v0.7.1

Studio: build your agents, test them, give them rules and guardrails, join them into workflows, and see how good all of it is, in one place. Download it from the GitHub release.

Everything your agents need, in one place. Studio in the menu bar opens your workspace's whole setup: agents, evals, skills, rules, guardrails, workflows, workers and secrets, each listed and edited with a form. Everything is still a file in .agents/, so it goes into git and your team gets it too.

Know your agents still work. Write an agent, and Blitz drafts evals for it: the questions it should answer well, and what it should refuse. Run them and see each answer beside the one you expected. When it misses, Refine rewrites the agent's instructions from the cases it got wrong. Change the agent later and Blitz offers to run them again.

Workflows you can see. Drag steps onto a canvas and join them: agents, scripts, API calls, MCP tools, files, branches, retries, a person's approval, a timer. Then run the whole thing as one job, in the background or every weekday at 7. Or just describe it: Compose with AI asks a question or two and draws the workflow for you, already checked.

A grade for everything. Studio opens on the Overview, your workspace's dashboard: what it holds, how its runs go and what they cost, and what needs attention. Re-check has a judge model grade each agent, skill, rule and workflow from A to D, with its reasons and suggested fixes. After the first check, it re-checks what changed every night.

Who should update: everyone. If you write agents, skills or prompts you keep reusing, this is the release for you.

See it in five minutes:

1. Open a workspace and choose Studio in the menu bar.
2. Agents › open an agent, then Evals › Draft evals for it, and run them with ▶.
3. Workflows › + › Compose with AI, and describe a job you do every week.
4. Back on Overview, choose Re-check to see the grades.

New to Studio? The tutorial A recipe app's harness, in Studio walks through every part on one real project.

What's new

• Evals. Each eval is a table of prompts and expected answers. An answer passes when it matches exactly, or when it means the same thing (scored by a model or by embeddings, against your threshold). Each case runs without changing your files. blitz eval <name> runs one in CI and fails the build when a case fails.

• Rules that check the work. A rule can now be judged at a fixed point in every turn: on your prompt before the agent starts, or on its answer and changes before the turn ends. It can block, warn, or send the work back to be fixed. Try it tests a rule on a sample first.

• Guardrails at every step. Three built-ins are on by default:

  • Prompt injection watches what web pages and tools bring back.
  • Secrets and personal data are masked in answers.
  • Limits caps spending, model calls, files changed and domains, and refuses force pushes and rm -rf /.

  Add your own in plain English, such as "dropping a database table", at any step.

• Skills with scripts. Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, shell and PowerShell scripts in a skill's scripts/ folder are picked up automatically. Each gets its own packages, and you can test-run it from the form. Scripts run without asking only after you've reviewed them, and a changed script is asked about again. Type \skill-name in a prompt to use a skill for that request.

• Workflows.

  • Steps can branch, join, repeat for each item in a list, retry and time out.
  • They can call APIs, MCP tools, remote agents and other workflows.
  • They can wait for a person to fill in a form, or until a given time.
  • Every run keeps a receipt: each step, its model, its time and its cost.
  • Runs use the new Auto permission mode by default: a reviewer model approves routine actions, so a scheduled run doesn't stop to ask.

• Compose with AI. Describe a workflow and answer a question or two. The composer knows your agents, skills and secrets by name, writes the workflow and fixes anything that doesn't check before you see it. Then it opens on the canvas for you to review and save.

• Workspace health.

  • Charts of runs and cost over 30 days, and eval coverage per agent.
  • A list of what needs attention: broken files, failing runs, agents with no evals, unused skills.
  • A–D grades with trends, as badges in every Studio list.
  • Improve turns a suggested fix into a request for the agent.
  • The nightly check has a cost limit you set.

• Secrets. Keep tokens and keys in your system's keychain and write {secrets:name} in prompts, agent instructions, MCP settings and workflow steps. The value is put in only at the last moment: transcripts, logs and workflow files keep the placeholder, and if a model repeats the value, it's masked. Settings › Secrets holds secrets for every workspace, and Studio › Secrets a workspace's own.

