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Version 1.8.0

Finch 1.8.0

Adds Bots and Bot collaboration, streamlined chat, Office file previews, and customizable shortcuts; improves long sessions, on-demand mini program loading, and background updates, with fixes for message history, attachment recovery, and Windows upgrades and startup.

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New

Bots & collaboration

  • Bot contacts: brings built-in Finch, custom Bots, and mini program Bots together, with following, unread indicators, recent-message summaries, and keyboard navigation.
  • Create Bots through conversation: ask AI to create a Bot in any conversation, then refine its name, instructions, and composer hint through chat. Supports animated avatars and configurable working directories.
  • Independent Bot conversations: each Bot has a persistent conversation. Archiving starts a fresh conversation, while changing its working directory preserves previous conversations.
  • Bot collaboration: mention a Bot with @name to delegate tasks between built-in, custom, and mini program Bots. Tasks run in independent background conversations and return results to the originating chat without occupying its composer.
  • Collaboration task management: supports attachments, structured tasks, status queries, timeout notices, and cancellation. Requests for human permission or answers appear as cards and are never approved automatically on the user's behalf. Delegation channels inherit the originating conversation's model and permission mode.
  • Bot-specific scheduled tasks: task execution and result delivery stay with the owning Bot. A task can disable its own source schedule while running or reporting results.

Chat & files

  • Streamlined chat: Bot conversations use a streamlined style, also available for ordinary chats through Labs. Common message actions move into a hover menu, with context-menu support.
  • Three-column layout (experimental): adds a persistent activity bar and a collapsible or floating list area, with collapsible Bot and recent-chat groups.
  • Delivery cards: presents file, image, and web cards together at the end of a turn. File cards can reveal files in the file manager.
  • Office file previews: preview local PDF, Word (DOCX), and Excel (XLSX) files in read-only mode without opening another application.
  • Customizable shortcuts: adds a settings page with key-combination recording, conflict notices, a view of modified shortcuts, and default restoration.
  • Followed items in the tray: access followed Bots and conversations directly from the tray.

Improvements

  • Chat presentation: refines bubbles, the composer, running notices, progress blocks, and timestamps. Bot avatars follow reply content, animated indicators appear while waiting, and redundant running bubbles disappear during text output.
  • Sidebar summaries: summaries track the latest message, filter internal hints, and update sorting as messages arrive. Unifies the menu entry for adding a side chat.
  • Files & input: groups image annotation references with attachments. Question options accept attachments, and mini program panels can write text and images into the current composer.
  • Long sessions & compaction: improves continuity between streaming output and saved history, output budgets, and recovery from truncated compaction. Preserves unfinished tasks and valid constraints; project, Space, and Bot rules survive message compaction and appear separately in context details.
  • Idle resource usage: reduces extra CPU work while idle and adjusts local token estimation.
  • On-demand mini program loading: discovers and loads tools as needed to reduce persistent context usage.
  • Model configuration: adds GPT-6.1 Terra to built-in Codex, corrects the context limit for GPT-6.1 Sol, and improves stable references and historical selection recovery after configuration updates.
  • Background updates: downloads updates in the background and lets the user restart to install when ready. The About page can switch to the China download mirror, update state stays synchronized across windows, and older or same-version installers are rejected.
  • Windows upgrades: overwrites matching files and preserves detailed failure diagnostics.

Fixes

Chat & input

  • Fixes replies disappearing, appearing twice, stopping midway, or earlier messages becoming inaccessible after history refreshes or pagination.
  • Fixes duplicate bubbles and stale running states caused by late events, redelivered content, or retries, and conversations becoming unusable after compaction.
  • Fixes drafts, pending answers, and image attachments being restored to the wrong conversation. Copying in streamlined chat applies only to the selected message.
  • Fixes relative image paths in Markdown previews and local Windows image paths.
  • Fixes model-menu shortcuts, duplicate highlighting of followed entries, and navigation misalignment when switching conversations.
  • Fixes zero usage from errors or interrupted messages overwriting context readings, and new turns inheriting the previous turn's token count.

Mini programs, models & startup

  • Fixes mini program lookup by ID, working-directory ownership, and old tool cleanup affecting newer tools with the same name.
  • Fixes mini program installation stalling when a package is double-clicked before the window is ready.
  • Fixes provider catalog failures affecting available built-in models and OAuth credential failures blocking otherwise healthy API Key models.
  • Fixes missing rebuildable caches blocking startup migration on Windows.