What's new
A running log of what's changed in Stella — new features, fixes, and polish — written in plain English. Newest at the top.
- Onboarding got a big polish pass — snappier transitions, friendlier copy, clearer steps.
- New setting to keep Stella awake so background work isn't interrupted.
- New sound-notification setting, plus an anonymous feedback prompt that can show up once a day.
- Fashion shopping: try-on flow you can trigger by dropping a photo into the composer.
- Store: navigation redesign, tighter Fashion agent, and a confirmation step before adding new connectors.
- Deleted items now appear in a trash view inside the side panel.
- Onboarding now skips the macOS permissions step on Windows and Linux.
- Lots of fixes: radial overlay stays on the active macOS Space, Connect dialog layering, askQuestion routing, and self-mod visuals during agent runs.
- Voice and dictation are now part of the onboarding tour.
- Chrome extension install step added to onboarding.
- Stella's sidebar got a (briefly) playable 3D Snake game.
- Country-code dropdown for the Text Stella phone setup.
- Better screen-recording permission detection on macOS, plus a per-permission reset.
- Spinner now shows while uninstalling Stella, and the launcher checks for updates without blocking.
- Smoother Store publishing review flow.
- Stella Connect: connect external services through MCP integrations.
- Computer-use comes to Windows — Stella can now click and type on your screen on Windows machines.
- Removed the Git Bash dependency on Windows.
- New "+" menu in the chat composer to attach files, capture your screen, or grab recents.
- Markdown and developer-file previews in the side panel.
- Shortcuts settings tab.
- Cloud backups are now part of the paid plan.
- Onboarding shows a capabilities walkthrough, and capture chips have a unified look.
- Local Parakeet dictation — fast, private, runs on your device.
- Local OAuth controls for routing to your own LLMs.
- New Fashion tab redesigned as a full-bleed snap feed.
- Top-bar chat sidebar toggle and a unified scroll between sidebar chat and full chat.
- Long chats are now much faster (stable rows + virtualization).
- Stella notifies you when a long-running agent finishes its work.
- Onboarding: faster fog, snappier disclosure cascade, friendlier hit targets.
- File-artifact previews in the display sidebar (Codex-style chrome).
- Stella now detects files created by tools running outside her — they show up automatically.
- Transparent topbar in the desktop shell.
- Mini window: smoother chrome, wider composer, lazier voice startup.
- Chat scroll holds its position when you resize the layout.
- New "Ask Stella" pill that appears above text you select — works in Stella and across other apps.
- Display panel is now resizable and can expand to fill the window, even taking over the mini window.
- Radial dial restored, replacing the cmd+right-click native menu.
- New Inworld dictation option in the composer.
- Web search wired to Exa for better results.
- Time-of-day greetings on the home screen with the occasional fun variant.
- Configurable OS-wide dictation.
- Save and copy actions on the display sidebar.
- New Ideas tab on the display sidebar plus a smoother sidebar slide.
- Agents can now ask you a question inline in chat (askQuestion).
- Live Memory dialog and a customizable creature face — toggle eyes and mouth.
- Big computer-use reliability pass: clicks now actually deliver to backgrounded apps, with overlay continuity fixed.
- Show more / show less for long user messages.
- Twitch emotes render in chat.
- Settings and Theme moved to the sidebar title bar.
- Double-tap Option to summon the mini window.
- Backend now rate-limits every public mutation, action, and HTTP route.
- Auto-display generated images in the display sidebar.
- Shell migrated to TanStack Router with sidebar app discovery.
- Live Memory phase added to onboarding (with sign-in resume).
- Onboarding mocks now mirror the real Stella surface.
- New "Cozy" theme.
- Major runtime change: agents now run on an Exec-first runtime, with isolated V8 contexts.
- Orchestrator and general agent prompts restructured for clearer behavior.
- Launcher reliability: macOS screen-permission build, Windows registry args, fewer first-run dependencies.
- Display sidebar now renders Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and HTML files.
- Suggestion chips above the full chat composer.
- Categories overlay back on home.
- New macOS native session service powering computer-use, with overlay motion aligned to action timing.
- Cmd+right-click context menu replaces the radial gesture overlay.
- Action overlay with a breathing lens and software cursor when Stella controls your computer.
- Onboarding creation mock rebuilt with section-transformation pills.
- macOS desktop automation engine with auto-attached screenshots.
- The active-window screenshot is automatically attached to your message as an image.
- Display sidebar can be opened from the right-click menu in chat.