• Settings, reorganised.

  • Settings are grouped in four sections, with advanced options behind Show advanced.
  • Settings › MCP servers adds, edits, switches off, restarts and removes servers, and every open workspace gets the change at once.
  • Settings › Workers lists every workspace's workers, with limits for all of them.
  • Global workers live in ~/.blitz/workers and run outside any workspace.

• Workflow tasks wherever you are. When a workflow waits for you, the status bar says so from any workspace. With the app closed, the tray shows a dot and opens the task.

• HTML files preview as pages in the editor.

• The web tab's address bar searches when what you type isn't an address.

Windows

• A setup program. Blitz_0.7.1_windows_x64_setup.exe installs Blitz for you, with no administrator needed. It adds Blitz to the Start menu, the desktop and Add or remove programs, where you can uninstall it (your settings and conversations stay). The zip is still there if you'd rather unzip and run Blitz.exe.
• Secrets in the Windows Credential Manager, like the Keychain on macOS. Secrets saved by an older version are moved over the first time they're read.

What's fixed

• The desktop app no longer stops the Blitz service in the middle of a running workflow.
• The Linux tray starts as soon as it's switched on, and login entries from older installs are repaired.
• The limits guardrail's command patterns now match across slashes, so git push --force* also catches pushes to feature/x.

Good to know

• Windows hasn't had a hands-on test for this release. The Windows app, its setup program and Credential Manager secrets are built for every release, but our automated tests run on macOS and Linux, and nobody has tried this release on Windows by hand yet. If something's off, please open an issue. The app isn't signed yet, so SmartScreen asks first (More info › Run anyway).
• Your settings, workspaces and conversations carry over from 0.7.0. The app updates itself, or install the new one over the old.
• Evals, grades and Compose with AI make small model calls. Each says what it costs before or as it runs, and a scheduled check never runs over its limit (a dollar by default).
• Compose with AI writes workflows for now. Skills, agents, evals, rules and workers come next.
• A schedule is added on the canvas after saving, even when your description says when.
• Scheduled checks and workers run while the Blitz service runs.

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_arm64.dmg (Apple silicon) and Blitz_*_macos_x64.dmg (Intel), notarized when the release was signed; Blitz_*_windows_x64.zip (unzip anywhere and run Blitz.exe; not signed, so SmartScreen asks first); blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later), the Arch Linux .pkg.tar.zst, and blitz-desktop_*_linux_*.tar.gz (any Linux; it updates itself). The app updates itself from here on, except where a package manager installed it.

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Release page: Blitz 0.7.0 by @rmcguinness in #66
• Blitz 0.7.1: Studio, evals, rules and guardrails, workflows, workspace health by @rmcguinness in #68

Full Changelog: v0.7.0...v0.7.1

v0.7.0

A new desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux: it updates itself, opens your web app beside the chat, and comes in the colours you like.

One app everywhere, Windows included. The desktop app is rebuilt on Electron, the same on every system. Windows gets the full app for the first time, not just a tray with a browser page: the folder picker, Export as PDF, notifications, and installing the blitz command. On Linux it no longer depends on WebKitGTK, so the graphics-card problems some NVIDIA systems had are gone.

It keeps itself up to date. When the app opens it looks for a new release (every few days at most), downloads it, checks its signature, and offers Restart. Install 0.7.0 by hand once; after that, there’s nothing to download by hand again.

See your web app, and show it to the agent. Click the globe in the top bar, or a localhost link in the chat, and the page opens in a tab beside the conversation. Add to chat hands the agent the page, your selection, a screenshot or the console's errors, and the agent reads them as content, never as instructions. Save to workspace keeps a page as Markdown (with its pictures, ready for the agent to read later), HTML or PDF.

Who should update: everyone on the desktop app, and anyone on Windows who has been using the tray's page.

See it in a minute:

1. Install the app for your system from the release, and open a workspace.
2. Start your web app (for example on localhost:3000) and click the globe beside Settings.
3. Type the address, then choose Add to chat › Console errors and ask the agent what's wrong.

