Codex GPU Thalen Helper v0.1.0-beta.20

Codex GPU Thalen Helper v0.1.0-beta.20

This unsigned prerelease is a focused Control Center hotfix. It preserves beta.19 task-aware routing, structured advisory output, provider safety, protected-file merging, and automatic unload behavior.

Visible fixes

• The compact three-dot Advanced menu no longer uses a pill-shaped owner-drawn button. It is now a transparent keyboard-accessible ellipsis glyph, removing the rectangular background and square focus-mask artifacts entirely.
• The GPU status strip now follows the helper-owned active-model tracker while the Control Center is open. Reviews started by Codex show the tracked model and provider, such as Qwythos 9B review via LM Studio or Qwen3 8B review via Ollama.
• After the tracker clears, the strip restores the exact prior passive status, including manual-startup or safety warnings. A tracker proves helper ownership and release responsibility; it does not by itself claim provider-confirmed GPU residency.
• The observer runs every 500 milliseconds on the UI thread and reads one small helper-owned local tracker file. It does not query provider inventories, start a process, load a model, run inference, or widen any trust boundary.

Safety and compatibility

The activity display never treats an arbitrary provider model as helper-owned. It reports only the strict tracker already used by the review lifecycle and cleanup controls. Existing loopback enforcement, single-review locking, resource-pressure refusal, foreign-model preservation, verified unload, exact-file LM Studio registration, and no-automatic-download behavior remain unchanged.

The complete isolated Windows test suite passes 387/387 tests, including nested-gradient rendering coverage for the transparent menu glyph and active-to-idle status restoration.

The installer remains unsigned and this build remains a prerelease. Verify the published SHA-256 checksum and GitHub artifact attestation before running it; Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher.