Release Notes 0.5.44

Release 0.5.44 is a broad reliability and platform release. It expands Browser V2 and channel documentation, improves Browser Use approvals and gateway routing, adds DeepSeek and NanoGPT provider coverage, fixes several active-runtime bugs found during log review, and hardens the release pipeline that produced the macOS, Windows, Linux server, npm, and GitHub release artifacts.

Highlights

• Browser V2 and Browser Workbench docs: added the canonical Browser V2 architecture guide and refreshed the product docs around the visible Browser Workbench default, BrowserSessionManager, Electron-workbench / Playwright-local / external-CDP backends, accessibility snapshot refs, diagnostics, downloads/uploads, real-browser consent, safety invariants, and verification flow.
• Gateway and channel guides: documented remote command routing, active-task behavior, /new and /new temp sessions, /stop, skill slash invocation, shared channel delivery, editable WhatsApp progress, scheduled channel output delivery, per-channel feature guides, and dedicated channel pages.
• Browser Use approvals: added browser-domain approval context, tool-prefix permission scopes, Browser Use domain approval prompts, sidebar approval wiring, Browser Use composer mentions, and browser-sidebar routing for markdown links.
• Provider expansion: added DeepSeek and NanoGPT as named provider options, including NanoGPT onboarding/settings support and safer Anthropic-compatible handling for routes that should not use CoWork-managed prompt caching.
• Gateway runtime expansion: added shared gateway types, channel delivery services, remote command normalization and registry support, WhatsApp command utilities, temporary workspace routing, voice event routing, tray channel activity, plugin/persona update hooks, and daemon startup wiring.
• Persistent goal command: added a slash-command path for setting and carrying a persistent goal in task context.
• Image generation guidance: bundled and registered the imagegen-frontend-web skill for higher-quality frontend image direction and generated visual references.

User-Facing Improvements

• Agents Hub active-agent visibility: Mission Control active agents now surface in Agents Hub counts and panel state.
• Browser Workbench polish: refined Browser Workbench navigation, styles, sidebar approval UX, mention icon rendering, browser tool prompting, runtime browser tool definitions, and storage-secret redaction.
• Messaging channel behavior: tightened shared channel-message handling across Slack, Discord, email, Telegram, WhatsApp, and the channel registry.
• Workspace status labels: improved renderer labels around active workspace/task status, especially for OpenAI-compatible provider flows.
• Branding refresh: updated app/logo assets and the related documentation references for the current CoWork OS brand set.

Fixes

• Task metadata persistence: restored persisted TaskRepository.findAll fields for assigned agent role, board metadata, and awaiting-user-input reason codes.
• Retryable provider failures: overloaded provider errors are now treated as transient, allowing existing fallback and retry handling to recover.
• HTTP tool errors: http_request failures preserve clearer failure reason and status metadata instead of collapsing into a generic unknown-error path.
• OpenCode Go/Kimi tool calls: improved OpenAI-compatible handling for Kimi/OpenCode Go style tool-call responses.
• Anthropic-compatible model selection: fixed overlapping custom-model matching so the intended Anthropic-compatible gateway model is selected.
• NanoGPT auth/cache handling: fixed NanoGPT Anthropic-compatible requests where CoWork-managed prompt caching should be bypassed.
• Archive cleanup: fixed archive deletion and SQLite cleanup paths so archived tasks and dependent rows are removed without foreign-key leftovers.
• Workspace switching: fixed active-chat workspace switching so task context follows the selected workspace correctly.
• PPTX previews: tightened workspace path validation for presentation preview loading.
• Security hardening: hardened MCP registry package verification, command/path containment, control-plane auth, and workspace file access.
• Email channel timeouts: reset IMAP timeout state after failures so one timeout does not cascade into later mailbox operations.
• Dev-log diagnostics: reduced false-positive error classification in development log utilities.

Release Validation

• Release workflow: v0.5.44 completed the full GitHub Actions release workflow after the mac unsigned smoke path was fixed.
• macOS artifact smoke: validated the unsigned macOS DMG/zip release path with the explicit unsigned-smoke allowance used by CI.
• Windows installer smoke: built and smoke-tested the Windows x64 installer artifact in CI.
• Linux server smoke: built the Linux x64 server tarball, verified checksum metadata, and smoke-tested the server package.
• npm package smoke: published and verified cowork-os@0.5.44, including registry propagation and tarball metadata.
• GitHub release assets: published the macOS, Windows, Linux server, updater metadata, checksum, and blockmap assets under the v0.5.44 GitHub release.

macOS First Launch

• Unsigned DMG Gatekeeper prompt: CoWork OS macOS DMGs are currently unsigned. After dragging the app to Applications, open it once. If macOS blocks it, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll to Security, click Open Anyway next to "CoWork OS" was blocked to protect your Mac, then click Open Anyway in the confirmation dialog.