v6.0.1 — setup failure reporting

A patch on v6.0.0, fixing four bugs on the path a first run takes when something goes wrong. v6.0.0 stays up — its .exe and checksum remain valid for anyone who already has them.

Download

Baby_6.0.1_x64-setup.exe · Windows 11 x64 · no admin needed

Windows will show a blue SmartScreen warning — the installer is not code-signed yet. That is expected, and docs/INSTALL.md walks through it. Verify the download before you run it:

Get-FileHash Baby_6.0.1_x64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

1F08096BB97ED8D69FA80A3C483F0F09093C2E025C625737DCA7C5AEDAA5EE9B

SHA256SUMS.txt is attached for the same purpose.

What's fixed

Full mode now installs the local brain instead of asking for it. Picking Full on a machine that did not already have Ollama could not finish setup at all: the row said "the installer sets it up" and nothing did — the only script that installed Ollama was a dev script that was never in the shipped payload. The verify step then failed with a raw Windows error code printed twice, and the only control on screen was a Retry that re-ran the same check forever. Provisioning now performs the silent install that was always intended — winget install --id Ollama.Ollama, falling back to the vendor installer — which is per-user and needs no admin, so the no-admin promise holds. It also sets OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH, without which the local brain silently serves a truncated context.

A first run that only the local brain broke now offers a way out. The failure reads as a sentence naming the fix rather than a Windows error code, a dead daemon is reported once instead of twice, and when nothing except the local brain failed the wizard offers "Use cloud only instead" beside Retry — a machine that cannot host the 9B can still finish setup. Deliberately strict: if anything a cloud-only install also needs has failed, the offer is withheld, because switching modes would not fix it.

A dead download gives up in 20 minutes, not an hour — and its error names the recovery that works. Stall detection previously changed the row's wording and nothing else, so a dead transfer held its pose until the one-hour ceiling. Stall time now has its own ceiling, disarmed once a download is past ~95% where the loader is building the model in memory and the cache is supposed to stop growing. The message it gives up with tells you to close and reopen Baby, which was measured recovering the download; the old text pointed at Retry, which was measured recovering nothing.

A failed download no longer reports a Python error. Pulling the network mid-setup put EventBus.publish() got multiple values for argument 'kind' into the setup status in place of the real reason.

Full detail in CHANGELOG.md.

Upgrading

Run the new installer over your existing install. Your conversations, settings and API keys survive.

If the uninstaller's confirm page appears during the upgrade, leave "Delete application data" unticked unless you genuinely want a clean slate.

Verified

Clean Windows 11 VM, no Visual C++ runtime, no GPU, no Ollama: full first run in Full mode with the local brain installed by the installer itself, plus the ten-row install matrix from v6.0.0. Not covered by a VM and worth knowing: a real GPU, a microphone, a translated Windows UI, and a corporate proxy that answers 407.

v6.0.0 — public Windows installer

Baby is a local-first voice assistant for Windows 11. This is its first public release: before v6 it was a developer checkout, and now it is an installer a stranger can double-click.

Install

Download Baby_6.0.0_x64-setup.exe and run it. Per-user install, no administrator rights.

Windows SmartScreen will warn you. This build is not code-signed — an unsigned installer from a new publisher always gets the blue box. Click More info → Run anyway. If you would rather verify first, check the download against the published checksum:

Get-FileHash .\Baby_6.0.0_x64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

B8ED97F0A216B0A48BB15B2F5D126637E0D4A96CFB42FC02F0E05B65253009B4

The first launch builds a Python environment and downloads models, so it needs a network connection and takes a while — the wizard shows what it is fetching. Full walkthrough in docs/INSTALL.md.

What is in it

• First-run wizard — GPU pre-check, a Full or cloud-only install fork, dependency download with progress and resume, then a functional re-verify that loads each model and exercises it rather than checking that a file exists.
• API keys proved before they are trusted — each key is tested against its vendor with an authenticated probe that spends no quota and never puts the key in a URL. A wrong key reads as a wrong key; a network failure reads as a network failure.
• Conservative public defaults — safety gate in enforce mode, no pre-approved app-close list, blank owner details, and a cloud router mode that follows what keys you actually have rather than what you intended.
• Per-user state — everything lives in %LOCALAPPDATA%\baby. A developer checkout is byte-identical to before.
• In-app repair and mode switch, and a diagnostics report that scrubs your keys, username and name before you paste it anywhere.

Voice answers to "Hey Jarvis"

Not "Hey Baby". openWakeWord ships no pretrained phrase for Baby's own name, and the custom model the config points at is owner-trained and not in this installer. Ctrl+Alt+B works too.

Known limitations

• Unsigned, so SmartScreen warns — see above.
• Offline first-install is out of scope. The first run needs a network connection.
• Full mode wants roughly 8 GB of VRAM for the local 9B. The wizard tells you what it finds and lets you choose anyway.

Uninstalling

Settings → Apps → Installed apps. The uninstaller offers a "Delete application data" checkbox: ticked removes %LOCALAPPDATA%\baby — conversations, memory, models and your API keys; unticked keeps them, so reinstalling resumes where you left off. During an upgrade the box does nothing and your data is always kept; for a clean slate, uninstall first, then install.

Notes

Fifteen of the fixes in this release exist because the installer was built, run, and broken on real machines rather than only tested — a wiped wake word, a key that was validated and then thrown away, game mode that freed no VRAM, an upgrade that could delete your conversations, and a six-minute download that looked identical to a hang. CHANGELOG.md has the full list and DECISIONS.md has the write-ups.

Licensed MIT.