niobe v0.9.0

The Activity pane

The pane at the bottom of the right-hand column used to list the sub-agents
that were running and nothing else. It is now the Activity pane, and it holds
everything about what the agent is doing: the sub-agents, the decisions the
session recorded, and the tools it called. Three sections, each of which folds,
in one column that scrolls.

A sub-agent that has finished stays in the list with how it went. A pane that
showed only what was running erased a failure at the moment it mattered most.
The state is a glyph before it is a colour — ◆ running, ◇ done, ✗ failed — so
it reads on a sixteen-colour terminal and in whatever palette you have chosen.
While an agent runs, its row says how long it has been running.

Decisions now carry the time they were recorded, in a column of their own,
newest first.

Tools are counted by family rather than by exact name: every tool an MCP server
provides is one row for that server, so a session that reached for Notion a
dozen ways reads as one figure instead of twelve. Each family carries its own
failure count, which the total at the top of the section could never tell you —
you can now see which tool you kept failing at.

The tool bars moved here from the Usage pane rather than being drawn in both
places, and they are no longer capped at four: this pane scrolls, so every
family gets a row. The Usage pane is four rows shorter for it, and the Changes
pane above got those rows — four more of your changed files on screen without
scrolling.

The mouse wheel goes to whichever pane the pointer is over.

niobe v0.8.0

Niobe 0.8.0 — the Changes pane knows about your repository

Until now the Changes pane showed one thing: the files the agent's own edit
tools said they had touched, six of them, with "and n more" underneath. It now
shows the repository you are working in.

The branch, and how far it has drifted from its upstream. The working tree,
file by file, with the directory written once and the files grouped under it.
The commits made since the session started, each with its age and its subject,
and the ones your upstream has not got yet marked. All of it measured from the
repository by asking git the same questions you would.

The pane scrolls, and its sections fold, so twenty-three changed files no
longer push everything else off the bottom. The mouse wheel goes to whichever
pane the pointer is over, and the pane you are scrolling shows a scrollbar so
you can tell there is more.

Two kinds of number about the same files, and Niobe will not blend them. The
"Working tree" section is git's count, exact, for every changed file in the
tree — including files this session never touched. "This session" is what the
agent's edit tools reported, which is a floor rather than a measurement: it
carries a "≥" where a call did not say how much it changed, and an em dash
where none of them did. They are separate sections with separate headings
because they are different claims by different parties.

Nothing is invented where nothing was read. A repository Niobe has not
finished reading says so rather than showing you a confident "+0 −0". A
directory that is not a repository grows no branch line and no commits section
instead of empty ones. A file git declines to count lines in keeps an em dash,
which a file that genuinely changed by no lines does not. A branch with no
upstream is not zero commits ahead — it is ahead of nothing, and the figure is
absent. A commit whose upstream git cannot compare against is marked as not
known rather than guessed either way, and the mark is a symbol as well as a
colour, so it survives a sixteen-colour terminal.

Reading a repository is not free — around a tenth of a second on a small tree,
which is six frames' worth — so none of it happens while the screen is being
drawn. Niobe reads on a thread of its own, follows an edit the moment it
lands, and otherwise paces itself against its own cost, so a large repository
never spends more than a sliver of a core keeping the pane current. A read
that is slow or fails leaves what you were looking at alone rather than
blanking it.

F6 folds the working tree away; F7 folds the tool list.

niobe v0.7.0

niobe 0.7.0

The Usage pane now tells you who spent the session's tokens.

Where the pane counted everything in one heap — tokens in, tokens out, cache
read — each model now has a row of its own: the share of the session it spent,
a bar of that share, and the count. A session that hands its sub-agents a
cheaper model can finally see the split.

Under those rows, the cache. Its figure is a hit rate — cache reads against
every input token the session sent — with the reads themselves beside it. A
token count that is nine tenths cache reads used to read as alarming; the pane
now says outright how much of the prompt came from cache and how much was paid
for in full.

Nothing here is estimated. The shares come off the same fold as every other
figure in the shell, they add up to 100 rather than to 99 or 101, and where no
request has been eligible for a cache yet the row shows an em dash rather than
a zero. A model that spent nothing gets no row.

Model names appear as your backend reported them, with only the vendor prefix
and a release date taken off; where two would shorten to the same thing, both
keep their full names, so two rates can never hide under one label.

niobe v0.6.0

Niobe 0.6.0

The Usage pane now opens on the plan's windows — how much of the five-hour
and seven-day window is gone, drawn as a bar you can read across the room,
and when each one comes back: resets 16:40 today, resets Tue 09:00 later in
the week. A window your backend did not report draws nothing rather than a
zero, and one reported without a reset shows the share alone. Where a plan is
spending beyond its flat fee the pane says so, and shows an em dash for the
amount — the CLI reports that it is happening and never how much.

The shell keeps time now. The menu row carries a wall clock, and a session
read back from its recording is dated by the times it actually ran at rather
than by the moment you opened it. A recording that kept no times shows none.

niobe v0.5.0

niobe 0.5.0

The status line is gone, and the shell is better for it.

What those two rows at the bottom carried has moved to where you already look
for it. The model you are on, the backend and profile running it, whether a
turn is going and for how long, and the time of day now sit at the right of the
menu row. The plan's usage windows and your budget are in the pane that owns
those figures. The branch is in the Changes pane. The session gets the two rows
back, which at eighty by twenty-four is two more lines of transcript.

The menu row gives its segments up whole when you narrow the terminal,
rightmost first. Half a model id, or a clock missing a digit, reads as a
different figure — so it drops the figure instead. An error count leads the
group and is the last thing to go: a session that hit one says so wherever you
are looking.

The body is cut nearly two to one in favour of the transcript, and the
right-hand column gives the Usage pane exactly the rows its figures need,
splitting the rest between the files you changed and the sub-agents running.

There is a clock. It is your local time, read from the system timezone — or it
is nothing at all. A clock an hour out is worse than no clock, so on a machine
that will not say which timezone it is in, the shell shows none.

Also: the Cost pane and its F-key are now Usage, menu hot keys are underlined as
well as accented, and the shell no longer tells you which palette is on — F9 is
the affordance.

One thing to know: the mode a session gates tool calls in is not shown anywhere
in this release. Shift+Tab still cycles it and the backend is still told, but
the row that named it is gone and the composer does not say yet.

niobe v0.4.1

Fixed

A running turn showed no cost until the backend reported one, so the figure
sat empty for the part of a turn where you most want it. It now shows what
the turn has cost so far, labelled as the floor it is — the number only ever
rises as the backend reports more.

niobe v0.4.0

Full Changelog: v0.3.0...v0.4.0

niobe v0.3.0

Full Changelog: v0.2.0...v0.3.0

niobe v0.2.0

Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v0.2.0

niobe v0.1.0

Full Changelog: https://github.com/niobe-dev/niobe/commits/v0.1.0