Perch v0.1.0-beta.2

Perch v0.1.0-beta.2

Second Windows beta of Perch, an agent development environment: one real terminal per pane, a work board for attention, and a local model gateway.

Download

• Perch-0.1.0-beta.2-win-x64.exe
• SHA-256: B243F53670D753EE7E77999A35B69A3AF124307D8F1768CE083B99BE8A0F47EE

This is a single portable executable. Download it, put it anywhere, and double-click it. No installer, no zip, and no second file to keep beside it.

The hook receiver is embedded and is unpacked to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Perch\bin on first run. Logs go to %APPDATA%\Perch\perch.log.

What changed

• No console flash. The release binary and hook now use the Windows GUI subsystem, so launching from Explorer no longer opens a console window first.
• First-run setup is a real flow. Pick an agent, connect the gateway and models, choose a workspace and language, then review and open your first agent. It reads live state, can be resumed, confirms before skipping, and can be reopened from Settings → About.
• Installer fixes. The Windows system proxy is now passed to the whole installer process tree (the native Claude installer does not read the system proxy by itself). Pi now checks the required Node version instead of only checking whether npm.cmd exists. Claude's current ~/.local/bin/claude.exe path is preferred, so updates are picked up.
• No restart after gateway setup. Agent models refresh when the gateway connects, an install finishes, the embedded provider page changes configuration, or you return from Gateway. The old permanent retry cap is gone.
• No silent agent fallback. If a configured agent profile cannot be applied to the gateway, Perch stops that launch with a readable error instead of letting the agent start with a stale local config. This removes the path that could send Codex to OpenAI directly and print a raw 401.
• Setup review polish. The final screen uses one status seal and a quiet review table instead of four identical check circles. Long workspace paths wrap, and the built-in workspace label is no longer vertically clipped.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 x64 with the WebView2 Runtime.
• ConPTY and Job Objects are required.
• macOS support is in development; there is no macOS build yet.
• The build is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may ask you to confirm. This is expected for the beta.

If WebView2 is missing, Perch shows a Windows dialog with the download page and the winget install Microsoft.EdgeWebView2Runtime command instead of exiting silently.

Known limitations

• Qoder, Copilot, and Cursor use their own sign-in.
• DeepSeek Harness tool execution still depends on the upstream dsh-tui build.
• Agent installers and the magpie engine are downloaded from their official sources; neither is bundled in the exe.
• Provider-side authentication errors (for example an invalid or expired provider key) still come from the provider. Perch now prevents the gateway from being silently bypassed; it does not invent a working key.
• Perch has no account system and sends no telemetry of its own. Agent CLIs and magpie may have their own policies.