Changelog.

🧠 AI & Agent Improvements

• Upgraded the AI “Find Notes” behavior to deliver more relevant suggestions.
• Improved vault/note listing behavior used by AI so results are more focused and less noisy.
• Added better run/composer controls in the AI panel so it’s easier to steer responses and workflows.
• General improvements to tool-driven AI reliability for longer or more complex requests.

🤝 LM Studio Improvements

• Selecting an LM Studio model now loads it immediately (instead of “one step too late” behavior).
• Canto no longer forces its own context size into LM Studio requests.
• Canto now follows LM Studio’s runtime context setting and syncs it back into the app.
• Reduced first-message failures caused by too-small default context windows.
• Context indicators are now more trustworthy during active sessions.

🧩 UI & Quality-of-Life

• Context badge on model cards now updates more accurately as runtime settings change.
• Context usage display now aligns better with real available context.
• Improved loaded-model handling so users can free memory more easily when needed.

✨ Highlights

Smarter, more reliable AI editing

• Improved the AI chat assistant so edits are applied more consistently and with fewer “stuck” or repeated actions.
• Improved how AI finds and updates text, especially in longer notes or content with mixed formatting.
• Reduced cases where AI would over-correct itself or retry the same step in an unhelpful way.
• Made multi-step AI edit flows feel more stable and predictable overall.

Better approval flow for AI changes

• Improved edit approval handling so AI tool actions are processed one at a time, making behavior more dependable.
• Removed overly strict selected-text retry behavior so responses feel less forced and more natural.

Tagging and editor usability improvements

• Added/improved manual tag suggestions to make tagging faster and easier.
• Improved tag input and tag suggestion interactions for a smoother note organization experience.
• Fixed selection toolbar positioning so it stays within view more reliably instead of drifting off-screen.

Sidebar and file tree polish

• Refined sidebar and file tree layout/styling for a cleaner, easier-to-scan vault experience.
• Improved overall navigation feel with visual and spacing tweaks in key sidebar areas.

🛠️ Under-the-hood improvements

• Multiple stability and guardrail improvements in AI runtime behavior.
• General UX refinements across editor and note-management surfaces.

What's New

Pin Notebooks

You can now pin notebooks to keep them at the top of your vault — just like you've always been able to pin notes. Right-click any notebook and choose Pin, or hover over it and click the pin icon. Pinned notebooks stay anchored above the rest, sorted by when they were pinned.

Smarter "Get Info" for Notebooks

The Get Info panel (right-click → Get Info) now shows meaningful stats for notebooks, not just notes. For a notebook you'll see the total number of cells, how many are code vs. markdown, what languages are used, and how many file attachments are included along with their combined size.

Cleaner Vault Item Cards

Notes and notebooks in the Vault sidebar got a visual polish pass. Selected rows have a crisper highlight style, tag chips now use the full available width before collapsing into an overflow count, and the inline rename field no longer causes the row to jump or resize when you start editing a title.

Nicer Code Blocks in Dark Mode

Code blocks inside notes look much better in dark mode. The background blends more naturally into the editor surface, the striped highlight artifact is gone, and syntax colors now follow a Monokai-inspired palette — magenta for keywords, cyan for types, green for function names, yellow for strings, and purple for numbers. Light mode is unchanged.

Smarter AI Agent — Structured Content Routing

The AI agent now reliably picks the right tool for structured content. When you ask it to insert a Mermaid diagram, a math equation, a table, or an inline element, it no longer falls back to a plain-text edit — it routes directly to the dedicated tool for that content type. If a model tries the wrong approach, the agent catches it, explains what went wrong, and steers the model to the correct tool automatically.

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Bug Fixes & Improvements

• Inline rename in the vault now fits neatly within the row width instead of overflowing or collapsing adjacent content
• Notebook sorting now respects pin order first, then recency — consistent with how note sorting works
• Various internal cleanup to improve startup speed and reduce memory overhead

This beta focuses on making Canto feel cleaner, faster, and easier to navigate day to day.