- Range-based thread compaction for long chats.
- Onboarding reveals theme options in steps.
- Refreshed emote bundle.
- Pause self-mod hot reload while shell or code-mode writes are happening (less flicker).
- Write and Edit tools added to the General agent.
- Stella streams reasoning summaries while she thinks, so you can see what she's working on.
- Native Stella runtime streaming and a refactor toward Pi extension model.
- Twitch emote rendering in orchestrator markdown.
- Smoother assistant text streaming, especially across resumed and hidden runs.
- Exponential backoff retry for OpenAI completions.
- Reasoning is preserved across Stella completions.
- New ExecuteTypescript tool — typed code-mode for the General agent.
- Wake-word pipeline removed (Stella moved away from always-listening).
- Bundled Stella browser binary refreshed.
- Local chat now pages by visible messages for performance.
- Radial dial redesign — the "Full" wedge becomes "Add", and chat persists across workspaces.
- Display overlay replaced with a sidebar on the home page.
- Launcher reliability fixes for macOS permission flows (TCC prompts, mic, etc.).
- Launcher hides its window when desktop starts and restores it on exit.
- ChatGPT-style turn-anchored scrolling in chat.
- macOS screen and microphone permission onboarding screen.
- Subagent ticker and streaming events show up in chat.
- Stella branding on launcher icons and release artifacts.
- In-app permission recovery flows.
- Many launcher and CI improvements (Windows/macOS).
- Mini chat split into its own dedicated window.
- Vision-based window content capture with column detection.
- Cloud backups (R2-backed) with settings integration.
- Self-mod history is now auto-tracked.
- Faster SQLite via node:sqlite.
- Refreshed Stella brand assets across desktop, launcher, and mobile.
- iOS privacy manifest for the mobile app.
- One-time welcome dialog after onboarding.
- Mobile app: dark mode, 17 themes, haptics, voice input, and push notifications.
- Voice "look at screen" tool — Stella can highlight things in real time.
- Vision screenshots, screen-guide overlay, and capture IPC.
- Compact mode replaces the overlay mini shell.
- Suggestion chips in chat with shared screenshot preview.
- New Claude Code orchestrator option.
- Connect dialog redesigned, and the Text Stella flow reversed for clarity.
- Permissions onboarding screen on macOS, plus a fix for relaunching from the DMG.
- Inline previews for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
- Stella Office is now vendored into Stella.
- Magic-link sign-in fix on mobile.
- Home merged into chat, with a shifting gradient on the mini shell.
- Radial dial reworked to four wedges with opt-in window context.
- File-system-based skill environment replaces LoadTools/ActivateSkill.
- New "View messages" button on home when you have chat history.
- Cloud device sync now requires a real (non-anonymous) account.
- Onboarding UX polish: better button visibility, top-down layout, gradient settings fixes.
- Live task status in the thinking footer while streaming.
- Faster chat transcript persistence (append-only JSONL).
- Restored the blob gradient theme and frosted shell chrome.
- Overlay stays on the active macOS Space.
- Right-click chat sidebar replaces the floating orb and context menu.
- Programmatic send opens the sidebar chat directly.
- Launcher auto-closes once Stella is confirmed running.
- Window controls moved into the sidebar header.
- Onboarding can complete without the canvas morph handoff.
- Custom DMG installer with a mesh-gradient background and icon layout.
- Stella requests all macOS permissions upfront, with start/stop launcher controls.
- Single General agent with dynamic tool loading and reactive HMR.
- Stella branding for Electron app icons.
- Smoother floating chat indicator (prewarmed animation).
- Frame-rate-independent Stella animation using real delta time.
- Overlay origin now syncs from actual window bounds on macOS.
- Multi-desktop per account: device-scoped registration, bridge, and phone pairing.
- Daily cron to purge stale anonymous user data.
- MCP removed from the desktop app (replaced by Connect integrations).
- macOS code signing and notarization for the launcher.
- Phone pairing.
- Mobile: offline chat persistence, image support, and friendlier errors.
- Cloud data is purged on account delete.
- New Home surface, with thread context that persists across runs.
- Polling-based magic-link auth, deep-link protocol fix, and migration to cloud.stella.sh.
- Linq remote-turn execution: Stella routes messages to your desktop and falls back to an offline responder.
- Smoother chat streaming with a deferred WebGL init on the first message.
- Region capture fixes.
- Message timestamps reformatted as system reminders, with timezone correctness and 10-min dedup.
- Music generation switched to Lyria 3 (proxied through the backend).
