Changelog

Author

fariazinhu

All notable updates to Aether are documented here. Each release includes new features, improvements, and bug fixes.

v0.1.4 — Sync, Clean & Global Config

🗓️ July 2026

The big one: /sync is live, config moved to a global directory, and a new /clean command gives you full control over stored data.

✨ Features

• /sync — incremental doc updates. After a /genesis baseline exists, /sync diffs the project against the last snapshot, asks the AI which docs are affected, and patches only those — existing sections are updated in place, nothing is deleted, and new docs are added when the changes warrant them. No more /genesis --force after every code change
• /clean — manage global data. Lists all configured projects with their provider, model, and cache size. Subcommands to clear caches (all or per-project), remove config, or nuke everything:
  • /clean — show status
  • /clean cache / /clean cache <n> — clear caches
  • /clean <n> — remove a project entirely
  • /clean config — delete API keys
  • /clean all — remove ~/.aether/ completely
• Global config directory (~/.aether/) — API keys and provider config now live in your home directory, never in the repo. One machine, many projects, each can use a different provider/model without touching version control. The first /config also sets a shared default that new projects inherit automatically
• Per-project cache — distill cache (condensed source notes for large projects) lives in ~/.aether/cache/<project>/, not in the repo
• Concurrent doc generation — both /genesis and /sync now generate multiple docs in parallel (default: 4, configurable via AETHER_GEN_CONCURRENCY)
• Shared project context — instead of building context per-doc, Aether now builds ONE complete context shared across all docs. If the project fits the budget, it's real code; if not, it's distilled once (not per-doc), so the expensive pass runs a single time

🏗️ Under the hood

• Snapshot moved from .aether/context.json to .aether/settings/context.json — keeps the project root clean (backwards-compatible: old location still found)
• Project identity uses a stable hash (<folder>-<sha1-of-path>) so same-named projects in different paths never collide
• Section-level patching: when /sync updates an existing doc, it rewrites only the affected sections instead of regenerating the whole file
• File fingerprinting with content hashes for precise change detection
• Git log integration: /sync includes recent commit messages in the AI's context so it understands why things changed, not just what
• Retry with exponential backoff on provider errors (429, 5xx, timeouts)
• Smart rate-limit handling: 429 errors now get up to 6 retries with 15s+ backoff (respects provider's suggested retry-after delay), so free-tier limits are survived automatically instead of failing

🐛 Fixes

• Config provider field no longer drifts when baseUrl is changed to a recognized host
• Large projects that exceeded the context budget no longer lose files silently — they're distilled into factual notes instead

v0.1.3 — Let the Whole Project In

🗓️ July 2026

/genesis was still leaving real projects behind. The scanner's budget was sized for a small model, so a mid-size codebase would blow past it and dozens of files got listed as omitted — the docs came out great, but built on a partial picture. This release opens the budget up to fit modern large-context models and puts the limits in your hands.

🐛 Fixes

• Context scanner no longer omits files from real projects. The scan budget was too conservative (300KB total, 32KB per file), so a project of any real size would trip "project context budget exceeded" and drop files from the AI's view. Defaults are now sized for modern large-context models (Gemini 1M–2M, Claude up to 1M tokens): 2MB total and 128KB per file, with the file walk raised to 10,000 files and tree depth to 12. A typical project now goes in whole
• Omitted files are still reported explicitly, never dropped in silence — but with the wider budget, that list should stay empty for most projects

✨ Features

• Configurable scan budget — every limit is now overridable via environment variable, so you can open it up further for a huge repo or tighten it for a small local model:
  • AETHER_MAX_TOTAL_CHARS — total character budget (default 2,000,000)
  • AETHER_MAX_FILE_SIZE — per-file size cap in bytes (default 128,000)
  • AETHER_MAX_FILES_WALKED — max files the walker visits (default 10,000)
  • AETHER_MAX_WALK_DEPTH — max directory depth (default 12)

v0.1.2 — Docs for Humans, Too

🗓️ July 2026

Until now, /genesis produced docs tuned for AI assistants — accurate and traceable, but they read like a file index. This release adds a parallel set of human-facing guides, generated with their own writing contract.

✨ Features

• Human guides — every project now also gets a guides/ section written for people, not machines:
  • guides/getting-started.md — install, configure, run, verify (always generated)
  • guides/onboarding.md — the mental model, why the project exists, and how to make your first change (always generated)
  • guides/contributing.md — conventions, quality gates, and how to submit a change (only when there's a real contribution process to document)
• Docs index — a docs/README.md landing page is now generated, grouping every doc by section (Guides, Architecture, Reference, AI Context) with links, so the knowledge base reads as a structured site instead of loose files
• The planner now knows about the guides and decides when contributing is warranted

🏗️ Under the hood

• The human guides use a different prompt contract than the AI docs. Both keep the same anti-hallucination floor — never invent a technology, file, or command, and never present a roadmap item as already built but the guides invert the writing rules: explain and connect instead of cataloguing, and lead with the why. When your repo already has author-written context (a README, CONTEXT.md, CONTRIBUTING.md), the guides lean on it for intent instead of distrusting it, but there's nothing new you need to write; without those files, the guides are still generated from the code
• The docs index is built deterministically (no LLM call), so it never drifts from the docs actually generated

v0.1.1 — Genesis First Steps

🗓️ July 2026

✨ Features

• /config — Configure your AI provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or OpenRouter as a new first-class provider with openrouter/auto as its default model)
• /genesis — Full implementation: scans the entire project (no arbitrary file-count cap), plans which docs make sense for this specific project, and can propose custom docs beyond the fixed catalog
• /genesis --force — Regenerate even if .aether/docs/ already exists
• /genesis now detects existing docs and points you to /sync instead of silently redoing all of them
• /sync — Registered as a command (shows up in /help), still under development

🐛 Fixes

• Context scanner no longer silently drops files — it used to cap at 10 source files and 8KB each, which excluded core files from the AI's context entirely. Now it includes the whole project within a much larger budget, and explicitly lists anything it had to omit
• provider config field used to drift from reality (e.g. staying "gemini" after pointing baseUrl at OpenRouter). It's now auto-synced whenever baseUrl changes to a recognized host
• The planner used to default to including conditional docs (api, business, diagrams, etc.) when unsure. It now defaults to omitting them — a frontend or devops project won't get api/endpoints.md just because it's in the catalog

v0.1.0 — Initial Release

🗓️ July 2026

✨ Features

• Interactive terminal session with command autocomplete
• Command system with dropdown autocomplete
• Startup animation with ASCII art
• /help — List all available commands
• /clear — Clear the terminal screen
• /exit — Exit Aether gracefully
• Tab completion for commands and suggestions

🚧 In Progress

• /ask — Ask questions about your code with full context

🏗️ Infrastructure

• Standalone binary distribution (no runtime required)
• Supports Windows (x64), macOS (x64), and Linux (x64)
• Provider agnostic — supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini

Roadmap

Upcoming features planned for future releases:

Follow development on GitHub for the latest updates.