Editor experience improvements

• The writing space is now cleaner and less distracting.
• The old fixed top formatting bar is gone.
• A Notion-style floating formatting toolbar appears near selected text when you need it.
• The Chat button stays easy to reach in the pane header.
• Text selection and toolbar appearance feel smoother and less jumpy.

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Notebook page refresh

• Notebook headers have been redesigned for clearer visual hierarchy.
• Notebook titles are more prominent.
• Tags are back under the title where they’re easier to scan.
• File controls were moved into a cleaner popover flow with a visible file count.

Major sidebar and vault redesign

• Canto now uses a simpler single-sidebar layout.
• Main sidebar tabs are now Overview / Vault / Tags.
• Vault/File Tree rows are richer and easier to scan (better previews, metadata, and timestamps).
• Hover actions (like pin/delete) are cleaner and less visually noisy.
• Sidebar visual polish: spacing, icon treatment, and divider thickness were refined.

Folder structure simplification

• Folder behavior is now streamlined to a root-level model (no nested subfolders).
• Existing nested folders are automatically flattened on upgrade.
• Name conflicts are handled automatically during migration.
• Move/open flows are simpler and more predictable with the new structure.

Split-pane resizing (new)

• Borders between panes are now draggable, like the sidebar resize handle.
• You can resize panes directly in the editor layout.
• Pane widths are remembered across app restarts.
• Double-clicking a divider resets adjacent panes to an even split.

✨ AI Experience Improvements

• Safer memory handling across platforms so AI features behave more predictably on different machines.
• Cleaner AI status display in settings/model UI, making model readiness easier to understand at a glance.
• Added a persistent “Model Off” mode — if you turn AI off, Canto remembers it and avoids unexpected AI actions.
• Introduced broader AI availability checks so actions fail more gracefully with clearer guidance when AI isn’t ready.

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🌐 External Model Endpoint (Ollama + LMStudio + OpenAI Compatible)

• Expanded support for external AI endpoints with a more complete runtime flow for Agent and Vault experiences.
• Improved endpoint reliability with better model-switch behavior and fewer conflicts when changing providers/models.
• Added incremental model refresh for external endpoints to improve stability and responsiveness.
• Strengthened cross-endpoint unload behavior so old model state is cleaned up properly when switching.
• Included major under-the-hood runtime unification for external endpoints to reduce edge-case failures.

🤖 Agent & Chat Workflow Enhancements

• Agent chat state now persists better: history and docked-panel behavior are preserved more consistently per tab.
• Added a new “Open Agent Chat Panel” action from editors (including notebooks) for faster access while writing/coding.

⌨️ Shortcut Customization

• Added configurable AI and voice shortcuts.
• Shortcut labels now update dynamically across the app (including command surfaces/UI text), so help text matches your actual keybindings.

🏷️ Tags & Note Organization Polish

• Redesigned tag editing with a modern compact chips-first inline UI.
• Notebook tags now use inline compact editing (less popover-heavy flow).
• Note tags now appear in the title area flow (under the note title), with improved spacing and visual separation.
• Improved tag creation visuals with more varied tag color assignment in Vault/tag creation flows.

🛠️ General Stability & UX Polish

• Multiple consistency fixes and architecture cleanups across AI, endpoint handling, and UI interactions to make day-to-day usage smoother in this alpha.

New: Vault Manager

A brand-new dedicated workspace for organizing your entire vault with AI assistance.

