Recording and Transcription Improvements

TL;DR: @everyone We’ve rebuilt our audio capture pipeline for a crisper recording and switched to the new Soniox V5 engine for better cloud transcriptions, plus an unreleased feature sneak peek for early adopters (open the newsletter for more details).

Also check a new tutorial where Olivier shares how he creates Alter actions to orchestrate multiple tools:

New Features & Enhancements

• Audio capture pipeline: Rebuilt capture for cleaner, more reliable meeting recordings.
• Cloud transcription: Switched to the new Soniox V5 engine for improved cloud transcription quality.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Meeting history: Fix history saving of meeting recordings.
• Live transcription: Fixed a Whisper live callback deadlock that could stall transcription.
• Dictation cleanup: Ignored dictation cleanup failures so they no longer interrupt workflows.
• Startup reliability: Captured AppKit launch exceptions, removed the placeholder window, and gated hub rendering until explicitly opened.
• Preferences: Sanitized persisted layout values and resolved a runtime concurrency warning.
• Chat rendering: User raw tags now render literally in messages.
• Workspace tools: Fixed Xcode Python shim handling in bash tool execution.
• Notch input: Fixed plain Return key submission from notch input.
• Pasteboard: Fixed a crash when copying to the pasteboard.
• QuickHub shortcuts: Reduced modifier attach sensitivity when opening QuickHub.
• Hub app sense: Refresh app context when focusing the hub.

Monday Hotfix Startup Stability

TL;DR: Improve startup reliability, recording stability with third party audio tools, duplicated context cards.

New Features & Enhancements

• Microphone architecture: Replaced the audio engine with the new software mixer foundation, fixing issues with FineTune, among others.
• Action editor: Show only “Modified by me” actions in the action editor sidebar.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Startup reliability: Fix startup sequence to avoid crashes when restoring Hub or QuickHub windows after settings or data migrations.
• QuickHub lifecycle: Fix crash due caused by tool call views during computer use.
• Shortcuts: Fix crash with the “perform” tool performing keyboard shortcuts.
• Chat and context rendering: Preserved code block formatting when copying, deduplicated action attachment contexts, fixed source rendering after web search.

Action Editor and Chat Improvements

TL;DR: The Action Editor received some love with a redesigned sidebar, better search, diagnostics, and filters, while chats feel smoother with updated message rendering, reasoning display, and animated streamed responses. Plus a new video tutorial to build your personal meeting report system.

New Features & Enhancements

• Action editor: Overhauled action editor state handling, moved search into the sidebar, added row context menus, simplified built-in actions customization, added filters, diagnostics, and multi-selection.
• Chat experience: Updated message rendering with stream animations, added reasoning display.
• Ephemeral actions: Don’t clutter your chat history, there’s a “Save to History” toggle in the action editor.
• Remote MCP: Added configurable API key headers for remote MCP integrations.
• Calendar selection: Added support for selecting upcoming calendars.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• MCP and startup reliability: Bounded wake restart and tool listing loops, prevented the hub from auto-opening on launch, surfaced prepared action startup failures.
• Workspace attachments: Fix actions misfires with attachements.
• Tool calls and Quick Actions: Repaired delayed OpenAI tool results, improved recovery when automatic quick actions fail.
• Keyboard and shortcuts: Improved paste and vim sequence handling across keyboard layouts, resolved performed shortcuts by layout.
• Action editor polish: Fixed drag-and-drop context buttons in the text editor.
• QuickHub and speaker suggestions: Fixed Quick Action picker empty states, speaker suggestion editing, speaker suggestion keyboard navigation, and speaker grid column widths.
• Tasks Tool: Avoid throwing an error if a tool sent as params is not found.
• Skills and workspace initialization: Overwrote existing workspace skill folders when needed and fixed a workspace initialization crash.

Better Speakers Matching and Stability

TL;DR: Alter now improves speaker matching by letting you choose the calendars used for matching and identifying speakers from calendar contacts, while improving meeting audio recovery, the QuickHub, AppSense and tools.

