0.52.0

Released 2026-11-02.

Upgrading

• The answer-terminal grants, the pane-tag claim, and the tower pane’s new look are in the sb server: they take effect once the sb server runs 0.52.0. The first pi session that loads 0.52.0 restarts an older sb server.
• Reload every pi session after the update (/reload); a session started before an earlier update keeps asking the new sb server to start and is refused as a protocol mismatch.
• Update pi-robot-hand to 0.4.0 with it. 0.4.0 tags the Herdr pane an accepted answer opens, so the sb server grants its terminal keys to that pane and no other. With pi-robot-hand 0.3.x the sb server falls back to the older timing match (see A granted pane).

Zen view (禪)

• A new view, Zen, shows one thing at a time: the unit that has waited longest, its question answered on the card (the same answer cards, trust panel, and Cancel as Standard), then a three-second pause before the next. A new item arriving makes no sound and changes nothing on screen; Zen shows no count anywhere, not even in the tab icon.
• With nothing waiting, Zen stays with the session this device last talked to (its log and composer), else that base’s tower, else the head base’s tower; with none of them, a breathing circle and a rotating mindfulness line with its author (14 lines from Thich Nhat Hanh, Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg, Mindful.org, and Taiwanese and Hong Kong mindfulness centres; sources in NOTICE.md).
• While you type a draft in the companion’s composer, a waiting item waits until 20 s after your last key, tap, wheel, touch, or dictated input.
• The look is ink: a breathing circle, a slow drifting ground, cards that ease to their size and dissolve when done, low-key lofi buttons, and ripples behind the mouse. Motion stops after 30 s idle, under reduced motion, and in forced colours.
• Keys: one Esc cancels the card’s question when it can be cancelled, else sets the card aside for 10 minutes (“Not now”); on the companion or the empty screen, Esc Esc goes back to Standard (this page only). A card whose answer is on its way takes no Esc, and a secret_drop card is never cancelled from Zen.
• A corner menu (hover, tap, or Enter) holds the language, the view (Auto, Standard, Geek, Zen, or back to Standard for now), and the sound switch and volume, the same settings as the settings page; beside it a full-screen button (on an iPhone, a one-time Add to Home Screen hint).
• Choose it with /boss gui view zen or the settings page’s Zen button. Any view pick shows at once, from any page; a server default that changes while the settings page is open waits there.
• Sound effects and music come in a later release.

GUI

• An answer that leaves a step in a terminal opens that terminal, in every view: robot_hand’s “Put it in my prompt” opens the session’s terminal with the keyboard in it, and “Type it into” or “Run it in a new Herdr pane” opens a live terminal tile of the new pane (full screen with the key pad on a phone). The alert closes at once and nothing queued opens over it.
• The new pane is granted to the page for that answer only: the grant is never given to a pane that runs pi or any agent or is a tower, and it ends the moment its pane starts one. With pi-robot-hand 0.4.0 only the pane tagged with the answer’s id is granted.
• A first “Show terminal” from the map before any other page had loaded did nothing; it opens the terminal now.
• The tab icon’s count works again (it showed a broken image) and counts the same items as the alert button.

Standing pane

• The tower’s standing pane looks designed instead of like a stray command. It clears its visible screen when the prompt starts, so the node "…/cli.mjs" prompt … line the server typed no longer stays on it (the scrollback is kept). It shows the tower glyph and tower · <label> in bold, a state line with a glyph and a colour per state (a green dot for standing by), the hints as four key rows (⏎, /new, /quit and ⌃D, /boss tower <message>), and a 󰐻 ❯ prompt. The lines it says in between carry a glyph and a colour of their kind.
• NO_COLOR (set and not empty) takes the colours. STRAW_BOSS_ASCII=1 in the shell of the pane takes every glyph outside ASCII and brings back tower> . A pipe or log gets plain ASCII with no escape sequence. See The standing pane.