StepWind 1.0.2

StepWind 1.0.2

History now takes about a quarter of the disk it used to — at the same capture speed.

Storage was StepWind's biggest real-world cost, and most of it turned out to be avoidable. Measured on a realistic session (75 documents, 15 saves each, 210 MiB written): the store went from 51.7 MiB to 13.5 MiB.

Your existing history is untouched and still restores byte-for-byte. Nothing is migrated or re-encoded.

What was wrong

The chunk sizes were borrowed from restic — a tool that backs a machine up occasionally. StepWind does the opposite: the same documents, saved over and over. At a 1 MiB average with a 256 KiB minimum, every file smaller than 256 KiB was a single chunk, so each save re-stored the whole file. Measured: 21 saves of a 256 KiB document reused nothing at all, and one edited line added a complete second copy.

Compression was also set to Deflate's weakest level.

What changed

• Chunk sizes tuned for repeated saves (64 KiB average). A one-line edit now adds about a fifth as much; an 8 MiB document edited 20 times drops from 14.7 MiB to 3.9 MiB. Even a single capture of mixed data is ~9% smaller, because smaller chunks catch duplicate content that 1 MiB chunks straddled.
• Compression at Deflate's balanced level — close to half the size on document-like text. Capture speed is unaffected in practice: a chunk that already exists is never re-compressed, so the stronger setting is only paid on genuinely new bytes.

Compatibility

Neither change alters the on-disk format. A Deflate stream is self-describing, so the level is an encoder-side choice and old blobs decode unchanged; each version records its own chunk list, so re-chunking cannot affect anything already captured. This is pinned by a test that writes history with the old settings and reads it back with the new ones.

One honest caveat: for a while after updating, a file's new chunks won't match its pre-update ones, so both are kept until retention expires the older versions. Expect the store to shrink gradually rather than instantly.

300 unit tests, 0 build warnings.

Update

If automatic updates are on, StepWind will offer 1.0.2 itself — it downloads and verifies the installer, then asks you to confirm. Or download below and run it over your current install.

Install

Download StepWind-1.0.2-setup.exe (x64) or StepWind-1.0.2-arm64-setup.exe (Windows on ARM). Windows 10 (1809+) or 11.

"Windows protected your PC"? Expected for a new, unsigned installer — click More info → Run anyway. Verify first:

(Get-FileHash .\StepWind-1.0.2-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash

Compare against SHA256SUMS.txt below. Full trust story: SECURITY.md. Enterprise: enterprise/README.md.

Website: https://stepwind.app

StepWind 1.0.1

StepWind 1.0.1

Recommended for everyone on 1.0.0. Two fixes worth shipping on their own, plus the installer wearing the product's own face.

Fixed

• stepwind_list_protected_folders failed on every call, for every AI agent. The tool asks the service for settings, and the MCP gateway's command allow-list did not include that command, so every invocation returned "not permitted to call 'GetSettings'" — one of twelve advertised tools was dead on arrival. The reason it shipped is fixed too: the CI smoke test only checked that tools were advertised, never that any could be called. It now calls every tool it finds, so a future tool wired to a blocked command fails the build instead of you.
• Settings leaked other accounts' protected folder paths. The settings response returned every protected folder on the machine, while the equivalent status response correctly filtered to the caller. On a shared PC that told any local user — or their AI agent — where another user's protected folders live. Both filter identically now.
• The uninstaller never asked what to do with your saved history, though the docs said it did; it silently kept everything. It now asks — keep it, so a reinstall picks it back up, or erase it — and positively identifies a real history store before deleting anything, including a store you relocated. Silent and scripted uninstalls always keep it.

Changed

• The installer looks like the app it installs: StepWind's own dark surface and title bar, brand artwork, and a progress bar in the product's indigo→cyan accent. One screen instead of four, and no license click-through (MIT grants its rights without acceptance; LICENSE still ships in the install folder). The upgrade engine is unchanged — it still stops the service, backs up your install, health-checks the new one, and rolls back if it won't start.
• No install-location prompt, deliberately. StepWind runs as a SYSTEM service, and a service binary in a folder standard users can write to is a local privilege-escalation path, so it installs under Program Files. Administrators can still redirect with /DIR=, and the installer then locks that folder down to SYSTEM/Administrators full control.
• The release toolchain is pinned and verified (fixed Inno Setup version, checked against a SHA-256 pin and its Authenticode publisher before use).

Your version history is untouched by this update, and existing protected folders keep working exactly as before.

Update

If StepWind is already installed with automatic updates on, it will offer 1.0.1 itself — the service downloads and verifies it, then asks you to confirm the install. Or download below and run it over your current install.

Install

Download StepWind-1.0.1-setup.exe (x64) or StepWind-1.0.1-arm64-setup.exe (Windows on ARM) and run it. Windows 10 (1809+) or 11.

"Windows protected your PC"? Expected for a new, unsigned installer — click More info → Run anyway. Verify first:

(Get-FileHash .\StepWind-1.0.1-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash

Compare against SHA256SUMS.txt below. Full trust story: SECURITY.md. Enterprise: enterprise/README.md.

Website: https://stepwind.app

StepWind 1.0.0

´╗┐## StepWind 1.0.0

An undo button for your whole PC. Real-time protection against accidental moves, renames, deletes, and bad saves - free, open source, 100% local. No cloud, no account, no telemetry.

Highlights

• Flight recorder - a plain-English, one-click-undo timeline of file operations across your drives (NTFS + ReFS/Dev Drive where Windows provides a change journal).
• Folder time machine - continuous, deduplicated, compressed version history for the folders you choose (any filesystem). Same-named folders on different drives each keep their own history.
• AI-agent safety net - a built-in MCP server (read + additive only) plus an auto-installed Agent Skill so tools like Cursor and Claude checkpoint before risky edits, diff, and restore safely.
• Optional AES-256-GCM encryption at rest with a passphrase recovery key; optional index encryption too.
• Hardened - the elevated service's pipe is local-only, DoS-bounded, and identity-verified; per-user authorization isolates each account's history; updates are fail-closed (checksum + pinned signature, never a silent unsigned install).
• Enterprise-ready - central Group Policy / MDM control (ADMX template), enforced settings + mandatory folders, and a SIEM-forwardable audit trail (Application log, StepWind.Audit source). See enterprise/README.md.
• A setup that respects you - one screen, no license click-through, no bundled anything, and the uninstaller asks whether to keep or erase your saved version history (silent and scripted uninstalls always keep it).
• Accessible, international, x64 + ARM64.

Install

Download StepWind-1.0.0-setup.exe (x64) or StepWind-1.0.0-arm64-setup.exe (Windows on ARM) and run it. Windows 10 (1809+) or 11.

"Windows protected your PC"? Expected for a new, unsigned installer - click More info -> Run anyway. Verify first:

(Get-FileHash .\StepWind-1.0.0-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256).Hash

Compare against SHA256SUMS.txt below. Full trust story: SECURITY.md. Enterprise: enterprise/README.md.

Website: https://stepwind.app