- Home Canvas: LLM generation pipeline, selectable guide, music bar.
- Improved wake-word handoff and voice echo gating.
- Auth callbacks now route through stella.sh.
- New voice model.
- macOS native build of the Stella browser.
- Mobile: refreshed chat, desktop bridge, and account screens.
- Simpler MorphTransition shader (less heavy on GPU).
- New Media Studio app.
- Personalized Home Canvas replaces the home dashboard.
- Notification panel on the floating orb.
- Display Overlay for the agent Display tool.
- Dark-mode gradient banding fixed (oklch interpolation + dithering).
- Cormorant Garamond added as a display font.
- Drag-and-drop file attachments across all three composers.
- New Pearl and Noir themes.
- Lightweight CSS radial gradients replace the heavier blob gradient (faster, cleaner).
- Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and in-app legal notices.
- Open / close animation for the mini shell.
- Sidecar runtime architecture — the agent runtime now runs in its own process.
- Chat UI: thinking row, shimmer, message typography refresh.
- Devtool initial release (hard reset clears storage, simplified UI).
- Backend migrated off the AI SDK.
- Faster boot.
- Switched to Manrope as the default font.
- Mobile bridge backend wired up.
- Mobile app initial commit.
- Onboarding: Next/Previous step controls, animation and layout polish.
- Cross-platform launcher CI workflow (Windows + macOS).
- Initial monorepo — desktop, mobile, backend, and launcher merged into one repo.
- Ultra tier added to billing.
- Discovery page generation fix.
- Tier-aware managed model routing.
- Realtime transcription.
- Realtime voice usage now reported for billing.
- Friend v1 — first cut of the social layer.
- Big runtime composition refactor — clearer routing seams.
- Launcher's first commit.
- Self-mod morph is now readiness-driven (less flash).
- Multiplayer skill (game).
- Schedule tool.
- Bundled Stella defaults moved into resources.
- Blueprint-based Store self-mod flow (v1).
- Stella browser ported to native Rust.
- Voice: hard VAD gate, adaptive noise floor, echo handling on speakers.
- Stripe billing fixes.
- Floating orb, chat panel, and input bar now scale with viewport.
- Floating orb v1 chat.
- Self-mod and General agent split with concurrency support.
- Header items moved to the sidebar.
- New wake-word model (fp16) and voice handoff.
- First-class Stella provider endpoints — desktop runtime now uses Stella provider models by default.
- Clearer "connected account" vs "logged in" semantics.
- You can now keep messaging while a task runs in the background.
- Backend route consolidation and SQL improvements.
- Audio ducking — music and other sounds dim while Stella speaks.
- Unified renderer mic across wake word and voice.
- Many small reliability fixes (chat re-renders, double-cache charges, capture leaks, web search failures).
- Extension system: auto-discoverable tools, hooks, providers, and prompts.
- Native text selection inside Stella.
- New "auto" radial dial feature.
- Faster web search and HTML rendering.
- Search canvas (and the news side trimmed down).
- Synthesis onboarding flow.
- Dashboard display and news rendering.
- Web search and news generation support added.
- Bootstrap quiet window delayed by 2.5s for smoother launch.
- Edit tool fix and orchestrator local scheduling improvements.
- Home view and music adjustments.
- Ongoing polish and refactors: cleaner runtime composition, fewer barrels, sharper IPC.
- Search canvas iteration, animation polish on streaming pills, dashboard fixes.
- Stella renamed and reorganized — new agent / subagent / tools / skills layout.
- Discovery rewrite: selectable categories, signal collection, and seeded ephemeral memories.
- App Store / blueprints groundwork — first cut of how Stella publishes apps.
- Connect dialog initial setup; opens links in your browser instead of a tiny Electron window.
- Slack, Teams, Signal, Telegram, and Discord channel work.
- Multi-monitor and Windows native window-title detection.
- Cron tool, heartbeat handling, and improved interrupt / queue control in the UI.
- Better Auth integration and hardened secrets handling.
- Drag-friendly mini shell, radial dial polish, and many capture/dial flicker fixes.
- First commits — shadcn UI scaffolding and the floating Stella surface.
- Initial agent / subagent / tools / skills wiring with markdown-driven plugins.
- Working indicator, streaming responses, conversation history, and reasoning components.
- Markdown colors, grain/noise/blur theming, and the original radial menu theme.
- Embeddings and retrieval initial pass; Convex schema + validators.
- Wake-up of the discovery + onboarding flow.