v0.6.0 — Autonomous Subagents, In-Place Self-Updater, Shell Autocompletions & Modular TUI

Corex v0.6.0 is a major milestone release introducing an autonomous multi-agent coordination engine with specialized subagent actors, in-place atomic self-updating, complete native shell autocompletions for all major shells, full Linux ARM64 support, resilient JSON repair parsing, and a modular architecture refactoring of the TUI.

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Key Features & Architectural Improvements

1. Autonomous Multi-Agent Coordination Engine (Subagents)

• Specialized Actor Roles: Introduced SubagentRole with 4 specialized roles tailored for software engineering workflows:
  • Scout: Read-only repository exploration and symbol finding at zero cost before cloud reasoning.
  • Tester: Automated background test runner, linter verification, and compiler diagnostics in an isolated sandbox.
  • Researcher: Documentation reader, API specification extractor, and external reference finder.
  • Worker: General-purpose autonomous subtask executor.
• Isolated Context Boundaries: Subagents execute with dedicated isolated context memory, preventing context window bloat and prompt token exhaustion in the primary orchestrator session.
• Native Runtime Tools: Added delegate_subagent (synchronous or background delegation) and manage_subagents (list, status, cancel) directly exposed to the reasoning model.
• Reactive Wakeup: Background subagents automatically notify the lead orchestrator upon completion without polling overhead.

2. In-Place Atomic Self-Updater (cx update / cx --upgrade / /update apply)

• Frictionless Binary Upgrades: Upgrade Corex directly from the CLI or TUI without requiring external package managers (cargo or npm).
• Cross-Platform Architecture Target Detection: Native detection for Linux x86_64, Linux ARM64, macOS Apple Silicon / Intel, Windows x86_64, and Android Termux.
• Cryptographic Signature Validation: Downloads and cryptographically verifies release payload integrity against published SHA-256 digests (sha2).
• Atomic In-Place Replacement: Replaces running binaries via filesystem rename semantics (fs::rename), cleanly circumventing Linux ETXTBSY ("Text file busy") and Windows file locking.
• Interactive TUI Support: Run /update apply (or /update force) directly inside conversation sessions to update in-place.

3. Complete Shell Autocompletions (clap_complete)

• Multi-Shell Support: Added clap_complete generating contextual shell autocompletion scripts for Bash, Zsh, Fish, PowerShell, and Elvish.
• CLI Flag & Commands: Dedicated --completions <shell> argument and cx completions <shell> command autocompleting flags, options, and descriptions.
• Automated Installer Hook: install.sh now automatically detects and installs completions into /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_cx, /etc/bash_completion.d/cx, and ~/.config/fish/completions/cx.fish.

4. Modular Architectural Overhaul of corex-tui

• Decoupled Architecture: Refactored the legacy ~5,870 LOC monolithic app.rs into specialized submodules under crates/corex-tui/src/app/:
  • mod.rs: App core lifecycle, session state, and slash command dispatcher.
  • event_loop.rs: Async multithreaded event loop, channels, keyboard, mouse, and streaming.
  • render.rs: Responsive Ratatui rendering pipelines, viewports, borders, and feeds.
  • formatting.rs: Markdown renderer, syntax highlights, and visual badges.
  • mobile.rs: Touch keyboard and portrait viewport adaptation for mobile Termux.
  • state.rs: Reactive state, selection tracking, and command history.
  • terminal.rs: Terminal raw mode and alternate screen setup/teardown.
  • tests.rs: Comprehensive UI regression test suite.

5. Native Linux ARM64 (aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu) Support

• Full Architecture Parity: Added dedicated aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu target to release CI workflows, bringing first-class precompiled support for Raspberry Pi 4/5 64-bit, AWS Graviton, Hetzner ARM, Oracle Cloud ARM, and Docker ARM64.
• Termux Separation: Clean distinction between native Linux ARM64 (gnu) and Android Termux (aarch64-linux-android) across all installer scripts.

6. Resilient JSON Repair Engine & Unified Multi-Provider Tool Calling

• parse_lenient_json: Fault-tolerant streaming parser repairing unescaped quotes, Markdown codeblock wrappers, trailing commas, single-quoted JSON, nested stringified arguments, and truncated SSE streams.
• Provider Replay Test Suite: Verified end-to-end against DeepSeek V4.1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Google Gemini 3.x thought signatures, Ollama local models, and OpenAI parallel tool execution.

7. Interactive MCP Server Management (/mcp)

• Interactive Server Catalog: Added /mcp catalog, /mcp add <catalog_id|custom>, and /mcp remove <name> to browse and connect external Model Context Protocol servers directly inside the TUI.

8. Security & Distribution

• Steganographic Watermark: Embedded XOR-encrypted authorship signature validation into the binary core.
• Nix Flake: Added declarative flake.nix for zero-install execution via nix run github:sluisr/corex.
• Memory Compaction: Automatic free page release via glibc malloc_trim(0) on Linux after high-token reasoning turns.

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Installation & Upgrade

Via In-Place Self-Updater

cx update

Via npm

npm install -g @sluisr/corex
# or run directly:
npx @sluisr/corex

Pre-compiled Binary (Linux, macOS, Android Termux)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sluisr/corex/main/install.sh | bash

From Source via Cargo / Crates.io

cargo install corex-cli --locked

Via Nix Flake

nix run github:sluisr/corex