v0.8.48 tracker: presence pass

[Hmbown]

Release theme

v0.8.48 should make the product feel inevitable for both users and contributors. The first minute, the main loop, the stuck states, the finish, and the public front door should feel composed, legible, and exact.

This is the presence, default-experience, and community-front-door release: your agents' favorite agent.

Product thesis

The terminal can have taste. It can be quiet when work is routine, precise when something fails, and satisfying when a task completes.

The project can also teach without talking down. The website, issue flow, contribution docs, and PR review language should make people feel like capable colleagues: here is what we know, here is what we need, here is where your help fits.

In scope

• First-run and first-30-seconds polish: install verification, project understanding, initial affordances, and clean fallback paths.
• A composed task finale: changed files, tests, issues/PRs, evidence, risks, and next action.
• Visual hierarchy and theme polish that improves legibility without turning the terminal into decoration.
• Sensible defaults for model/provider, compaction, thinking display, status, notifications, and recovery.
• Performance and noise budget pass: remove redundant status spam, smooth long-output rendering, and keep details inspectable on demand.
• A manual release smoke path that exercises the product as a new user, not only as a maintainer running gates.
• Website contribution path: report a bug, request a feature, find known issues, start a small PR, and understand the roadmap.
• Issue and PR templates that teach evidence quality, scope, tests, and contributor credit.
• Contributor docs that explain how maintainers merge, harvest, credit, defer, or close work.
• Public-facing roadmap copy that is ambitious without becoming vague marketing.

Candidate issue/PR clusters

• onboarding/install/docs reports from v0.8.42 triage
• completion/status notifications: QoL: taskbar progress, animated title spinner, and configurable completion sound #1871, PR feat: QoL — taskbar progress, animated title spinner, and configurable completion sound (#1871) #1872, PR feat(notifications): idle-based trigger with native OS notification support #1761
• task finale/reporting improvements from v0.8.43-v0.8.47
• theme and legibility requests: 这个颜色真的很丑 #1579, UI/UX improvement: Better color contrast and text readability for long sessions #1070, 添加light主题 #936, 建议增加多个主题 #862, 支持主题切换 / Theme customization support #1262, PR feat(tui): add "Terminal" theme #1831
• startup/session picker and workspace flow: Feature Request: Session picker on TUI startup / 启动时显示会话选择器 #1638, 希望有切换工作空间的命令，现在无法切换工作空间 #1010
• default model/provider confusion: 每次启动后的模型都是gpt-4.1，还需要手动切换成deepseek #1434
• version/update doctor experience: PR feat(update): add version check output to doctor and update #1836
• website badge/release visibility and public docs follow-ups from the v0.8.42 community-front-door audit
• issue/PR template and CONTRIBUTING.md improvements promoted from v0.8.42 tracker: inbox-zero triage and backlog close-out #1876

Review lenses

• HCI thinker: does the full experience feel inevitable, or does it still expose implementation seams?
• Brave beginner: can a new user install, start, recover, and contribute without insider knowledge?
• Open-source maintainer: do website, issue templates, PR templates, and comments teach people how to provide useful signal?
• Terminal power user: does polish improve legibility and flow without adding latency, clutter, or decorative distraction?
• Expert agent operator: does the final task summary make verification and next action obvious?

Acceptance criteria

• A fresh user can install, launch, configure, and complete a representative task with clear status and recovery options.
• The end-of-task summary is concise, evidence-backed, and useful for shipping.
• The default UI has a clear visual hierarchy across common terminal sizes.
• Notifications and polish are tasteful, optional where appropriate, and do not hide terminal truth.
• The website gives clear routes to file a useful issue, make a first PR, read the roadmap, and check current known issues.
• Issue/PR templates help contributors give maintainers the evidence needed to act.
• Contributor guidance uses a teacher-colleague voice: direct, respectful, specific, and oriented toward making the next contribution easier.
• Release verification includes a manual first-run smoke path in addition to normal automated gates.

[Hmbown]

UI/presence note from current TUI screenshot: the cockpit/sidebar is doing useful work, but the visual hierarchy is noisy. Heavy panel borders, clipped rows, dense bottom status, a large empty composer, and stale recent-tool failures make it hard to tell what deserves attention. The concrete stale-state issue is tracked in v0.8.43; this should feed the v0.8.48 presence/noise-budget pass as well.

[Hmbown]

Updated scope (2026-05-23 integrated roadmap)

v0.8.48 is now the shim-drop release — the last 0.8.x before the architectural shift to v0.9.0:

Shim removal

• Drop deepseek and deepseek-tui legacy binary shims from Cargo.toml files
• Drop npm/deepseek-tui/ deprecation-shim package directory
• Drop deepseek-artifacts-sha256.txt alias from release.yml
• Stop building deepseek-* release assets
• Drop CODEWHALE_*=DEEPSEEK_TUI_* legacy env-var aliases

Brand-presence pass (original v0.8.48 scope)

• GOVERNANCE.md and SPONSORSHIP.md
• Security inbox at security@codewhale.net
• Contribution-path templates and CONTRIBUTING.md refresh
• Website serves refreshed landing page explaining the project history

This was originally planned for v0.9.0 but moved earlier so v0.9.0 can focus entirely on the Programmable Agent Runtime. See .private/codewhale-integrated-roadmap.md.