What's new

• Windows desktop app. Blitz_<version>_windows_x64.zip: unzip it and run Blitz.exe. It has Blitz's icon, no console windows popping up, and installs the blitz command by putting its folder on your PATH.
• Updates in the app. Settings › About shows where the update is, with Check now, Download, Restart to update and the release notes; Update automatically turns it off. Copies installed by a package manager (the .deb, the Arch package) say to update there instead.
• Web pages in the editor. Back, forward, reload, the address, Open in browser, and sign-ins that stay apart from the app. Only web addresses open.
• Add to chat from a web page: the page, the selection, a screenshot or the console's errors, each as a chip in the composer.
• Save to workspace: Markdown (its pictures saved beside it), HTML or PDF, in any folder of the workspace.
• Colour themes. Settings › Appearance has a Light theme and a Dark theme: Blitz's own, or One Light and One Dark Pro, as in your editor.
• Expand the chat, or the editor. With files open, the expand button in the chat's header lays it over the editor to read a long answer at full width; the editor's does the same for a file. The other pane waits on a rail at the side, so you can see it's there, and comes back with a click.

What's fixed

• Export as PDF waits for fonts and pictures before printing, so pictures in documents with maths no longer come out blank.

Good to know

• Your settings and workspaces carry over from 0.6.x: install the new app over the old one.
• On macOS there's one download for Apple silicon and one for Intel.
• The Windows app isn't signed yet, so Windows asks before it first runs it.
• The One themes are solid; the glass look is part of Blitz's own theme.
• Web pages open only in the desktop app, not in the VS Code extension or the Windows tray's page.

---

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_arm64.dmg (Apple silicon) and Blitz_*_macos_x64.dmg (Intel), notarized when the release was signed; Blitz_*_windows_x64.zip (unzip anywhere and run Blitz.exe; not signed, so SmartScreen asks first); blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later), the Arch Linux .pkg.tar.zst, and blitz-desktop_*_linux_*.tar.gz (any Linux; it updates itself). The app updates itself from here on, except where a package manager installed it.

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Panels stay put: views slide down in a drawer over the middle, dialogs ignore clicks beside them by @rmcguinness in #62
• Electron desktop app: Windows included, self-updates, web pages beside the chat, themes; Wails removed by @rmcguinness in #63

Full Changelog: v0.6.5...v0.7.0

v0.6.4

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Blitz 0.6.3: /init leads with the spec, Pull/Push and merge conflicts, stoppable workers, reconnecting models, no disk sweeps by @rmcguinness in #55

Full Changelog: v0.6.2...v0.6.4

v0.6.1

Closing the window, cleanly, on NVIDIA 🐧

v0.6.1 is a quick fix for the Linux desktop app on NVIDIA graphics cards. In 0.6.0, closing the Blitz window could crash the part of the app that draws the page, and your desktop's crash reporter (DrKonqi on KDE, Apport on Ubuntu) popped up about every other time you quit. Your work was never at risk, because the crash came after the window had already closed. Now Blitz closes cleanly every time.

Who should update: anyone using the Linux desktop app with an NVIDIA card. Nothing changes on macOS, on other Linux graphics cards, or in the command-line tools, so updating there is optional.

See it in a minute:

1. Install the .deb or the Arch Linux package from the release, and start Blitz.
2. Close the window, then start Blitz again. Do this a few times.
3. No crash reports appear, and coredumpctl list shows no new WebKitWebProcess entries.

What's fixed

• Quitting never crashes on NVIDIA. When you close the window, Blitz now shuts down the web page's process first, before the graphics driver can trip over it on the way out.
• Unsaved changes still come first. If the editor has unsaved changes, Blitz asks before closing, just as before. Cancel, and nothing closes.
• The graphics card stays on. You don't need to turn off Use the graphics card to avoid the crash.

