Native Web Search: The Better Way

TL;DR: Native Web Search is now built into Alter’s router models. Pick best, fair, fast, or light, and Alter automatically retrieves current information from the internet when needed with no tool setup or extra steps. Plus welcome GPT 5.4 to our model roster.

New Features & Enhancements

• Native Web Search: Added automatic backend-powered web retrieval to Alter’s router models so current information is fetched from the internet when needed.
• Workspaces: Now code runner and full-access are exclusive to avoid confusion, full rework of the sandbox system for both bash sandbox and code container, and added previews for all workspace root files.
• Meetings: Automatically copy transcripts in Markdown format with sync support.
• New Default Skills: Embedded Anthropic skill for DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX files.
• New Model: OpenAI GPT-5.4 is available to everyone.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Message Editing Reliability: Fixed floating panel editing, newline handling, deletion at the start of lines, and Escape-to-cancel behavior.
• Speech-to-prompt: Fixed continuous speech-to-prompt when an active chat is open in the hub.
• Custom Model Providers: Fixed model identifier parsing.
• Tool Use: Improved bash tool and reduced malformed tool calls

Hotfixes & Stability Improvements

TL;DR: This hotfix release focuses on reliability and polish across actions, recording, floating panel behavior, flow execution, and workspace bash support.

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace Bash Safety: Added an allow list path to support more CLIs like Obsidian-cli
• Recording: Ignored “no capture source” errors when removing screens to avoid unnecessary failures messages.
• Floating Panel UX: Removed the large overlay in favor of a cursor-based feedback.
• Flow Execution: Optimized flow step behavior for smoother and more predictable runs.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Built-in Actions Respect Settings: Fixed built-in actions so they correctly honor user-disabled tools.
• Recording Reliability: Fixed multimonitor timeout behavior during recording.

Alter Mode

TL;DR: Alter Mode lets you create custom workspaces with dedicated tools and instructions. When you enable a mode, Alter automatically switches you to the linked workspace, giving you a controlled environment tailored to specific contexts like finance, personal, or professional workflows. Plus discover new documentation website at https://docs.alterhq.com.

New Features & Enhancements

• Alter Mode + Workspaces: Introduced custom modes with workspace-follow behavior
• Hub Productivity: Added transcript-first editing flow, multi-select delete (cmd+backspace), double-click rename in transcript view, and better sidebar render performance
• Conversation & Chat UX: Moved to a new architecture, reduced memory usage by 90%, and added command-based dragging for the floating chat window
• Database: Chats are now unencrypted for a faster experience but always live on your device.
• Flow: Better summarization step to surface links and ids likely to be used during the next turns.
• Voice & Meetings Controls: Added recording input-device selection and transcript export to a user-defined folder for meetings
• Action Editor & Scheduling: Added a new layout in the action editor, plus a schedule trigger for run actions on new transcripts
• Docs & Help Experience: Added automatic alter-docs skill updates from the public https://github.com/alterhq/docs/ repository, and launched one-click Help chat entry in the menu.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Sandbox Runtime Stability: New container with relaxed rights to install more libraries using apt-get. Better persistences of installed libraries.
• Voice & Recording Reliability: Fixed noop notifications when recordings are canceled.
• Malformed tool calls: New test suites and recovery system
• Hub Refresh & Live Updates: Fixed transcripts not appearing immediately after creation and aligned upcoming refresh behavior with other refresh controls

Introducing Plan Mode

TL;DR: We’re thrilled to introduce Plan Mode to Alter, a new approach to complex workflows that puts thinking before execution. Better planning leads to better results. Plus new models!

New Features & Enhancements

• Plan Mode: Introduced Plan Mode to help structure complex workflows by planning before execution
• Flow Engine: Add transform/chaining support between tools and a summarization step to avoid context bloat
• New Models: Added Sonnet 4.6, GLM 5, Minimax 2.5, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B, and FM2-24B-A2B-Preview to the model roster
• Speech-to-Text: Voxtral 2 is now the main cloud STT processor, with Deepgram Nova kept as a fallback

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub Input & Navigation: Fixed hub input expansion and context strip navigation issues
• Hub UI Stability: Fixed flickering scroll with tool calls and removed transparency effects from conversation view
• Conversation & Sidebar: Fixed conversations sometimes not showing in sidebar, plus performance optimizations
• Malformed Tool Calls: Server-side fixes to avoid malformed tool calls
• Usage: Improved fair-use display behavior
• Transcript Indexing: Fixed transcripts renamed from the notch not being reindexed properly
• Menus & Action Editor: Fixed picky click hit areas in Alter menu categories and removed unwanted autofocus in action editor general pane
• Microphone Sessions: Improved recording stop flow by clearing live sessions correctly, avoiding stray sessions, removing duplicate reset handling, improving stop reactivity, and storing failed recordings in history when possible
• Microphone Errors: Better handling of session start failures
• Floating Widget: Reverted change breaking context retrieval

Hotfix Account Issues

TL;DR: This release fixes account-related issues: the subscribe reminder no longer popups for lifetime and pro users using the cloud voice processor, and the Hub correctly clips scroll content when reduced transparency is enabled.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Subscribe Reminder: Avoid showing account locked reminder when user is in lifetime or pro and using cloud voice processor
• Hub: Enable scroll clipping when reduced transparency is used in system settings

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