HOTFIX for beta68

TL;DR: We broke skills import and automatic inserts, couldn’t let that for a week so fixed it under 1 hour.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Skills: Fix broken import button
• Tools: Avoid adding workspace tools when no skill tools or no workspace linked
• Pasteboard: Fix weird history behavior inserting wrong text

Calling all the keyboard maestros

TL;DR: This week, we spent a significant amount of time on bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements. We are also expanding our support for keyboard shortcuts to deliver a faster, more intuitive experience with Alter. Finally, routers (Best and Light) are now available in our gateway, including the new Fair router, ahead of the Fair policy rollout.

New Features & Enhancements

• Hub Keyboard Navigation: Full keyboard support for Hub search results, workspace picker, and context strip — including multi-select with Shift+Arrow keys. Search/filter with Cmd+F everywhere, clear search with button or keypress
• Menu System: New workspace menu commands to switch workspaces, add files, and manage containers (start/stop, terminal). Single window management command group, hub menus for workspace permissions
• Hub Shortcuts: Cmd+T for new tab, Cmd+W restored for closing, icons added to hub commands. Default focus on input area when opening Hub
• Bulk Operations: Multiple selection in sidebar for deletion; bulk tagging and export from the sidebar
• Actions & Routers: Built-in actions have tools disabled by default. Alter fast and best backend routers are now available in the API gateway.
• Ephemeral Workspaces: Skills with ephemeral workspaces work without a real workspace
• Performance: Async save panels to prevent hangs, faster recording listing in notch header, lazy loading of context and tool calls. Earlier markdown content loading.
• UI Polish: Bigger sheet for managing custom models, better action form popup, more visible tab bar on light mode. Tool status moved below share overlay.
• Meetings: Mistral Voxtral is now the main cloud processor, Deepgram Nova is the backup for languages not supported by Mistral.
• New Models: Kimi K2.5 and Qwen3 Coder Next are the latest additions
• Fair Policy: New router Alter Fair policy automatically used when the fair policy budget is exhausted. Usage shown in the Billing tab.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub & Conversations: Fixed conversations not removed from sidebar on delete. Fixed chats not opening, restored loading indicator
• Memory & Crashes: Fixed memory leak in Artifacts and AssistantMessages; double free when deinit messages. Prevent crash when switching sections from menu bar
• Recording & Transcripts: Fixed renaming transcripts deleting them when slugs match; proper handling of failed sessions; correct session removal at end of action recording
• Pasteboard & Paste: Restore paste synchronously to avoid overwriting; restore paste behavior in Hub for files, images, etc.
• Context Strip: Fixed keyboard navigation, focus after deletion, and deletion of context
• Models & Messages: Save model in assistant message and user defaults; fix model missing in message; custom model IDs use proper format instead of Custom prefix
• Whisper: Avoid unloading model while transcription is active
• Floating Panel: Avoid small height windows
• Sandbox & Workspace: Disable sandbox for ephemeral workspaces
• Skills: Fixed parsing failures for Skill.md descriptions
• Misc: Fixed multi-select delete glitch, sidebar search, focus when cancelling search. Clear workspace search when selecting in popover. Tool status view no longer always opened on load. Better error management when chat fails to start or continue. Remove error notifications when starting live transcript

Run Your Skills Scripts Safely

TL;DR: Alter now includes a sandboxed Code Runner that lets skills execute scripts in a secure, containerized local environment — with support for Intel Macs, persistent runtimes and outputs, web servers, and an integrated terminal. Also support Osaurus as a custom endpoint.

New Features & Enhancements

• Code Runner & Sandbox: A new sandboxed environment for running skill scripts securely inside containers, with runtime and output persistence across sessions. Comes pre-loaded with a rich set of libraries for data science, document processing, visualization, image/audio processing, geospatial analysis, machine learning, and more
• Intel Mac Support: The Code Runner now works on Intel-based Macs in addition to Apple Silicon
• Web Server in Sandbox: Containers can now spin up web servers with startup scripts and port mapping
• Terminal in Container: Open an interactive terminal directly inside a running container
• Osaurus Endpoint: Added Osaurus as a built-in custom endpoint option
• Performance: Non-blocking save panels, smoother Hub conversation scrolling, and faster input typing

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Fixed model selection UI not updating and model not being changeable during a conversation
• Streaming: Cancel tool calls properly when streaming is cancelled
• Title Generation: Avoid triggering multiple title generations simultaneously
• Scheduler: Better handling of schedules
• Skills: Display skill name correctly in the installed skills list
• Crashes: Fixed crash when fetching installed apps repeatedly, fixed crash on selection change

Alter now supports Agent Skills

TL;DR: Agent Skills are an open standard that enables Alter to extend its capabilities with modular, reusable functions. Also, for users using their own keys, Alter now supports multiple custom endpoints.

