v0.1.9 — Threads, autonomy, embeddings

Released 2026-05-03. Same-day cut as v0.1.8 — direct user feedback drove the priorities. Five anchor features + a per-project Autonomy toggle that closes a long-running DevOps complaint + a UI bug sweep on the topbar/footer.

If you’re already on v0.1.7 or v0.1.8, the in-app banner will pull this in on next launch. Manual install at codenow.pro/download .

Threads sidebar — full Zed parity

The headline. Direct user quote: “This is the key feature for developers — separate thread/context for each new task, this way credits are optimally utilized.”

• New Threads sub-tab in the Agents panel, alongside Run / Test / Trace.
• Left rail: list of named threads, most-recent first, each with model badge + turn count.
• Right pane: active thread chat — messages, composer, model picker, autonomy indicator.
• + New thread in the rail toolbar. Cmd+N when the Threads tab is active.
• Auto-named from the first user message (60-char ellipsis).
• Per-thread rename / archive / delete on hover.
• Cumulative cost + token totals shown at the top of each active thread; per-turn cost on hover.

Why this compounds with v0.1.8’s prompt caching: each thread caches its own static prefix (system + tool catalog) via cache_control: ephemeral. Every turn after the first hits the cache — typically a 90% cost reduction on the prefix. Switching threads switches which prefix is being cached, so two parallel “Add /api/health endpoint” and “Refactor billing webhook” threads don’t pollute each other’s contexts.

Persistence + audit:

• Stored at <project>/.codenow/threads/{threadId}.jsonl.
• SHA-256 Merkle hash chain over every turn (the same _h/_p chain v0.1.8 introduced for the JSONL recorder). Audit-verifiable that no message was tampered with.
• lastActiveThreadId persists per project — relaunching drops you back into the thread you left.

studio.runPrompt extended to accept an optional messages[] array (previously it took a single prompt string). Anthropic, OpenAI, Google all route the multi-turn history. The single-prompt path is unchanged for the Run pane and Composer.

Per-project Autonomy toggle

Closes the most-cited recent complaint: “Codex keeps asking to confirm every command, can’t run a 30-40 min hands-free DevOps task. Same task in Windsurf is silent.”

Tri-state per project: Confirm (default — every shell command asks), Safe (auto-approve safe ops, prompt on failure), Full (no prompts at all). Topbar segmented control next to the Vim pill. Persisted at <project>/.codenow/autonomy.json with changedAt and changedBy for audit.

terminal-start-ai and terminal-start-claude append the right flags before the launch line. Full mode shows a persistent red top banner (“Autonomy: FULL — agent runs commands without asking”) that nags on every IDE boot until disabled. Explicit confirm dialog before entering Full.

Embeddings codebase indexer

The lexical TF×IDF “Ask the repo” panel from v0.1.7 sometimes missed paraphrases. v0.1.9 swaps the retrieval backbone to semantic embeddings.

• OpenAI text-embedding-3-small (1536-dim) when you have an OpenAI key. ~$0.02/M tokens.
• Google text-embedding-004 (768-dim) when only Google is set. Free tier covers most projects.
• Lexical fall-through when neither key is available — same TF×IDF as v0.1.7 keeps working.
• Packed binary index at <project>/.codenow/codebase-index/embeddings.bin + chunks.json sidecar.
• Mtime-aware — only re-embeds files that changed since the last build.

Cost-confirm modal before kicking off the build. Real number, real money, real disclosure: “This is real money charged to your OpenAI account.”

The Ask panel’s toolbar now has an engine dropdown — Lexical, Embeddings (3-small), Embeddings (004) — and a “Rebuild embeddings index” button. Each result row tags which engine produced it.

Tab autocomplete v2 — multi-suggestion + partial-accept

The v0.1.7 Tab autocomplete was single-suggestion. v0.1.9 adopts the Cursor pattern.

• 3 candidates per request. Three parallel Haiku 4.5 calls at temperatures 0.0 / 0.4 / 0.8, deduplicated. Total cost: still pennies.
• Alt+] / Alt+[ cycles between candidates. Tab accepts the visible one.
• Cmd+→ (Ctrl+→) accepts only the next word/token boundary.
• Cmd+Down accepts only the first line.
• Prefix-aware re-rank: as you type, candidates whose prefix no longer matches what you’ve typed get filtered out locally. No fresh fetch unless none of the 3 candidates survive.

Cost guards from v0.1.7 stay: file < 2000 lines, window < 8000 chars, 600ms idle debounce, fail-soft on no-key. Topbar pill now reads Tab AI · streamed · 3 candidates when active.

DefenseClaw scaffold-time policy

Closes the last open DefenseClaw integration item. v0.1.7 shipped the CLI wrapper, v0.1.8 shipped the runtime gateway hooks, v0.1.9 shipped the auto-policy.

Every scaffolded agent now writes a defenseclaw.yaml at the agent root with sensible defaults:

• skills_scanner: enabled
• mcp_scanner: enabled, allow-list mode
• codeguard: enabled (secrets, unsafe deserialization, weak crypto, injection patterns)
• guardrail proxy: mode: observe (log, don’t block — opt into mode: action later)
• network egress: empty allowlist (forces explicit declaration)

Header comment in every generated policy explains each section. Idempotent — never overwrites a hand-edited policy.

The Anatomy card shows a DefenseClaw tile with three states:

• Green ✓ — Policy active (mode: observe / action)
• Yellow ⚠ — No policy (legacy agents from before v0.1.9)
• Red ✗ — Policy file present but mode: off

Click the tile → opens defenseclaw.yaml in Monaco.

Bug sweep — footer + topbar

User-reported red-arrow screenshot pointed at five issues; all fixed:

• Footer overflow on long paths. Project-relative path + ellipsis + tooltip with the absolute path.
• Missing git branch. New ⎇ <branch> chip in the footer.
• “Where is the Models menu?” The toast is now clickable — clicking opens the BYOK modal directly.
• Sign Out + name in awkward bottom-right. Moved to a topbar avatar pill. Click → dropdown with email, trial countdown, Manage AI keys, Check for updates, Sign out.
• First name only shown in the topbar pill; full name + email in the dropdown.

Smoke

What slipped to v0.1.10

• Multi-file Apply. The build agent disconnected mid-run; deferred to v0.1.10.
• Stripe billing + tier enforcement. Owner-anchored v0.1.10.
• Real Cloudflare Turnstile keys.
• Mac signing in CI.