Release notes¶

zGentic release notes
What each release changed for the people who use it.

What changed for you, newest first. Only changes you can notice are listed here; work on the inner workings is left out.

0.28.5¶

Changed¶

zGentic now serves more people at once on the same machine. The application runs as several independent processes instead of one, so a slow answer for one person no longer holds up everyone else's. Nothing changes in how you use it; busy periods should simply feel less busy.
Stop keeps working regardless of which process handles it. This is the part that had to be built before the above could be switched on: your Stop can arrive at a different process from the one writing your answer, so a request to stop is now passed to whichever process is doing the work. If a stop cannot be confirmed within a few seconds you are told it is stopping rather than told it stopped — the one thing we will not do is claim a stop that did not happen.
One consequence worth knowing: if a stop is handled by a different process from the one writing the answer, the partial text is not kept in the saved transcript, though it stays on screen in the window that was watching it. The stop itself is always recorded.

0.28.3¶

Fixed¶

Stop now stops the work, not just the display. Pressing Stop used to end what you could see while the model carried on writing in the background — so a stopped answer could reappear as a second message next to (Stopped by user.), and questions you had already abandoned were still being sent to your model supplier and charged for. Stop now ends the work itself. A stopped turn leaves exactly one message.
A stopped or interrupted round still appears in your spend, and says why. Previously a round that was cut off recorded nothing at all: the text had been sent to the supplier and charged by them, but it was missing from your figures. It is now listed like any other round and marked cancelled, so what you are billed for and what you can see finally agree. See understanding what you are paying for.
The token count shown on an answer was roughly double the real figure. Answers written by the assistant directly — the common case — were counted twice in the number displayed on the turn. Your actual spend was never affected, because billing has always been calculated separately, but the figure you reconcile against it was wrong. It is now correct, which means the number you see on a turn will look smaller than before for the same work.

0.28.2¶

Fixed¶

Answers on the default model supplier stopped arriving word by word. A fault meant every streamed reply failed and was quietly retried in one piece, so answers appeared all at once after a long wait — losing the read-as-it-is-written behaviour added in 0.27.2 — and no progress was visible while you waited.
Text you sent was recorded as costing nothing. On the same path, and on Google Gemini, the size of your question was logged as zero, so daily spend and per-person usage under-reported what had actually been used. Figures recorded from now on are correct; figures already recorded for affected days remain understated.

0.28.1¶

New¶

Spend can be broken down by what happened. Every round now records whether it succeeded, came back empty, failed or was cancelled, and Export CSV has an outcome column — so a bill inflated by failures and retries is visible as failures and retries rather than as unexplained usage. The on-screen daily-spend chart does not split by outcome yet; use the export for that.

Changed¶

An approved plan starts straight away. Approving a multi-step plan no longer repeats the decision the approval already made, which removes one model call and about ten seconds from every approved plan.
A mistake in code the assistant wrote is caught before anything is charged. Code is checked for syntax first, so a typo becomes a free correction instead of a paid attempt.
Long narrative steps describe the pictures they refer to instead of pasting them. A drawing a later step will produce is named rather than dumped into the prose, which keeps long answers readable.

Fixed¶

A task that dies without warning no longer sits at "running" forever. Work with no one left to do it is marked failed within about ten minutes, with an honest reason, and anything waiting on it is marked blocked instead of waiting indefinitely.
Stop began cancelling plan steps and the code the assistant runs. Completed in 0.28.3, where it also ends model replies.
You stay signed in when zGentic is used behind a company proxy.
Clicking Details collapses the plan panel it belongs to, instead of leaving it open.
The panel-edge handles no longer appear on desktop, where they are not used.

0.28.0¶

Almost all of this release was work on the inner workings — how the platform stores what a conversation is doing, how spending is counted, and how many people it can serve at once — and by the rule at the top of this page, that is left out. What you can notice:

Changed¶

Filing your charges no longer holds up your answer. Recording what a round cost now happens after the reply has been delivered rather than as part of it. The check that you have balance still happens first — that has to, so nothing is served that cannot be accounted for.
Searching your documents got faster on large collections, and price lists are read from memory instead of the database on every request.

Fixed¶

Links opened from a notification on a phone always use a secure connection.

The rest was groundwork for running zGentic across several processes per machine — switched on in 0.28.5, once Stop had been made to work across those processes.