Good to know

• Your settings and workspaces carry over: install the update over 0.6.0.
• Nothing you type is lost. The page doesn't save anything as it closes, so ending its process early loses nothing.
• Tested on an NVIDIA RTX 4090 (driver 580) with KDE on Wayland: 0.6.0 crashed on 3 of 5 closes, 0.6.1 on none of 14.

Desktop app

• Linux: blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later) or blitz-desktop-*.pkg.tar.zst (Arch Linux), for x86-64 and Arm. Install it over 0.6.0.
• macOS: Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed). Unchanged from 0.6.0 apart from the version.

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Linux: closing the window ends the web process before it can crash by @rmcguinness in #52

Full Changelog: v0.6.0...v0.6.1

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

To check the fix on Linux with an NVIDIA card: with Use the graphics card on, close the window a few times, then run coredumpctl list. It should show no new WebKitWebProcess entries.

v0.6.0

Your documents, everywhere they need to go 📄

v0.6.0 sends your work out the door looking right. Export any Markdown file as a Word document, with real Word equations, your pictures and your Mermaid diagrams drawn in. PDFs now keep every picture, even in documents full of maths. Skills install from registries such as your organization's Castor, checked before they land. And your project's history becomes a graph you can explore: every file's, every folder's, the whole workspace's, with branches, merges and the power to put things back.

See it in a minute:

1. Open a Markdown file with an equation, a picture and a diagram.
2. Choose Export › Export as Word in the file's bar, and open the .docx beside it in Word.
3. Choose Changes › Workspace history… to see your project's commits as a graph, then Shift-click two of them to compare.

Word documents

• Export › Export as Word in a Markdown file's bar writes <name>.docx beside it, from what's in the editor.
• Equations you can edit: $…$ and $$…$$ become Word equations: fractions, roots, sums and integrals, matrices, cases and more. $5 and $10 stay as text.
• Pictures and diagrams: pictures (SVG and HTML <img> tags too) are embedded, and Mermaid diagrams are drawn in.
• Word's own styles: headings, lists, quotes, code and tables use Word's styles, so the navigation pane, a table of contents and restyling all work.
• Anywhere: /export notes.docx writes a conversation, blitz sessions export <id> -o notes.docx does it from the shell, and the agent has export_docx.

PDFs keep their pictures

• Every picture prints, including in documents with maths, which used to print pictures as blank space: printing now waits for the page's fonts and pictures.
• Pictures are found as the preview finds them, by my%20figs/plot.png, /figs/plot.png or an HTML <img>, in the app's PDFs, Word documents and the agent's export_pdf.

Skills from registries

• Add a registry such as Castor with blitz skills registry add <url>, or in Settings › Skills. Its token is kept in your keychain.
• Find and install skills with blitz skills search and blitz skills install castor/lit-review, /skills install in a session, or Install in Settings, for you or for the project. Each skill is checked against its registry's hash first.
• No restart needed: a new skill is ready in the conversations already open. blitz skills update keeps skills current.

History as a graph

• See how your work got here: View revisions… on a file or folder (or Changes › Workspace history… for everything) shows its commits as a graph: branches in their own colours, merges where they join, grouped by day, with who made each change and how big it was.
• Compare anything: see what a commit changed, how it differs from now, or Shift-click two commits to compare them.
• Put things back: restore a file, or a whole folder, as it was in any commit. A folder's restore shows you which files come back first, and keeps the files you've added since. Nothing is staged, so you review before you commit.
• Follows renames, and loads long histories 100 commits at a time.

Files

• View revisions is on an editor tab's right-click menu too.
• Remove from .gitignore takes back what Add to .gitignore did, and names the rule when something else ignores the file.
• Tabs: right-click a tab to close it, the others, those to its right, the saved ones or all of them, with one question for any unsaved changes.
• Tidier tree: AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, GEMINI.md and BLITZ.md are hidden like dotfiles; Show hidden files shows them.
• Messages up top: the snackbar now appears at the top, out of the way of the chat box.

Linux

• NVIDIA on Wayland: the desktop app no longer quits on startup with a Wayland protocol error on NVIDIA GPUs, and Export as PDF works there.

