v2.4.0

Kent 2.4.0 makes workflow-heavy projects easier to organize, automate, and operate. Project labels span Desktop and CLI, lifecycle hooks connect interactive sessions to local automation, agents stay oriented inside the active worktree, and session histories use 17% less disk space.

Organize Tasks With Project Labels

Projects have a shared label catalog across their linked workflows. Assign labels while creating or editing tasks, see them on board cards, and filter boards and task lists by any selected label, every selected label, or tasks without labels. Desktop remembers the active filter for each Project.

The same catalog is available from the CLI through kent task label. Task creation accepts repeatable --label selectors, and task listing supports the same any, all, and unlabeled filters.

Keep Agents In The Right Worktree

When a session enters or leaves a worktree, Kent reminds the agent which checkout and working directory are active before work continues. The reminder survives continuation and compaction, helping agents keep edits inside the selected worktree instead of reaching into neighboring worktrees.

Patch and edit operations also warn when they target another managed worktree, including file moves.

Connect Kent To Local Automation

Interactive TUI sessions can run a local lifecycle hook when a session starts, work completes or fails, input is required, or compaction begins. Hooks receive structured JSON and run on the client machine, including when the TUI connects to a remote Kent server.

Use hooks.client.lifecycle to connect Kent to notifications or other local automation. See the lifecycle hooks guide.

Smaller Session History

Kent's session-history JSON format is 17% smaller, reducing disk usage for long-running conversations, backups, and migration. Existing sessions convert automatically while preserving transcript, rollback, compaction, and resume behavior.

Clearer, Faster Workflow Operations

• kent workflow delete shows the affected Projects and Tasks before anything is removed, then requires explicit confirmation.
• kent task complete reports the scheduled destination node or fan-out group.
• Workflow agents receive dedicated assignment, reassignment, and post-compaction instructions that include the workflow name.
• Desktop questions submit immediately, preserve drafts and selections across refreshes, and preselect the recommended option when one exists.
• Workflow attention loads progressively and focuses on questions, approvals, and actionable interrupted runs.
• Task details show every active execution, including parallel work, remove completed scripts promptly, and report unavailable source workspaces.
• Goal commands can update dormant sessions without starting a runtime.
• Steered guidance reaches the active agent before its next model request, while queued guidance remains assigned to the following turn.

Bug Fixes

Sessions, Recovery, And Compaction

• Session history is committed safely so a crash during a write does not leave a partially updated conversation.
• Reopened sessions retain interrupted questions, shell commands, patch operations, tool activity, in-progress recovery, and queued guidance.
• Recovery stays coordinated with new messages and session changes, preventing duplicated work, stale state, and inconsistent histories.
• Restarts and compaction preserve active goals, workflow handoffs, final answers, accurate token usage, and the active working context.
• Manual and automatic compaction keep assistant text and tool output in order across multi-tool turns and oversized-context recovery.
• Missing or mismatched tool results are repaired once and in order. Malformed, stale, or canceled tool calls are rejected before execution.
• Model failures and cancellations leave queued guidance available and keep the next turn usable.
• Failed setting updates preserve fast mode, reviewer mode, and pending questions instead of resetting session controls.
• Closing or switching sessions preserves pending prompts and transcript updates instead of leaving half-closed work behind.
• Sessions affected by the 2.3.1 background-notice regression render their transcript after upgrading instead of opening blank.
• Large sessions are less likely to fail because of inaccurate memory estimates.

Workflow Runs And Task State

• Automatic workflow work starts reliably. Runs left unstarted by a restart are marked interrupted instead of remaining silently stuck; resume or move the affected task.
• Queued tasks continue after earlier runs finish, and live-run status remains accurate when there is no final answer to display.
• Workflow completion cleanly ends the current turn, prevents additional tool runs after finalization, and preserves queued guidance.
• Interrupted workflow sessions can finish normally, and manual moves clear obsolete approval and interrupted-run attention.
• Concurrent approval submissions resolve safely, and question answers proceed without unrelated workflow changes blocking them.
• Workflow commands allow longer-running operations to finish before timing out, preventing partially removed tasks and worktrees.
• Manual moves to previous targets select the correct destination, and grouped fan-out transitions report the correct shared destination.
• Workflows run correctly from external workspace roots and from Projects without a managed-worktree base directory.

Questions And Desktop

• Hidden questions notify only after becoming visible. Missing question details use a safe fallback, while real loading failures remain visible.
• Board drag-to-start survives brief focus changes and workflow validity updates.

Terminal, Transcript, And Shell

• Resizing the terminal preserves history in tmux, clears stale live rows, and avoids replaying or blanking the transcript.
• Streamed assistant text preserves spaces, newlines, ordering, interleaved tool output, and finalized content across providers.
• Web searches preserve their raw presentation and quoted query text.
• Reasoning traces remain readable, reviewer suggestions stay consistent, and detail rows retain images, background processes, notices, and errors.
• Expanded transcript details keep their position while nearby rows update.
• Tall Markdown questions remain usable during resize, and pending prompts finish loading before interaction.
• Obsolete question submissions are canceled cleanly instead of being applied to a replaced prompt.
• Sending input to a running command preserves exact spaces, newlines, special characters, and long waits while rejecting unsupported wait durations and wasteful short polling.
• Failed live runs keep their terminal result and failure details available after the process exits.

Worktrees, Configuration, And Errors

• Worktree enter, leave, and delete actions issued while an agent is working are applied instead of being lost at the end of the turn.
• Managed-worktree context remains correct across headless runs, session retargeting, rollback, and external workflow roots.
• Deleted managed task worktrees are recreated when needed.
• Busy worktree deletion fails promptly. After retargeting, workflow work uses the task's active worktree.
• Global and workspace settings do not duplicate or conflict when both point to the same file.
• Recovery, startup, question-loading, and workflow failures surface actionable errors instead of disappearing behind generic failures.
• Session startup failures appear immediately instead of leaving the session looking idle or stuck.

Upgrade

Upgrade and restart the Kent server, CLI/TUI, and Desktop together. Existing sessions migrate automatically; no manual migration is required.

Full changelog: v2.3.1...v2.4.0