone.

Fixed

• When the service refuses agent register or agent rebind with an error that is not retryable, the CLI deletes the new credential file that the command wrote. A file that existed before is kept.
• JSON output from the service ends in one newline, not two.
• The docs say which commands take --state-dir, and use a-stack instead of ./a-stack in examples.

Security

• Releases are signed. The release workflow signs SHA256SUMS with an Ed25519 key and uploads the raw signature as SHA256SUMS.sig. a-stack update checks it with the public key in the binary before it trusts the checksums, and the install script checks it with OpenSSL 3 when it is installed. For v0.1.5 and later, a missing or wrong signature stops the update or the install, and nothing changes. Older releases have no signature; they install with a warning, only when you name their version.
• Every release file, install.sh included, has a build provenance attestation. The install guide shows how to check a file with gh attestation verify and the signature with openssl.
• Only the Operator can open the browser view. open with an Agent credential fails with forbidden. Before, an Agent could open a view and read the Task mail of Tasks it was not assigned to.
• A view link works once, within 60 seconds. The page trades the code in its fragment for a view token, which it keeps for the tab, so a reload works. Opening the same link again shows that it expired. A view token works for 30 days. Each new link deletes the expired links and view tokens. a-stack, a-stack -r, a-stack new and open print or open a fresh link as before.

To update, run a-stack update and restart the service. See Update.

Full Changelog: v0.1.4...v0.1.5