Good to know

• Diagrams in Word come from the desktop app, which draws them. The agent's export_docx and /export keep a diagram as its code, with a note.
• SVG pictures in Word show in Word 2016 and later; older readers show a blank space.

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Linux on NVIDIA: the window really draws with the graphics card by @rmcguinness in #41
• Fix the open issues: tab menu, snackbar, agent files, revisions, .gitignore, Word export, skill registries by @rmcguinness in #46
• Release notes and version pins for 0.6.0 by @rmcguinness in #47
• Printing waits for every font and picture before it prints by @rmcguinness in #49
• History as a graph: files, folders and the workspace by @rmcguinness in #48
• The 0.6.0 notes include the history graph by @rmcguinness in #50

Full Changelog: v0.5.4...v0.6.0

v0.5.4

Spec-driven, for every kind of project 🔬

v0.5.4 takes /spec beyond software. Researchers, data analysts and writers now get a specification and a workspace built for their kind of work, not a developer's. The desktop app gains every slash command the terminal has, the user guide now lives inside the app, and MCP servers and agents got safer and clearer.

See it in a minute:

1. Open a folder with your study, report or manuscript in Blitz and type /spec.
2. Pick what kind of project it is: Software, Research or science, Data analysis, Writing or documentation, or Something else.
3. Answer the questions that kind needs. For a study, those are the question, data, methods, compute, ethics and outputs.
4. Run /setup: it offers helpers that fit, such as a literature reviewer and a statistics critic for research.

Not only software

• /spec asks what you're making first, then the questions that kind needs: for a study, the research question, data, methods, compute, ethics and outputs, not deployment and sign-in. Mixed projects are fine.
• Setup follows the kind. /setup, /skills update and /agents update offer helpers that fit: experiments, figures and citations for research; a literature reviewer and a statistics critic instead of a code reviewer.

See Start any project: spec, then setup, with a walkthrough for software, research, data analysis and writing.

Every command, in the app too

• The desktop app has the terminal's slash commands. Type / in the chat, or press ⌘K, for the same commands in the same groups: /status, /goal, /loop, /memory, /permissions, /approvals, /skills, /mcp, /tools, /export, /fork, /rewind, /copy and more, 31 of them new to the app.
• /loop repeats a prompt while the window is open. For schedules that keep going after you close it, use a worker.
• /config opens the settings file; /config key=value --save changes it.
• Terminal-only: /clear, /exit, /paste, /cd and !command. /help in the app tells you what to do in the window instead.

The user guide, in the app

• Help opens the guide for the version you run, with search. Each section has its own entry in the Help menu, /docs <topic> finds a page, and the guide remembers where you left off. It reads well in a small window too.
• New pages: the spec-then-setup tutorial, and guides to workers, MCP servers and agents.

Safer, clearer MCP servers and agents

• Secrets stay secret. An MCP server's header values (an access token, often) are now masked in logs, telemetry and blitz config show, as its environment values were.
• Your rules always apply. An auto-approved server's resources now follow your deny and ask rules, as its tools do.
• Problems show where you are. When an MCP server goes down, is paused or comes back, the conversation says so, instead of only the service's log.
• What's off looks off. /mcp marks disabled servers, and /tools no longer offers their tools.
• No silent skips. A project's SSE server entry, which Blitz can't run, is reported rather than tried and failed.
• Agent files mean what they say. permission_mode: acceptEdits and other alias spellings now work, and can't loosen an untrusted project's agent.
• Worker costs show in the desktop app's run list.

Good to know

• Coming from 0.5.3? Everything in Blitz 0.5.3 is here too: /spec and /setup, Gemini 4 Argon by default, the idle CPU fix and the Mac menus.
• The website still has the newest guide; Open on the web in the app's guide takes you to the same page there.

