v0.1.28 — Sidecar, pair-programming, team consolidation

Released 2026-05-24. Multi-platform signed/notarized DMG + EXE + AppImage. Auto-update from v0.1.27 is automatic on next launch.

Headline: agents running in your own AWS/GCP/Azure VPC can now receive Skillify and Guardrail updates without inbound firewall holes. Plus the team-invite stack — two parallel systems that had been confusing users — is now one modal, one flow.

Sidecar (Mode C) — production ready

See Concepts → Deployment modes for the full architecture.

The CodeNow Sidecar runs inside the customer’s cloud, opens a single outbound long-poll to codenow.pro, and serves the latest skills + guardrails to the agent over loopback. Same security shape as the Datadog Agent, Grafana Alloy, Fluent Bit — the pattern enterprise security teams already accept.

Three install paths ship today:


# Bare VM with hardened systemd
curl -fsSL https://codenow.pro/sidecar/install.sh | \
  sudo bash -s -- --token=codenow_sc_xxx --systemd --start
 
# Docker
docker run -d \
  -e CODENOW_SIDECAR_TOKEN=codenow_sc_xxx \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8721:8721 \
  --read-only --cap-drop=ALL --security-opt no-new-privileges:true \
  karlmehta/codenow-sidecar:0.1.28
 
# Kubernetes
kubectl create namespace codenow
kubectl -n codenow create secret generic codenow-sidecar \
  --from-literal=token=codenow_sc_xxx
kubectl apply -f https://codenow.pro/sidecar/k8s.yaml

In CodeNow Desktop: Business mode → Sidecars tab → ”+ Mint sidecar”. The token is shown exactly once — paste it into the install command above.

What ships in v0.1.28

Surface	Detail
Sidecar binary	`tools/sidecar/index.mjs` — Node.js 18+, zero external dependencies
Endpoints (loopback)	`GET /health`, `/skills`, `/guardrails`, `/state`, `/metrics`, `/readyz`, `/livez`; `POST /runs`
Endpoints (codenow.pro)	`POST/GET/DELETE /api/sidecar`, `GET /api/sidecar/pull` (25s long-poll), `POST /api/sidecar/heartbeat`, `POST /api/sidecar/runs`
Audit-log forwarding	Sidecar forwards agent runs to CodeNow; tagged with `sidecar_id` so the Runs tab shows provenance. Closes the observability loop.
Prometheus metrics	Counters: `pull_successes/failures/no_change`, `runs_accepted/forwarded/rejected/forward_errors`. Gauges: `skills`, `guardrails`, `uptime_seconds`.
YAML config	`/etc/codenow-sidecar/config.yml` default; override via `--config=` or `CODENOW_SIDECAR_CONFIG`. Precedence: defaults → file → env → CLI flags.
Hardened systemd	Runs as `codenow` user, `NoNewPrivileges`, `ProtectSystem=strict`, `RestrictAddressFamilies=AF_INET AF_INET6`, all capabilities dropped.
Docker image	`karlmehta/codenow-sidecar:0.1.28`, multi-arch (amd64/arm64), Alpine + Node 20, non-root, `HEALTHCHECK` against `/livez`.
Kubernetes manifest	Deployment + ClusterIP Service + NetworkPolicy. Liveness on `/livez`, readiness on `/readyz`, Prometheus scrape annotations.
SDK shims	Drop-in `sidecar.{ts,py}` lands in scaffolds for all four harnesses — Claude Agent SDK (TS + Python), Cursor SDK, Microsoft Agent Framework, Google ADK. Each agent template composes the sidecar prompt automatically.
Desktop UI	Business mode → Sidecars tab — mint + list + revoke + status pills (Connected / Waiting / Revoked)

Deferred to v0.1.29+

Multi-tenant sidecar (one binary mirroring multiple projects). Today: run one sidecar per project on different ports.
SBOM signing via cosign (Docker image already attaches SLSA provenance + SPDX SBOM attestations from the GH Action build).
Custom CA support for corporate TLS-interception environments.
Token rotation API (today: revoke + re-mint).

Pair programming + team-invite consolidation

See Concepts → Pair programming for the end-to-end walkthrough with screenshots.

Two parallel invitation systems (team-* and collab-*) collapsed into one lifecycle-rail Share modal. The “Team members” modal is gone. The user-pill Invite team menu item, the ⌘P Invite Teammates command, and the editor topbar Share button all open the same modal.

