v0.1.8 — Zed parity + production primitives

Released 2026-05-03. The biggest release since launch. Eight new features, four production-grade engineering primitives, two onboarding fixes, and seven bug fixes. Auto-update will pull this in on your next launch if you’re on v0.1.6 or v0.1.7. New users can grab it from codenow.pro/download .

Headline: Zed parity in one cycle

A user moving from Zed.dev asked us for the comparison. We answered with the four features Zed had that we didn’t — and shipped them in the same week:

Real-time collaborative editing (CRDT)

Open the same file in two CodeNow windows on the same project. Click Go live on each. Live cursors with name tags, simultaneous edits, no merge conflicts.

• Built on Yjs + y-monaco, the same CRDT stack Figma uses.
• Transport over Supabase Realtime broadcast — no separate WebSocket relay to deploy.
• Per-project opt-in (sync traffic is real bandwidth; users consent).
• Doc state persisted to a new crdt_snapshots Supabase table per (project_id, file_path) — a user joining mid-session resumes from the latest snapshot.

Known v0.1.8 limitation: a user joining during an active session may miss updates that happened before their join, since Supabase broadcast doesn’t persist messages. v0.2.0 will swap to a y-websocket relay with full sync history. For now, joining at-rest is rock-solid; joining mid-edit is best-effort.

Voice pair-programming (WebRTC)

Click Join voice in the topbar. Mic-permission prompt → connection. Pill flips to Voice · live · N peers.

• Direct-peer WebRTC. STUN-only (Google’s stun.l.google.com:19302) — symmetric-NAT users will need TURN in v0.2.2.
• Signaling over Supabase Realtime broadcast on voice:{projectHash}. No new infrastructure.
• Audio-only for now. Video, screen-share, and remote-mute land later.
• Mute is track.enabled = false — local toggle, peers see the indicator update.

First-class Vim mode

Click Vim · off in the topbar (next to the version pill). monaco-vim AMD-loads on first toggle.

• Normal / Insert / Visual modes; :w, :q, :%s/foo/bar/g, dd, yy, gg, G, f<char> — the standard set.
• Status bar at editor bottom shows -- INSERT -- and command line.
• Persists in ~/.codenow/settings.json vimModeEnabled.
• Wired into both the main editor AND the diff editor in the source-control panel + the Apply-code modal. (Cmd+K inline overlay is intentionally unaffected — its widget keymap would fight Vim’s normal-mode handler.)

Slack-style team channels

Business mode → Workforce → Channels.

• New tables team_channels + team_messages in Supabase, RLS scoped to project membership.
• Real-time via Supabase Postgres-changes subscription. Messages appear in other windows within ~500ms.
• Per-channel history paginated 50-at-a-time.
• “Live” pill in the channel header shows when the realtime subscription is active.

Production-grade primitives

Four engineering primitives the engineering-agents blog post promised. All shipped in this release.

Prompt caching across all 4 LLM call paths

Anthropic’s cache_control: { type: 'ephemeral' } (5-minute and 1-hour TTL) wired into Studio Run, Cmd+K, Composer, and Tab autocomplete. Two breakpoints per the official guidance: tool catalog + system/skills bundle.

• Cached tokens bill at 10% of input cost; cache writes cost 25% more on first call. Net: ~90% cost reduction on the static prefix once warm.
• OpenAI’s automatic prefix caching: surfaced via usage.prompt_tokens_details.cached_tokens in the Studio result card meta (cached: NNN).
• Gemini explicit CachedContent resource creation deferred to v0.1.9 — for now we log a deferred-note line on every Gemini call and read back any caller-managed cachedContentTokenCount.

Verifiable in DevTools: open Network tab on a Studio run, inspect the request body, see cache_control: { type: 'ephemeral' } markers on the last block of system and tools.

Instruction-data channel separation

Every untrusted content boundary now wraps payloads in <untrusted-data source="..."> tags + a system-prompt SECURITY: header instructing the model to treat the wrapped content as data, not commands.

• Composer’s read_file / list_files tool results are wrapped per file. Cmd+K wraps editor selection. exec-agents and Studio system-prompt construction get the header automatically.
• Tag-injection attacks neutralized: an attacker pasting </untrusted-data> inside a file gets their close-tag rewritten to use a U+2010 unicode hyphen, so they can’t escape the wrapper.
• Single source of truth: src/untrusted-data.js.

SHA-256 Merkle hash chain over JSONL recorder

Every agent-run JSONL event now carries _h (current hash) and _p (prev hash), chained with a codenow-v1 domain separator. After run.end, the head hash is appended to a side file <slug>/heads.jsonl for offline anchoring.

• runs.js getRun() calls verifyChain and returns integrity: { status, head, brokenAt? }.
• The Studio Runs sub-tab shows a ✓ chain verified pill (with truncated head hash + copy button) on every run; ✗ chain broken at event N if tampered; neutral legacy for pre-v0.1.8 runs.
• Cross-language: the Python recorder (RECORDER_PY_SRC) and TS recorder (RECORDER_TS_SRC) emit byte-identical hashes for the same event sequence.

Verifiable from a shell: node -e 'const {verifyChain}=require("./src/recorder-hash"); …' on any .jsonl returns { ok: true, head: 'fb2e25a2…' }.

Cisco DefenseClaw runtime — Phase 2

Phase 1 shipped in v0.1.7 with the Business-mode Guardrails CLI wrapper. v0.1.8 adds runtime enforcement.