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Desktop slash commands at parity with the terminal by @rmcguinness in #29
• Minor Patch - CLI / Skills / Help by @rmcguinness in #30
• Release notes and version pins for 0.5.4 by @rmcguinness in #31

Full Changelog: v0.5.3...v0.5.4

v0.5.3

Start with what you're building 🧭

v0.5.3 lets Blitz understand your project before it sets it up. A new /spec command interviews you about what you're making, who it's for, how fast and big it must be, where it runs and how people sign in, then writes a real specification your agents follow. Gemini 4 Argon is the new default model. An idle window no longer keeps your processor busy, and both help screens are finally easy to scan.

See it in a minute:

1. Open an empty folder in Blitz and type /spec a recipe-sharing web app.
2. Answer a few rounds of questions: intent and value, users, performance, platform, security.
3. Confirm the list of specs it proposes. You get .agents/specs/001-overview.md, one spec per piece of work in the order you'd build it, and an index.
4. Run /setup: it reads the specification and sets up the instructions, skills and agents to match.

Specifications that drive your agents

• /spec writes numbered specs in .agents/specs/ (001 to 999, in build order). Each has goals, numbered requirements, acceptance criteria and open questions. Run it again, or /spec <what changed>, to revise them.
• /setup asks first. With no specification yet, it offers to write one before anything else, because the spec should shape the setup.
• /skills update and /agents update check your skills and agents against the specs, propose what to add, change or retire, and change only what you pick.
• Blitz notices when a spec changes. The welcome screen offers "The specification changed: update the skills and agents".

Gemini 4 Argon by default

• New installs, and anyone who never picked a model, now use gemini-4-argon, for chat and for web search.
• A model you've chosen in your settings stays as it is.

Lighter on your computer

• An idle window no longer burns CPU. The glowing ring around the chat box now moves only while the agent works. On Linux this ends the window sitting at 100% CPU while idle, even with the display off.
• Linux uses your graphics card. The window now draws with the GPU where it can. If it flickers or goes blank, turn off Use the graphics card in Settings › Appearance (with the advanced settings shown). If Blitz won't start at all, launch it once with BLITZ_GPU=off.
• Linux dock icon: the window now groups under the Blitz icon in your dock or taskbar.

Feels like a Mac app

• Blitz › About Blitz and Settings… (⌘,) are in the menu bar, along with Hide, Hide Others, Show All and Quit, in your language.
• Escape in full screen closes a dialog without also leaving full screen.

Help you can actually read

• blitz --help groups its commands (runs and sessions, the workspace, models and extensions, setup) and its flags (session, agent and model, one-shot runs, permissions, instructions), each alphabetical.
• /help in a session does the same for its slash commands, then lists your custom commands by where they come from.

Good to know

• Placeholder price: Gemini 4 Argon is priced at Gemini 3.8 Flash's rate until Google publishes its own, so costs and --max-cost-usd still work. If you know the real price, set it under [pricing."gemini-4-argon"].
• Retiring skills and agents: /skills update and /agents update can't delete files. A retired skill or agent says why it was retired, so you can remove the file.
• /help and update: /help mentions update in the descriptions of /skills and /agents, not yet in their usage columns.
• Testing so far: the menus and specifications were tested on macOS. Linux GPU drawing is new, so please tell us if your window misbehaves.

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Idle CPU fix, the GPU on Linux, and a native macOS app menu by @rmcguinness in #25
• /spec: the project's specification first, and skills and agents that follow it by @rmcguinness in #26
• Default Gemini model: gemini-4-argon by @rmcguinness in #27
• CLI help in groups, alphabetical within each by @rmcguinness in #28

Full Changelog: v0.5.2...v0.5.3

v0.5.2

Go code in your docs, steady as you hover 🐹

v0.5.2 is a quick fix for anyone with Go code in their Markdown. Hovering over a Go code block in the visual editor could close the editor and make it look as if Blitz had crashed. Now hovering just shows you the help you were after. And Go blocks now get that help in many more projects.

See it in a minute:

1. Open a Markdown file with a Go code block, in a project whose Go module lives in a folder (say backend/go.mod) rather than at the top.
2. Switch to Visual and hover over a name in the block, such as fmt.Println or net.Listener: its documentation appears.
3. Type in the block: completion and real errors show up as you go.