New Features & Enhancements

• Agent Skills: an open standard to package expertise, workflows, and best practices into reusable, file-system-based resources.
• MCP Servers: Refresh tool list for remote MCP servers, status badge in server listing, and automatic tool cache clearing when deactivating or removing servers
• Multiple Custom Endpoints: Support for configuring multiple custom endpoints with minor improvements
• Bifrost Integration: Added support for Basic Authentication and Virtual Keys
• Calendar Events: Added participants and descriptions to calendar event results
• Workspaces: Link tools and skills to provide special capabilities to your workspaces.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Actions Context: Fixed actor isolation issues, bad regex context keys, and active app name provider being late to update
• Microphone & Audio: Fixed wrong end-of-meeting detection on MS Teams, microphone state mismatch causing “no audio file” errors, and prevented other errors when starting recordings
• Live Captions: Fixed live transcriptions not being stopped when recording has ended
• Dictation: Fixed cleanup phase using the previous dictation instead of current one
• ApplicationObserver: Fixed crash when activating Enhanced User Interface
• App Sense: Fixed crash when trying to read children
• Floating Panel: Fixed focus stealing when Alter is used while another app is active
• Menu Bar: Fixed clickable area for menu bar item
• MCP Servers: Fixed duplicate entry on edit and API key not enabling saving
• Eagle MCP: Fixed connection issues by sending “initialized” event on connect
• OpenRouter Haiku: Fixed messages follow-up after tool call
• Action Loading: Avoid showing an error when trying to load an action that has no file on disk
• Editor: Minor performance improvements in system and user prompt editors
• Tools: Fixed icon symbols display

Make Most of Your Workspace with Alter.md

TL;DR: Make most of your workspace with Alter.md (or Claude.md, Agent.md). Workspace now supports instruction files for better project context, a new workspace tool for files and folders operations and a permission system. Also faster glob matching, bug fixes and optimizations for meetings and dictations.

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace Instruction Files: Support for Alter.md, Claude.md, and AGENTS.md files to provide project context and instructions
• Workspace Permissions: Added read, write, and execute permissions support for workspace operations
• Workspace File System: New workspace_fs tool for complete file system operations without the need of bash
• Hub Stop Button: Added stop button with improved stop streaming between tool calls
• Copy Conversation ID: Add copy ID button in hub to use with Run Action tool

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub Input: Fixed prefix search issues when search term starts with or is preceded by a space
• Transcription: Optimized CPU resource usage
• Model Override: Fixed last message model overriding global user model of choice
• Custom Endpoints: Fixed conversation failure after tool call with empty arguments
• Deleted Conversations: Fixed deleted conversations not being removed from sidebar
• Workspace Performance: Faster glob matching on large folders
• Model Synchronization: Fixed current model synchronization issues in hub
• Workspace Context: Fixed fork reuse of workspace context and proper context removal
• Notch Integration: Fixed workspace attachment as context in notch

Cowork with Alter

TL;DR: Alter Workspaces lets you create, edit, and compose directly in your folders—no cloud, no sync delays, no data leaving your Mac. Pull from Gmail, YouTube, and the web. Write your newsletters, notes, and tasks. Everything stays local. Everything is yours. Plus run bash commands safely in your workspaces.

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace Tools: Added bash tool, edit and multi-edit tools for file manipulation, and improved sandboxing with PDF syncing
• Workspace: Auto-name workspaces based on folder, and optimized prompt for small models use
• Hub Improvements: Added shortcuts to open Settings, Tools Manager and the Action Editor. Improved search with partial reindexing for chat messages, and better window management with dock access
• Conversations: Auto-scroll to bottom on initialization for better UX
• Providers: Added Privatemode.ai as a custom provider for access to confidential AI cloud models
• Routers: Deprecated cerebras oss-120b in favor of zai-glm-4.7

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Workspace: Improved search with spaces and lowercase matching
• Performance: Optimized keychain warmup, reduced JSON decoding overhead on message loading, fixed action editor and audio processor race conditions, and improved markdown rendering
• Audio Recording: Better handling when WhisperKit is not available, improved audio file URL uniqueness and earlier creation, fixed buffer appending errors, and ensured init tasks complete when stopping recordings
• Settings: Fixed model listing for custom providers
• Hub: Fixed restoration behavior and key window handling on open, improved message selection

New Workspace, manage 1000 of files, great with Obsidian

TL;DR: Alter’s new Workspaces feature lets you work via thousands of files—simply create a workspace, add your files (Obsidian vaults, documents, PDFs, etc.), and start chatting. Automatic indexing, suggestions and transparent tool usage to see exactly how Alter found your answers, with writing and editing features coming soon.