0.27.2¶

New¶

Answers appear as they are written. Text arrives word by word instead of all at once at the end, so you can start reading — and stop early — while the rest is still being written.
A line tells you what is happening before the words start. Three pulsing dots and a short description: Searching the web for "luxembourg weather" · 4s, Looking in your documents, Running Python, Asking Research buddy, Using Google Drive. A finished search says how many sources it found; something that did not work says Didn't work, and the assistant usually carries on and tells you what it could not check. The line disappears the moment text starts to flow, because the answer has become its own sign of progress.
A plan tells you where it stands at a glance. The heading of a multi-step plan now counts the work — 3 running · 2 queued · 1 done — with one line on what is happening at this moment. Open it and each step has its own activity line and says what it produced, for example wrote 412 words.
A failed plan explains itself. The card turns a warning colour and opens on its own, the heading says what happened overall (Plan failed — 3 steps failed, 2 of 6 done), the step that went wrong is marked Failed with a short reason, and each step that was waiting on it is marked Blocked with a note naming what it was waiting for. Everything that did succeed is still delivered, and text that had already appeared in the conversation stays there.
Progress is announced to screen readers as it changes, and every state is written out in words as well as shown by colour.

Changed¶

No more documents built from an incomplete set of inputs. If four drawings were asked for and one was produced, the slide deck is now marked Blocked instead of being built from the single drawing and presented as finished. This is a deliberate trade: sometimes fewer finished files, but no more files that quietly leave something out — and the card names exactly which part to ask for again. See when a step fails.
An answer is saved only when it finishes. If zGentic is restarted while an answer is still being written — most often while a new version is being put in place — that answer is lost and the message is marked as interrupted. This is expected rather than something to report: ask again and it will be answered normally. Nothing else in the chat is affected. See if an answer disappears.
A single step is given longer to succeed — up to about ten minutes — because it now shows its progress the whole time and can be stopped at any point.

Fixed¶

A problem at your model supplier no longer looks like a frozen screen. You see the model call did not complete — retrying (attempt 2 of 10) while it is retried, instead of waiting in silence and receiving a poor answer at the end of it.

0.27.1¶

Fixed¶

The progress display shows one clear list instead of three. While a multi-step job ran, the same steps were listed in three places at once — and one of those lists was showing work from your whole organisation, with the chat's own name repeated on every row. There is now a single list for the job you are watching, with each step in order, one elapsed time each, and its result to download. Work running in your other chats still appears separately, which is what that list was always for.
Steps no longer jump around while you watch. Steps that started at the same moment could appear in a different order each time the list refreshed. The order is now fixed: your own chat first, then oldest first.
An empty grey bubble no longer appears above a plan that is waiting for your approval. Nothing had been said yet, so nothing is shown.
A proposed plan is no longer described as "active". Steps waiting for your approval are counted as proposed, because nothing has started.
Your text appears as it is written. When a job writes something — a story, a report — the text now appears in the conversation as each step finishes, instead of only the machinery being visible while you wait.
Spending limits are enforced correctly and stay fast. Checking a limit no longer got slower as the day went on, and a usage record can no longer be lost in a way that leaves a charge unrecorded — a charge and its record are now saved together or not at all. Repeating a charge cannot bill twice.
Smaller touches: the token counter shows real numbers instead of zeros, the "Ask your knowledge base" box is tucked away until you want it, and prices are rounded consistently everywhere.

0.27.0¶

New¶

Use zGentic from your own tools — "Model as a Service". You can now create a personal access key under Settings and point a developer tool (for example opencode) at zGentic, so that tool uses the models your organisation has set up, billed and budgeted exactly like a chat. You can hold several keys, give each one a name so you know which machine it belongs to, and switch one off the moment you no longer trust it — it stops working on the very next request. Each key has its own activity list showing what it was used for. The full instructions are on Model as a Service; if you do not wire up developer tools, you can skip it.
Choose how eagerly the assistant uses an agent. Each agent in the Tools sheet now offers Auto, Always or Off, instead of a switch that had to be turned on before the assistant could use it at all. Auto is the new default: the assistant reaches for an agent when it is relevant. Turning one back on after switching it off no longer quietly changes it to "Always".
Examples you copy, instead of clutter you delete. A new workspace no longer arrives with demonstration agents already in it. Ready-made examples live in a gallery you copy from when you want one.
Markdown joins the document formats, and each format can be switched on or off individually.
Plainer documentation, and a glossary. Every page has been rewritten for people who do not work with AI daily, and words that cannot be avoided — token, model, agent, connector, retrieval — are explained in one sentence each under Words explained.
Emails now look like they come from us, with the zGentic mark. They still read perfectly if your mail program blocks images, and the mark is embedded in the message, so opening an email tells us nothing about you.

Changed¶

New organisations are served by a different model supplier (Fireworks). The models themselves are the same generation as before. Pictures are handled by a supplier whose model can actually read images, chosen automatically — you do not have to pick.
Long tool output no longer floods a conversation. Very large step output is trimmed, the most useful part (the end) is kept, and the chat says plainly that it was trimmed rather than hiding it.
Faster, cheaper answers on follow-up questions. The unchanging part of each request is now arranged so your model supplier can reuse it instead of re-reading it every time.
On the agent form, Type is now called Runtime, because it describes how an agent runs, not what it is.

Removed¶

The Corporate Identity agent is gone. Design guidance is now something the assistant fetches itself when it builds a branded document. If you had uploaded a corporate identity template, it has been removed along with the agent — upload your branding again under your organisation's settings.
The chat action that used to be called create_skill is now create_agent. It always created an agent; the name was misleading.