What's fixed

• Hovering never closes the editor. When a language server can't answer, Blitz now treats it as that server's hiccup, not as Blitz itself going away. The editor stays open and your place in the document stays put.
• Go blocks work wherever your module lives. Before, Go blocks only got hover, completion and error checking when the project had a go.mod at its top. Now monorepos and projects with their Go code in a subfolder get them too.
• No false alarms. A Go block no longer shows a "No packages found" warning just for being a block. Real errors still show.

Good to know

• Nothing is written to your project: Blitz keeps an empty scratch folder in your system's temp directory for Go to look at, and removes it when the language servers stop.
• In a project without a top-level module, a Go block sees the standard library but not the project's own packages or its dependencies, since no module ties them together there.
• Tested on macOS. Linux should work the same; let us know if anything looks off.

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Hovering in a Go block no longer closes the editor; Go blocks work without a root module by @rmcguinness in #24

Full Changelog: v0.5.1...v0.5.2

v0.5.1

Equations, pictures and room to breathe 📐

v0.5.1 makes your Markdown look the way you meant it. Equations render beautifully, in the app and in the PDFs you export. Pictures embedded in your docs actually show. Diagrams pan and zoom. And on a big monitor, documents finally use all of it.

See it in a minute:

1. Open any Markdown file and add an equation, the way you would on GitHub:

   The mean is $\bar{x} = \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n} x_i$, and the model is:
   
   $$
   \hat{y}_t = \beta_0 + \beta_1 T_{t-1} + \varepsilon_t
   $$

2. Hold ⌘ (or Ctrl) and scroll, or pinch, over the editor to zoom in. Do the same over a diagram to zoom into just the diagram.

3. Click Export as PDF in the file's bar: your equations come out properly typeset.

Math, everywhere you write

• Equations render in previews, the visual editor and the chat: $…$ inline, $$…$$ and ```math blocks, exactly as on GitHub.
• Prices stay prices. "It costs $5 and $10" is still text; Blitz reads dollar signs the way GitHub and Pandoc do.
• Edit equations in place. In the visual editor, click a formula to edit its TeX with a live preview, type $x^2$ to create one, or add a block with Equation (Σ) in the toolbar.
• PDFs typeset math properly, with the right fonts embedded, ready to share.
• A formula with a mistake shows its source in red, with the reason when you hover over it.

Pictures that show up

• Embedded (base64) images render in previews, the visual editor and the chat, instead of showing as code.
• Images from your workspace show too: ![chart](results/chart.png) displays the picture.
• Still private: Blitz never fetches a picture from the web, so web images stay a click-to-open link.

Room to read and zoom

• Zoom the editor and documents from 50% to 200%: ⌘ or Ctrl with + / − / 0, the scroll wheel, or a pinch. The chat stays as it is, and the zoom level is remembered.
• Documents use your whole screen. Markdown now fills the editor, which is great on wide monitors. Prefer a reading column? Switch with the ↔ button on the tab or in Settings › Appearance.
• Diagrams pan and zoom. Zoom at the pointer, drag to move around, double-click to fit, or Expand a diagram to see it over the whole window.
• Readable hover help. Hovering over code shows documentation in a proper, wide box again, instead of a narrow column.

Good to know

• Math uses standard LaTeX via KaTeX. A few TeX habits don't carry over: for example, a line break inside \text{…} isn't \n; use an aligned block with \\ instead.
• Base64 that's split across lines, or contains spaces, isn't a valid Markdown image, so it shows as text.
• Tested on macOS. Linux and Windows are expected to work the same; let us know if anything looks off.

Thanks to everyone who filed issues: #6, #18, #20, #21 and #22 are all fixed in this release. 🙌

---

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Math, pictures, zoom and readable hover help: fixes #6, #18, #20, #21, #22 by @rmcguinness in #23
• ci: bump the actions group with 4 updates by @dependabot[bot] in #19

New Contributors

• @dependabot[bot] made their first contribution in #19

Full Changelog: v0.5.0...v0.5.1

v0.5.0

Write Markdown the way it looks, with code that understands your project ✨

v0.5.0 turns Blitz's editor into a real workspace for docs and code. Markdown files open as the finished document, ready to edit: no more switching between source and preview. Every code block inside them gets completion, error checking and documentation from your project's own language servers. And regular code files get the same help.