• Auto-spawn the Go defenseclaw-gateway sidecar on app boot when the CLI is installed AND any project has a policy file. Tear-down on app.before-quit. Port configurable via ~/.codenow/settings.json defenseclawGatewayPort (default 8787).
• Pre/post hooks wrapped around 3 call paths: exec-agents.invokeAgent (local invoker preflight prompt + postflight model output), studio.runPrompt (input + output), composer-runner.run (preflight every tool call before fs ops; blocked calls become tool-error results so the model can adapt).
• Fail-open by default — missing/down gateway never blocks an agent. Set defenseclawFailMode: 'closed' in settings to opt in to fail-closed.
• Topbar pill Guardrail Proxy: live/idle polls /healthz every 30s. Hidden when CLI is absent.
• Block toasts surface stage + reason; policy-file path copies to clipboard.

Onboarding + UX fixes (May-3 user feedback)

First-run prerequisites checklist

A user reported: “Installing fresh, it’s not obvious that we need claude / codex / gemini CLI installed (or API key) as a prerequisite.”

The welcome screen now auto-shows a 3-card prereqs panel when no provider is ready. Each card surfaces:

• Status pill: Ready / CLI installed · sign in or add key / Not installed
• Install command with a one-click Copy button
• “Add API key” → opens Manage Keys modal
• “Get a key →” link with utm_source for attribution

Auto-dismisses when any provider becomes ready. “Skip for now” persists via settings.prereqsDismissed.

In-app update banner

A user reported: “Developers keep the IDE open for many days; we need an in-app prompt when a new version is available with a quick update button.”

The bottom-right toast was easy to miss. v0.1.8 ships a prominent top-of-window banner with three live states:

• Downloading → Downloading CodeNow vX.Y.Z… while the auto-updater fetches.
• Progress → live percent updates from the download-progress event.
• Ready → A new version is ready + green Restart and update button + Later (dismisses for that version only).

New Check for Updates entry in Cmd+Shift+P for manual checks. The auto-updater itself polls on boot + every 4 hours.

Bug fixes

• Wiki search broken on wiki.codenow.pro — Nextra 4 ships search via Pagefind but the wiki had no postbuild step to generate the index. Search box was throwing TypeError: Failed to fetch dynamically imported module: /_pagefind/pagefind.js. Fixed: added Pagefind devDep + postbuild script. Vercel’s default pipeline now generates the index on every deploy. 19 pages / 1899 words indexed.
• Welcome screen bled through editor text — #welcome overlay was position: absolute; inset: 0 with no background. When the user toggled welcome back ON via Cmd+Shift+P → Toggle Welcome Screen with a file open, Monaco’s text rendered underneath the welcome content. Fixed: added background: var(--bg).
• Distribution admin tab — angle column miscategorized + link column empty — sequel-blog drafts had the manifesto tag (legacy taxonomy); link column rendered — because posted_url was null. Fixed: re-classified to tech-depth / cursor-limitations / CN-IDE launch; backfilled posted_url so every row has an open ↗ link.
• Distribution admin — accidental Mark-live — single Cancel on the URL prompt still flipped status to live with no URL. Fixed: two-step guard (Cancel aborts; explicit confirm before PATCH).
• Manage keys opened the MCP tab — fixed in v0.1.7, ships in v0.1.8 binary. Now opens a real BYOK modal for Anthropic / OpenAI / Google.
• Dev → Business agent handoff broken — fixed in v0.1.7, ships in v0.1.8 binary. Import Agent wizard’s “From this workspace” source type now lists local agent manifests and dispatches via studio.runPrompt.
• CLI auth detection — fixed in v0.1.7, ships in v0.1.8 binary. CodeNow now probes ~/.codex / ~/.gemini / ~/.claude (+ macOS keychain) and surfaces “Signed in via CLI” instead of “no key”.
• Topbar version pill — fixed in v0.1.7, ships in v0.1.8 binary. Every window now shows the build version; click to file feedback.

Smoke

Comparison table on codenow.pro

The comparison chart  now reflects v0.1.8:

• Real-time CRDT collab: CodeNow ✓ · Cursor ✗ · Windsurf ✗ · Zed ✓ · VS Code (Live Share)
• Voice pair: CodeNow ✓ · Cursor ✗ · Windsurf ✗ · Zed ✓ · VS Code (Live Share)
• Vim mode: CodeNow ✓ · Cursor (extension) · Windsurf (extension) · Zed (native) · VS Code (extension)
• Team channels: CodeNow ✓ · Cursor ✗ · Windsurf ✗ · Zed ✓ · VS Code ✗
• Native Rust 120fps: only Zed. Out of scope for v0.x; revisit when DAU > 10k.

Known gaps shipping in v0.1.9 / v0.2.0+

• Embeddings codebase indexer. v0.1.7’s “Ask the repo” panel uses lexical TF×IDF. v0.1.9 swaps to semantic embeddings (text-embedding-3-small or BGE-base) cached at <project>/.codenow/codebase-index/embeddings.bin.
• Multi-suggestion Tab autocomplete. Cursor-style accept-fragment behavior, prefix-aware ranking.
• Multi-file Apply. Currently single-file; v0.1.9 extends to a Composer-like preview-all-files-then-apply flow.
• Stripe billing + tier enforcement. Pricing page advertises tiers; the desktop app doesn’t yet enforce them.
• DefenseClaw scaffold-time defenseclaw.yaml. Phase 2 runtime hooks shipped in v0.1.8; the agent-kit scaffolders writing per-agent policies on agent creation lands in v0.1.9.
• CRDT v2 with y-websocket relay. Mid-session join sync. v0.2.0.
• TURN server for WebRTC voice. Symmetric-NAT users. v0.2.2.
• Real Cloudflare Turnstile keys. Currently using the always-pass test value.
• Mac signing in CI. Apple env vars in GH secrets so release builds don’t require the founder’s machine.