Fixed¶

Deleting an agent now removes the files uploaded to it. Previously those files stayed behind.
Switching one of an agent's two settings no longer resets the other one.
If your organisation's deployment does not include a particular runtime, choosing it now says so clearly instead of looking like a temporary outage.
Pictures can no longer be quietly ignored: if no model that can read images is available, the chat tells you, rather than answering as though it had seen your picture.

Security¶

Stronger isolation for code the assistant writes and runs. Programs it runs for you are now cut off from the network by default, and can never reach zGentic's own internal services.
Only an owner can allow an agent to reach the internet. This can no longer be switched on from an ordinary request, an imported agent bundle, or by restoring an older version of an agent.
Connections to external tool servers must use encrypted addresses, and a connection entry can no longer cause anything to be started on our servers.

0.26.1¶

This documentation site. The pages you are reading, covering everyday use and running your own organisation.
Web search stops saying "Unavailable" when it is available. Organisations that had set it up correctly could still see the control greyed out. Fixed.
Connectors are easier to find. The Connectors section in the Tools sheet is now always visible, and tells you where to install one if your organisation has none yet. Connectors can also be switched on for a whole project, not only for one chat at a time.
Fewer stray task lists. A one-message chat no longer creates a list of steps, and Clear finished now removes older leftovers that previously could not be cleared away.
Settings tidied up. The options for letting your model supplier cache parts of a conversation are gathered in one place, arranged by supplier.
One search provider. Web search is provided by Perplexity; the picker offering engines that no longer worked has been removed.
Clearer model prices. The pricing table under Admin, Billing & usage now gives the cost per million tokens separately for text going in and text coming out, so you can estimate a cost without guessing.
Proper icons for browser tabs, bookmarks and home-screen shortcuts.

0.26.0 — Connectors¶

Connectors. Your administrator can install links to other systems — weather, current time, Atlassian, Lucid, GitHub, Slack — and you switch them on for a chat, a project or an agent.
You sign in with your own account for Jira and Confluence, Lucid, GitHub and Slack. Results reflect what you are allowed to see, never a shared login. Runs that happen while nobody is watching never use someone's personal sign-in.
Hidden instructions are reported, not obeyed. Text smuggled into a ticket or a wiki page cannot redirect the assistant.

0.25.x — Memory, faster answers, better search¶

Memory. Tell the assistant a fact once and have it remembered — for one chat, for a project, or for you everywhere — with the new /memory commands. Typing / shows the full list of commands.
Architecture Board agents shipped as a worked example of review helpers shared across an organisation.
Faster and cheaper answers. A question is now handled in one pass instead of two. Long answers show a progress line that keeps updating, so a slow answer no longer looks like a frozen screen.
Live web search and page reading, with clickable sources, replacing the older arrangement that depended on the model supplier.
Photos straight from a phone are accepted as they are. The iPhone HEIC format is read, pictures are turned the right way up, and large photos are shrunk for you.
A calmer chat window. No more half-written text; one progress indicator with a timer that stays accurate even if you leave the chat and come back.
Billing detail. Model prices per million tokens, email addresses in the usage table so you can tell people apart, and a properly laid-out "what's new" email.

0.24.x — Ask about a picture¶

Attach a photo, a screenshot or a diagram and ask what it shows. A model that can see pictures is chosen for you, and you can say what to look for instead of getting a general description.
Camera information is removed from uploads, including the GPS location where a photo was taken.

0.23.0 — Seeing and controlling what you spend¶

Daily spending, broken down by model, with Export CSV for your own analysis.
A monthly limit per person, actually enforced, with a warning before it is reached.
Spending charts for owners, a statement each month, and a small starting balance for new organisations.
Time spent running code is counted alongside model usage, so the figures are complete.

0.22.x — Signing up, security and polish¶

Sign your own organisation up, with an approval step, a welcome email and a starting balance.
Spam protection on the sign-up form, invisible to real people.
Your organisation's figures are separate from the accounting done by the people who run the platform, so an owner sees only what applies to them.

0.21.x — Google Workspace and personal file sources¶

Sign in with Google Workspace, including belonging to several organisations, with a switcher to move between them.
Bring in your own files from Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
A screen for scheduled work.
Better document reading for PDF and Office files, and a size check before an upload starts rather than after it fails.

0.20.x — Work that takes several steps¶

Plans and task lists. A request with several parts is laid out as ordered steps, shown as they progress, and adjustable in the task panel.
Runs that start by themselves — on a schedule, or when another system asks for them.
Consistent documents. Word, PowerPoint, Excel and PDF files are produced the same way everywhere.
Several browser tabs stay in step on the same chat.
More model suppliers to choose from for your organisation.

Exact dates and version numbers are available to the people who run zGentic for you. This page groups changes by the release that delivered them.