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

Hotfix for Listing Custom Models

TL;DR: Several users experienced their custom models no longer appearing (Open Router, LM Studio, etc.). This release fixes that issue and includes some additional fixes.

New Features & Enhancements

• Conversation History: Allow manual reindexing when conversation search results are empty, with a reindex button for easy access
• Flow Planner: 3-models swarm and GLM 4.6 for better plans
• Quick Actions: New sheet view to add quick actions

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Custom Endpoint Models: Fixed issue where custom endpoint models were not showing properly
• Flow Tools: Improved tool descriptions from search results
• Audio Recording: Fixed multiple key triggers issue during audio recording
• Meeting: Fixed parsing of speaker names with non-letter or non-digit characters
• Tool Lists: Fixed missing actions in Alter tool lists
• Notch: Fixed crash when notification appears and mouse is close to the notch
• Error Reporting: Enhanced Apple processor error reporting

Remote MCP servers

TL;DR: The community voted last month for this feature, and it’s finally here. You can now connect with any apps using remote MCP servers!

New Features & Enhancements

• Remote MCP Servers: Support for remote MCP servers enabling you to connect Alter with your favorite apps and services. Includes Oauth 2.1 and API key authentication modes.
• Transcript Metadata: Added date and duration metadata to transcript files.
• Context Preview: Added right-click menu on context preview cards to create a workspace.
• Flow: Improved effeciency by merging the first two steps in one. Flow is still highly experimental.
• Flow & Websearch Display: Better display of flow steps and websearch results.
• New Models: GPT-5.2 (thinking low) and GPT-5.2 Chat (Instant)

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Audio Recording: Fixed crashes when finishing a recording and starting a new one in succession, plus other issues.
• Message Saving: Fixed crash when saving a message.
• Tool Display: Fixed tool detail pretty name display.
• Speaker Editor: Fixed issue where renaming speakers required a double save.

Conversations That Build On Each Other

TL;DR: Reuse just got smarter, you can now add insights from multiple conversations instead of starting fresh. Plus new audio settings and many stability fixes.

New Features & Enhancements

• Reuse Tool: Appends new context instead of clearing previous content so you can iterate without losing prior snippets.
• Dictation Controls: Added a silencing option (instead of ducking) and the ability to disable the chime sound.
• Custom Endpoints: Added support for Bifrost.
• Forked Windows: Offsets forked conversation windows for better visibility.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Audio & Transcription: Fixed various crashes, including ones from the Apple local voice processor, plus fixing the missing audio files error.
• Scheduling & Automation: Avoid running multiple missed schedules.
• Models: Fetch models even when custom endpoints are empty.
• Conversation & UI: Fixed date formatting for history, conversation rename issues, misplaced conversation input in forms, focus issues, and prevented leading/trailing newlines in the replace/insert tool.
• Drag & Drop: Fixed crash when dropping some items.
• Security: Improved private key handling and error reporting when creating keys.
• Live Panels Shortcuts: Avoid resetting defaults when a user clears them.

Introducing Expense Report & Fork+Edit functions

TL;DR: Edit and refine assistant messages with full find/replace support, fork conversations to explore different paths, and generate monthly expense reports automatically. Plus audio separation for meetings and dictation, and stability fixes.

New Features & Enhancements

• Edit Assistant Messages: Edit assistant messages directly in conversations with full find/replace functionality in the detail view
• Fork Conversations: Fork conversations to explore different conversation paths
• Monthly Expenses Report Action: New action to automatically generate monthly expense reports
• Audio Separation: Separate audio processing for meetings and dictation

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Audio Recording: Multiple crash fixes
• Settings Defaults: Default max tokens set to 16000 to avoid response length issues
• Conversation Crashes: Fixed crash when adding message to empty conversation (no system prompt), crash when closing app sense context in chat window
• Whisper Model Crashes: Fixed crash when loading/unloading whisper models
• Data Races: Various improvements and fixes in text selection reading and microphone
• Scheduling: Better rescue logic for scheduling tasks
• Quick Actions: Limit description to 1 line in the popover menu for better readability
• Editor Crashes: Fixed crash in editor
• Transcript Thumbnails: Fixed crash when thumbnail not available for transcript
• Model Listing: Better refresh of models listing after fetch
• Tools: Respect user disabling default tools
• Conversation UI: Aligned bottom bar buttons