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace System: List, Search Files, Search Patterns and Read tools scoped to the workspace files and folder for security
• File Management: Add files and folders to workspaces, handle large PDF files, and search across workspace contents
• Topic Suggestions: Intelligent topic suggestions and conversation starters based on workspace content
• Workspace Scoping: Scope tabs to workspace for better organization
• Hub Workspace Picker: New workspace picker in toolbar for easy workspace switching
• Open Files/Folders: Double-click to open folders and files in workspace view
• Workspace & Tab Switching: Preserve tabs with state and unload after some times to preserve system memory
• New Model: Cerebras GLM-4.7 at 1,000 tokens per second

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Popover Behavior: Improved popover behavior in hub
• Performance Optimizations: Fixed sidebar performance, input rendering performance, and multiple hangs/render performance issues
• Client Restart: Fixed restarting clients with wrong type and bad camel case tool names
• Hub Fixes: Fixed input model selection clear prefix

Multitask Like a Pro: Introducing The Hub

TL;DR: Organize your conversations like never before. With a full window, tags and tabs, you can now manage multiple workflows simultaneously, keeping everything organized and accessible. The menubar gets a sleek makeover in our path to remove the notch, and we’ve made the hub more powerful and stable than ever.

Features

• Tags & Tabs: Added tag management to sidebar and tabs
• Menubar: Introduced extendable menu bar (can be disabled in the Settings)
• Tools: Added computer use overlay to let you know Alter is controlling your app

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Limited upcoming section loads and fixed chat tag issues
• Hub: Fixed sidebar load more behavior for both short and long history
• Hub: Fixed refresh contexts holder on change
• Inspector: Optimized loading for tool call results
• Inspector: Fixed multiple crash issues on open and empty selection
• Shortcuts: Fixed hub shortcuts resetting to default values
• Tab Management: Fixed select and close preview behavior on tab click

🎁 A gift from us to you.

cmd+shift+h o ho ho…

You asked for it. We built it. Merry Xmas, and thanks for being here.

The Alter team - Olivier, Kévin, Gaël and Sam

P.S. Thoughts? Head to #cmd-shift-h on Discord.

P.P.S MacOS 14 is now required, do not update if you are on macOS 13

Features

You’ll have to unwrap this one.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• History: Fixed crash when saving messages
• Background Jobs: Fixed built-in action background job disabling issue
• MCP Status: Fixed async status handling for MCP connections
• AppSense: Better support for Discord
• Recording: Improved wake up/sleep while recording
• Data Races: Fixed data race in process termination
• Transcripts: Fixed transcript renaming

Sub-agents in Alter

TL;DR: Alter now supports sub-agents, enabling you to trigger multiple Alter actions within a single conversation. Sub-agents let you create complex workflows and get more done, faster. Imagine having a team of experts working for you, all within a single Alter chat. Plus comprehensive internationalization support for Spanish and Chinese, improved tool control, and enhanced audio recording stability.

New Features & Enhancements

• Run Action Tool: Run Alter actions as sub-agents within conversations, enabling complex multi-step workflows and parallel task execution
• Stop Tool Calls: Added ability to stop tool calls mid-execution, similar to text streaming cancellation
• Internationalization: Added support for Spanish and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) languages with comprehensive translations across the app
• Localized Tool Names: Tool names and descriptions are now translated and localized
• Flow Messages Localization: Flow messages in conversation view are now localized
• Faster Microphone Start: Improved microphone start performance
• Screen Capture: Automatic restart of screen capture streams when the system stops them
• New Models: Gemini 3.0 Flash and Mistral Small Creative

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Notch: Fixed indexing indicator not showing when triggered manually
• Microphone: Avoid low audio cutoff when transcriptions are coming in
• MCP Tools: Return proper ToolError when no response is received from MCP tools
• Crash Fixes: Fixed crash when saving messages
• Data Races: Fixed data race in Models service