Arc 0.51.71 - Helper teams, complete extensions and personal memory

Arc 0.51.71 — helper teams, complete extension projects and personal memory

This Windows x64 development release brings together 0.51.66–0.51.71, following public 0.51.65. Substantial tasks can now use a coordinated local helper team, browser-extension requests produce complete source folders, and Arc can retain concise personal details you choose to share. Reviewed Reddit drafts and finite timed queues are also available as a beta feature.

Download Arc · GitHub release · Full version history · Feature overview

A team for harder tasks

With helper tasks enabled, substantial High or Ultra work can plan five distinct assignments: three for requirements, research and approach, followed by two reviewers examining the parent's actual work. Arc then uses the findings for a bounded correction and final response. Simple questions, fast voice and story writing skip this automatic team overhead. If the team planner cannot produce a valid plan, the main agent continues directly.

• Up to 24 helpers per parent turn, including failed or cancelled helpers. At most five are admitted at once; additional work waits in order. Time spent waiting for a slot does not consume the helper's execution deadline.
• One selected model, shared GPU queue. Helper model requests run in turns; Arc does not load five or 24 copies of the weights. Read-only tool work can overlap. More helpers can take longer and use additional bounded ordinary memory/storage; they do not provide free parallel inference or remove the context window.
• Preparation, work, check and repair. Helpers provide evidence, proposals and review. The main agent retains file changes, browser/SSH actions and supported execution checks through its existing tools and permissions. Reviewers do not acquire new authority or turn an opinion into a successful test receipt.
• Project builds participate. Completed source files and available check receipts can receive two result reviews. The parent may reopen one existing file for a bounded correction through the same revision checks and validation loop.
• Visible progress and controls. The helper panel distinguishes queued, working and finished tasks, includes individual Stop controls and supports all 24 entries on desktop and narrow screens. Reports remain available through bounded excerpts and paging. Older three-helper conversation records remain valid.

Use the existing General Settings → Helper tasks switch. The 24-slot maximum is a coordination limit, not 24-way GPU inference. Read the helper-team architecture and limits.

Complete browser-extension source folders

New Brave/Chrome extension projects now use the sequential project writer. manifest.json, popup HTML, scripts and styles keep their exact relative filenames in one exported directory. Every planned file must be saved before Arc can report completion. Small extension projects of up to 12 files can finish in ordinary text chat within a bounded 32-round run; larger work and longer corrections retain Ultra → Until done, cancellation and saved checkpoints.

Static checks cover supported Manifest V3 metadata, local resource references, missing scripts/popups and common extension-page script restrictions. A failure triggers a bounded repair or preserves an incomplete project. These checks are not a complete manifest/security audit and do not establish compatibility with every website.

Version 0.51.70 also corrects planning guidance after a real Strata test produced circular file prerequisites. File-writing dependencies now distinguish build order from runtime references: a popup and its script can refer to shared IDs without both requiring the other to be written first. Invalid dependencies receive explicit correction guidance instead of being silently removed.

Open Code → Local website workspace, select the project, then Export & open folder. Review the generated source and permissions before manually loading the extension. Creating source does not install it or perform its proposed account actions. Read the source and local-helper guide.

Clearer assessments and tool creation

An instruction such as “inspect this and tell me whether you can build it” now retains its findings as a feasibility report. It no longer requires a reusable helper to be published just to finish an assessment. Explicit implementation requests can create source files; a small isolated JSON helper remains a different deliverable with its own fixture checks.

Failed local-helper creation distinguishes disabled/unavailable authoring, an unattempted build, and failed validation or tests. Existing working revisions remain intact. Describing future browser actions does not authorize those actions during inspection or source creation.

Compact personal memories

Find Settings → Memories → Details you've shared. Arc can capture clear personal facts from new direct messages, deduplicate them, and recall a small relevant selection. The recognizer uses conservative English patterns, rather than an extra model; it does not scan past conversations or need another GPU allocation.

Facts are saved locally in encrypted storage, separate from manual notes. You can edit, delete or clear them. User edits are protected from automatic replacement. Stored facts have a 768-token budget; a reply receives at most a 256-token relevant pack when context space permits. Turning off automatic capture or the saved-memory master switch pauses both capture and recall.

Temporary voice, shared screen/audio, attachments, tool output and generated templates are excluded; saved direct microphone questions can contribute facts. Sensitive or ambiguous statements are skipped by the bounded recognizer, though reviewing the saved list is still useful. Memory controls and limits.

Reddit drafts and reviewed timed posting — beta

Open Settings → Reddit posts, also linked from Plugins. Use your connected browser account to prepare 1–10 editable text-post drafts with the selected local model. Review the exact title, body, account, subreddit and rules before approving a finite queue at 15, 30 or 60 minute intervals. The first post waits a full interval. The visible automation disclosure is part of the content reviewed before scheduling.

The model cannot approve its own drafts. Editing an approved draft revokes approval. Restart, Windows lock or sleep pauses the queue; resuming starts a fresh interval without a catch-up burst. Account mismatches, CAPTCHA, rate limits, required flair and unsupported layouts pause work. Unknown submission outcomes require reconciliation instead of an automatic duplicate retry.

Live Reddit posting remains unverified. Automated browser tests use controlled local pages and do not publish posts. A supervised check on the intended account/community is still needed. Setup, review and recovery instructions.

Verification and measured limits

For 0.51.71, 505 targeted Node regression tests passed across the tool loop, project/extension writer, helper engine, saved artifacts, context compaction, runtime queues and browser/SSH/PC tool boundaries. Four native Python protocol tests passed. The 24-helper UI passed desktop, tablet and 390px checks without renderer errors. TypeScript, the production UI build, workflow-catalog integrity/reproducibility and packaged-helper checks also passed.

These are scripted-model and isolated-fixture checks. Real-model helper-team answer quality, VRAM usage and task speed were not benchmarked. The test count is targeted coverage, not a claim that every feature or website was retested.

A separate 0.51.70 one-machine Strata test generated a neutral four-file word-counter extension through Arc's production project workflow. Generation/project work took 32.1 seconds after a 40.5-second model load. Exported hashes matched the saved project; Chromium 153 loaded it and passed five word-count checks with no page errors or external requests. This establishes that neutral popup task, not arbitrary extension or website reliability. Earlier release-specific test coverage is retained in the version history; counts overlap and should not be added together.

The existing 0.51.65 VRAM/workload report remains available with its original hardware, source and scope. Its measurements are historical and are not new benchmarks of 0.51.71 or helper teams.

Installation

Download Arc-Setup-0.51.71.exe from this release or the website. Models remain separate downloads, and these changes add no new model or runtime dependency. Normal application updates preserve models, conversations and settings.

The installer is 334,855,928 bytes (about 319 MiB). Its SHA-256 is:

1ef87546e639ce80a0c2914dfceee2ba0dd6fdbd0404a74ef27b89c7fc76bf6b

The release includes a cumulative changelog and SHA256SUMS.txt. The installer is not Windows Authenticode-signed. Signed Arc updater metadata is separate from executable signing. No matching VirusTotal result has been supplied for this exact installer; older scans do not cover these bytes.