Try it in a minute:

1. Turn on Settings › Show advanced settings.
2. Open any Markdown file. It opens in Visual: headings, lists, tables and diagrams, all editable in place.
3. Add a code block from the toolbar (or type ```), pick Go, Python or TypeScript, and start typing. Completions come from your project, mistakes are underlined, and hovering a name shows its documentation.

Want the raw Markdown? Source is one click away, and both views stay in sync.

Visual Markdown editing

• Edit the document, not the syntax. Bold, links, images, tables, task lists, quotes and Mermaid diagrams, from a toolbar at the bottom of the editor, a right-click menu, or / for a quick block menu. Typing Markdown still works: # makes a heading, - a list.
• Your files stay yours. Blitz rewrites only what you change. Everything else is saved byte for byte, so your git diffs show your edits and nothing more. Front matter, raw HTML and footnotes are kept as editable source.
• Code blocks are real code editors, with highlighting, a language picker (R included), and diagrams that redraw as you type.
• Paste and copy Markdown: pasted Markdown becomes formatted text, and copying gives you Markdown back.

Code that knows your project

• In files and in code blocks: completion with signatures and the imports you need, problems underlined and counted in the status bar, documentation on hover, and ⌘-click or F12 to jump to a definition.
• Code blocks see your workspace. A Go block in your README can call your own packages, and a short snippet of statements just works, without a package line or a main.
• Tab completes. After a word or a ., Tab brings up completions; at the start of a line it indents, as always.
• Shared with the agent. The editor uses the same language servers the agent already runs, so nothing extra starts in the background. Settings › Workspaces › Language servers shows how each one is doing, with Restart.

Supported out of the box: Go (gopls), TypeScript and JavaScript (typescript-language-server) and Python (pyright). Have them installed and Blitz finds them. If one is missing, the status bar tells you how to install it.

Also in this release

• Your tools are found when Blitz starts at login. The background service now uses your terminal's PATH, so language servers and the tools the agent runs are found even when you installed them with nvm, Homebrew or go install.
• Google sign-in is simpler. Gemini uses one credential, in this order: your API key, then Google Cloud's application credentials, then your Google sign-in. Each request carries only that one.
• Security updates: built with Go 1.27.2 and the latest networking libraries, closing eleven published advisories.
• HTML tags get proper syntax colours, Markdown source highlights its code blocks, and tables have clearer borders.

Good to know

• Visual editing is an advanced feature. With advanced settings off, Markdown files still open in Preview and Source, as before.
• Language servers in code blocks cover Go, TypeScript, JavaScript and Python. Rust blocks get highlighting and word completion, since rust-analyzer needs a full Cargo project.
• Language servers start only in workspaces whose project settings you trust.
• Windows support for language servers is new and lightly tested so far.

Try it and tell us what you think. Issues and ideas are very welcome. 🙌

---

Verifying

checksums.txt lists every archive; its signature is checksums.txt.sigstore.json. Each desktop package has its own .sigstore.json. Verify against this repository's release workflow:

cosign verify-blob --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/retail-cortex/blitz/\.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com checksums.txt
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c checksums.txt

Desktop app

Blitz_*_macos_universal.dmg (notarized when the release was signed) and blitz-desktop_*.deb (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13 and later).

macOS

The macOS CLI binaries aren't notarized by Apple. If you download one in a browser, Gatekeeper refuses to run it until you clear the quarantine flag:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine blitz blitzd

You can also open it once through Finder's context menu (Open). A copy downloaded with curl isn't quarantined.

What's Changed

• Visual Markdown editor, and language servers in the editor by @rmcguinness in #17

Full Changelog: v0.4.0...v0.5.0