• Open from anywhere — Use the sidebar icon, command palette, the start menu, or press ⌘⇧M.
• Two-pane layout — See your vault overview (folder tree, note/notebook counts, tag cloud) on the left, and chat with the AI organizer on the right.
• AI-powered organization — Ask the Vault Manager to create folders, move notes, rename notes, or suggest tags. It analyzes your vault and proposes a concrete plan.
• Draft plan with approval — Every proposed change is shown in an interactive checklist. Check or uncheck individual actions, use "Check all / Uncheck all" to toggle everything, or clear the entire plan. Nothing happens until you click "Apply Approved."
• Preset prompts — Four quick-start buttons let you kick off common tasks instantly: organize into folders, fix unclear titles, clean up tags, or set up a weekly review structure.
• Smart folder & note resolution — The plan displays human-readable note titles and folder names instead of technical IDs, even for folders being created in the same plan.
• Safe by design — The Vault Manager never deletes notes or folders, never edits note content, and limits the number of changes per plan.
• Clear chat button — Start fresh anytime with the trash icon in the chat header.

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Improvements

• Sidebar buttons always visible — The quick action buttons (command palette, search, shortcuts, knowledge graph, vault manager) now stay visible even when no tabs are open.
• Welcome screen shortcuts — Added Knowledge Graph and Vault Manager buttons to the start menu for quick access.
• Rename persistence fixed — When the Vault Manager renames a note, the new title now sticks everywhere — in the editor, tab bar, sidebar, and database — without reverting.
• Tag sidebar sync — Tags added through the Vault Manager now immediately appear in the sidebar tag section.
• Vault Manager icon — Uses a distinctive archive icon across the sidebar, tab bar, command palette, and start menu.
• Keyboard shortcut registered — ⌘⇧M opens the Vault Manager, shown in the Settings shortcuts list.

✨ New features

• Added Web Search to the AI assistant, so it can pull in up-to-date information from the internet when needed.
• Added a dedicated Web Search settings section in Settings (separate from AI Models).
• Added support for the assistant to insert web images directly into your notes when relevant.

🧠 Smarter AI behavior

• Improved detection of “latest/current/news” requests so the assistant is much more likely to use web search when it should.
• Better handling of time-based requests (for example, keeping your requested year/timeframe instead of drifting to older info).
• Clearer guidance when Web Search isn’t configured yet (so setup issues are easier to understand).
• Improved image-insert retry flow: if an image result is rejected, the assistant can try again with a different image instead of getting stuck.

🛠️ Stability and polish

• Fixed the empty pane state so “No active tab” is centered correctly.
• Cleaned up a large amount of unused/legacy code to reduce potential bugs.
• Continued reliability improvements around agent tool execution and tool-call loop handling.

⚡ Performance & maintenance upgrades

• Removed legacy Python-web runtime leftovers, making setup/install leaner.
• Updated core dependencies (editor/runtime/build stack) for better compatibility and stability.
• General lint/type cleanup for a smoother development baseline.

This update focuses on making AI Chat much more reliable—especially with smaller local models like SmolLM3—while also cleaning up the chat footer UI.

✨ What’s better

• Smarter AI behavior for smaller models

  • Chat now adapts its internal strategy automatically based on the selected model and available context.
  • SmolLM3 should behave more consistently in multi-step note tasks.

• More reliable note editing with AI tools

  • The assistant is better at deciding when it should actually use tools (instead of only replying in chat).
  • If a request clearly needs note edits, the assistant is now more likely to execute the edit flow correctly.

• Major reduction in “tool call loops”

  • Added protections against repeated tool spam when nothing new is happening.
  • Added protections against “success loops” (repeating the same already-successful tool call over and over).
  • When loop-like behavior is detected, the assistant is pushed to move forward or finish the response.

• More stable chat generation

  • Chat now applies generation settings more consistently, improving response stability and reducing erratic behavior.

• Cleaner, condensed footer under the chat input

  • Context usage now shows a simple used / total (percent) display.
  • Runtime status details were condensed into compact, color-coded chips for faster scanning.
  • Fallback/retry states are easier to see at a glance.

• Improved instruction quality for the assistant

  • Strengthened behavior rules to avoid fake/pseudo tool narration.
  • Better guidance to stop repeating identical actions and finalize clearly when done.