Arc 0.51.52 — Voice, YouTube, browser research and reliability

Arc 0.51.52 — voice, YouTube, browser research and reliability

Arc 0.51.52 is a cumulative Windows x64 development release. It includes the changes made since the previous public 0.50.4 installer, including Hey Arc/Arc Mini, Watch with Arc for YouTube, broader Agent Reach connections, screenshot-and-vision research, long-form file work, local PHP development, and the latest browser/eBay and feedback repairs.

Download Arc-Setup-0.51.52.exe from Assets below. Models are separate downloads. Normal updates preserve your separately stored conversations, settings, guides and installed models.

Full version-by-version changelog · Feature and model overview

Talk about what you see and hear

Show Arc combines optional shared-screen samples, local vision, local shared-audio transcription and voice conversation. Ask about a page, a coding problem, a chart or something said in a video. A blue boundary indicates desktop sharing, and Escape stops sharing/listening. Visual memory is sampled still frames, not continuous video comprehension.

Hey Arc now has a visible Arc Mini desktop helper, configurable automatic startup, prewarmed Focus/speech and minimized-window operation. Say “Hey Arc,” pause for the greeting, then ask. A local speech fallback improves wake recognition; microphone access and device-specific limitations remain. Turning the feature off is remembered. Explicit requests to go deeper can select a longer reasoning path while ordinary voice questions stay on the fast path.

Watch with Arc · YouTube is available in Plugins, Research and Voice. It prepares available captions or permitted audio, follows your playback position, optionally inspects selected frames, bookmarks moments, compares up to three prepared videos, and saves timestamped notebooks and actual analyzed images. Simple questions can reuse prepared evidence directly; background observation yields to foreground speech and questions. Enabling the plugin alone does not start observation.

The desktop also includes Android Companion preview pairing and private remote connectivity support. The separate APK is not included in this release. Phone hardware, capture/echo behavior and end-to-end latency still need physical-device validation.

Browser, Agent Reach and screenshots

• Choose Brave, Chrome or Edge and connect the usual browser with its own required permission. Arc can find the tab matching a request and start a closed browser when needed. A separate research profile has its own sign-in; no saved-password/cookie import is performed.
• Agent Reach adds supported public readers and searches, account-connection help, platform permission switches and optional diagnostics in batches of three. Signed-in features remain subject to the platform's availability, account state and limits.
• Ask for up to 20 screenshots, saved and previewed in chat/Created Files, with optional local-vision summaries. A blue outline marks the screenshot area. Distinct captures, retained page evidence, partial file receipts and retry behavior reduce repeated navigation and plan-only endings.
• A request-understanding panel shows the outcome and steps Arc inferred. The plan guides tool routing but is not treated as completed work or additional permission.
• Research → Security adds bounded domain-research workspaces with module progress, cancellation and report export. These are native adaptations, not full installations of every upstream security CLI.

Long-form work, guides and local coding

• Ultra Until Done supports bounded continuation with checkpoints, saved evidence and preserved partial results. Long-story mode writes a TXT file with a 20–90 paragraph target, continuing verified sections and keeping the exact saved ending.
• Stronger repetition detection catches identical and rotating paragraph/sentence loops. Failed story sections get bounded rewrites without feeding the rejected draft back as the next section. Model reasoning budgets and context accounting were repaired for Strata/tool work.
• Import personal JSON, TXT or Markdown guides from Plugins, using clear field descriptions and downloadable examples. New collections include 300 story-writing guides, 300 advanced Hey Arc guides, and 120 Ultra Until Done guides. Guides are instructions, not executable extensions.
• Code → Local PHP workspace offers persistent local source, isolated lint/preview, optional copying from an SSH project, and separately reviewed publication back to the server with revision/conflict checks. Requires the optional Docker/PHP runtime; this is not a full XAMPP/MySQL stack.
• Generated Python runs in a fresh Pyodide/WebAssembly environment with bounded virtual files and no host shell or UAC access. Third-party integrations and authorized remote operations have their own permissions.
• The selected text model stays resident between tasks where possible. Temporary vision can restore the original model/context; shared GPU scheduling and failures can still require handoffs.
• Strata's optional Q2_0/IQ2_XS choices now support the pinned alesha-pro abliteration projection variant while keeping the Strata engine. Eligible existing weights are reused with a small projection download. Short paired RTX 5090 Q2_0 measurements found similar speed; they do not establish broad accuracy or performance on every PC. No Hy3 backend is included.

Latest fixes in 0.51.51–0.51.52

Discord feedback: the Feedback button sends a reviewed UTF-8 text attachment through Arc's server relay instead of email. No Discord sign-in is required. The webhook credential stays on the server; it is absent from the desktop bundle. Only the submitted fields/version/reference are included, not automatic conversation or log uploads.

Browser launch and eBay: screenshot requests open a visible research browser when necessary. A missing tool registration that could reject unrelated research before inference is repaired. Market requests use a smaller relevant tool catalog and preserve exact page excerpts through compaction. “Take 3 of them and screenshot them” keeps the requested count, and the final research explanation remains alongside image attachments.

Sold-price evidence: distinct sold-item pages and captures are tracked separately. Active listings, search results and repeated screenshots cannot fulfill a request for three distinct sold listings. Undisclosed accepted offers are excluded from averages; currency, shipping, grade and lots must be distinguished. Sign-in and human-verification blockers stop the loop with a clear explanation.

Find the new instructions at Settings → Plugins → eBay research · Sold prices & screenshots. Sign in yourself when eBay requests it, then return to the same chat and say “continue.”

Verification and remaining limits

• 216 focused Node tests, 91 Python worker tests, and 96 voice-boundary tests passed.
• TypeScript/production UI build, Windows packaging checks, wide/narrow eBay help UI, installer execution and installed-file verification passed. Forty-two packaged/installed files matched the verified source/build output.
• The complete existing run recorded 2,978 tests: 2,970 passed, 3 failed, 5 skipped. One screenshot/file-card regression was fixed and passed its focused rerun. Two existing memory-budget failures remain; the complete suite is not represented as clean.
• Real Arc Focus Ultra work in visible Brave reached eBay's Sold Items login screen in six rounds, recovering one typing error. Its strict no-error-events smoke assertion therefore did not pass. Three authenticated sold listings, their screenshots and a live average remain unverified until sign-in. Controller/fixture tests are not substituted for that live result.
• Platforms can require sign-in, impose rate limits or refuse access. Arc does not solve CAPTCHAs. Vision, speech and local models can make mistakes. Continuation and SSD-backed retrieval do not remove active context limits or guarantee completion.
• Windows CPU/CUDA/Vulkan paths are implemented where verified; there is no universal ROCm/SYCL/Metal/TensorRT-LLM execution support or macOS installer in this release. The default Arc system-RAM ceiling remains 32 GiB.

Installer and scan information

• File: Arc-Setup-0.51.52.exe
• Size: 334,292,623 bytes (about 319 MiB)
• Platform: Windows x64
• Authenticode: not signed
• Matching VirusTotal report: not yet supplied for this exact file; older-file reports are not claimed for this release.

SHA-256:

7aaf881bcdf8507272c2e2a72d1f6a6907257f38b08aa7ac97a79617148de380

SHA256SUMS.txt and the downloadable cumulative changelog are also attached. This is an active-development release, not a claim that all workflows, hardware or external services have been validated.