The modal teaches the flow:

Intro / Repo — header explains pair-programming + offers an inline GitHub-URL editor for the missing-URL case
Invite a teammate — email + role + Send invite + optional welcome message; help line tells the user what to expect (“They’ll get an email with a link that opens this project in their CodeNow”)
Team (N) — each member has a status pill (Owner / You / Joined) and non-owners get a Pair → button that starts a CRDT live session + copies a paste-ready Slack/email blurb for the teammate
Pending (N) — Email-sent pill + Resend / Copy link / × per row. Resend re-fires the transactional email without touching the row.

Server-side:

New POST /api/collab/email-invite fires Resend after a row is created (the Share button finally sends real email — before this, you had to copy/paste the link yourself)
New /join public landing page resolves invite tokens and walks new users through signup + accept; old /team/accept page kept for backwards compat
Homepage + signup carry the pending invitation token through email confirmation so the accept loop completes automatically (extends 48b025b)

Server cleanup:

Deleted 5 endpoints: /api/team/{accept, audit, invitations, invite, members}
Deleted 5 IPC handlers, 5 preload bridges, 13 renderer functions, the entire #team-members-modal DOM
Dropped 4 Supabase tables: team_invitations, team_audit_log, team_channels, team_messages. (team_members retained — project_view_links RLS still references it; UUID migration is on the v0.1.29+ list.)

Net code change across the consolidation: −742 LOC, one door, one flow.

Workforce panel — no more channels

Per Karl: “we do not have channels so business mode referring to channels is a BUG.”

The Workforce tab in Business mode now renders people + agents side by side — project_members from the same source the Share modal reads, plus the existing agent list. The Slack-style chat feature shipped in v0.1.8 release notes never carried real product weight; it’s been ripped end-to-end:

DOM block + create-channel modal removed
loadWorkforceChannels, renderWorkforceChannels, selectChannel, openChannel, submitChannelMessage, openCreateChannelModal, slackChannelButton, openSlackChannelMappingModal all deleted
team:list-channels / team:create-channel / team:list-messages / team:send-message IPC + matching preload bridges removed
/api/team/channels + /api/team/messages deleted
team_messages + team_channels tables dropped
New runtime smoke case workforce.humans-and-agents asserts both the new shape AND the absence of the deleted DOM/functions — re-introducing channels fails fast

Auth silent-retry restored

Phase 2 of the team-invite consolidation deleted renderTeamMembersPanel, which carried the silent-retry-on-auth-expired logic from 0a18f00 (the sleep-wake JWT-expiry fix from May 21). The replacement Share modal had no equivalent, so a stale token landed users on the Sign in again panel even though authRefreshSession() would have worked.

Restored in b648a2d: both openCollabModal and renderCollabPanel now attempt authRefreshSession() once before showing the sign-in block, and renderSessionExpiredBlock exposes a “Refresh session” retry button. Caught by the screenshot rig before any real user hit it.

Other things in this batch

Browser control panel + mobile PWA companion (originally landed under v0.1.28 work in flight)
Enterprise compliance layer (secret managers, IAM, air-gap, SIEM)
GSD Phase 1 — auto-detect, badge, command palette, one-click install
GitHub Action wrapper at codenow/deploy-action@v1
K8s / Container adapter + Phase 2 trust runtime

Smoke

Static: 0 errors, 0 warnings
Runtime: 136 pass / 4 fail / 1 skip. The 4 fails are pre-existing and unrelated to this release (shareViewLink Refresh-session dead click, browser bottom tab, JIRA context bridge, k8s switchStudioTab ref). New cases that landed: workforce.humans-and-agents, pair-program.share-flow, team.invite-folded-into-share-modal, team.members-bridges-collab-only, team.share-modal-shows-known-state, sidecars.tab-and-bridges.

Upgrade path

v0.1.27 users get this automatically via the in-app updater on next launch.
v0.1.5 → v0.1.7 users: download once manually from codenow.pro/download/mac ; subsequent versions auto-update.
Windows: codenow.pro/download/windows
Linux: codenow.pro/download/linux

The Mac DMG is signed by Developer ID Application: PREDIXTIONS INC and notarized — spctl -a -t open returns accepted, source=Notarized Developer ID.

What’s queued

Multi-tenant sidecar
SBOM signing (cosign-based supply-chain provenance on the Docker image)
Custom CA support for corporate TLS-interception
project_view_links UUID migration (so team_members can finally be dropped)
Stripe billing + tier enforcement in the desktop app
Webpack/vite bundle of Monaco so the built .app works without the source-load hack