New Features & Enhancements

• Speaker matching: Added calendar selection for speaker matching and support for matching speakers from calendar contacts, added manual calendar event selection.
• QuickHub shortcuts: Added a Control double-tap QuickHub shortcut, Esc no longer closes the QuickHub.
• Conversation workflows: Improved user experience when forking a conversation from a user message.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Meeting and audio recovery: Added retry recovery for audio input failures, recovered selected input authorization failures, fell back to mic-only mode when meeting audio routes fail, hardened the end-of-meeting detection.
• Speaker and transcript quality: Prevent transcripion from stalling because of bad vocabulary, improved speaker name matching, and restored live transcript context loading in QuickHub.
• QuickHub reliability: Prevented modifier-click misfires, fix background job not being in the background, close blank chat tabs on Command-W when other chats are open, and hardened QuickHub close teardown to prevent a crash when dismissing the window.
• Tools and task stability: Improved tool matching in tasks, preserved OpenAI tool-call history in BYOK scenarios, and improved skill info failure diagnostics.
• AppSense and context handling: Fixed AppSense contexts wrongly being added to messages, table formatting improvements, fixed contexts not following along when forking from the first user message.
• Voice: Display the meeting apps monitored for voice detection.

Flow finds tools again

TL;DR: This hotfix gets Flow back on track by restoring tool discovery from the tool repository, while also tightening QuickHub behavior and improving a few user-facing touches around tool visibility and QuickHub reliability.

New Features & Enhancements

• Tool visibility: Added the Ask User tool under Alter.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Flow and tool discovery: Fixed Flow failing to find enabled tools.
• QuickHub actions: Fixed shortcut-triggered actions that require input failing to start correctly.
• Hub activation: Restored QuickHub activation after a regression in beta91.
• Hub palette: Fixed the prefix used to open the palette after deleting a context card.

Introducing Auto Attach

Alter now introduces Auto Attach, a powerful new feature that lets you instantly pull your active window, files, or folders into Alter with a simple double-tap of the command key. This opens the door for a brand new Alter experience, and we want your help shaping where it goes next. Let us know how we should push it to the next level.

New Features & Enhancements

• Auto Attach: Added double-tap shortcuts for instantly attaching QuickHub to the active app, with context such as selected files and folders.
• QuickHub attached mode: Added conversation switching from the close pill, automatic selected-file context when attaching QuickHub.
• Shortcut flexibility: Added double-tap Command, Option, and Shift shortcut options.
• Tools and skills: Added a click destination for skills, surfaced connected Applications from the Apps Gallery, and added an action option to disable the Task tool.
• Task and Flow permissions: Better propagation of workspace permissions to Task and Flow tools.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Auto Attach and QuickHub reliability: Fixed crashes when closing attached QuickHub, allowed closing the final remaining tab, handled Enter correctly from text input, opened context strip details reliably.
• Focus and shortcut handling: Prevented QuickHub from focusing the tools manager when opened, ignored command chords for double-command detection, and fixed fullscreen double-command attachment to the current app.
• Attachments and images: Fixed follow-up image attachments, rehomed provisional workspace attachments, removed intermediate image deduplication steps, and improved AppSense screenshot attachment.
• Skills and workspaces: Canonicalized provider tool names, used safer workspace mount aliases, fixed runtime skill permissions for ephemeral workspaces, and fixed path validation for directories in the Task tool.
• Scheduled runs and conversations: Waited for MCP tools in scheduled runs, linked workspace conversations for schedules, and released task conversations with their parent view model.
• Recording and provider stability: Improved recording and transcription failure reporting, and prevented malformed skill names from causing OpenRouter provider errors.
• Tool management: Linked active tools to the remote MCP view from “See all”.

Introducing Subagents

TL;DR: Alter now introduces Tasks, a dynamic subagent system designed to streamline complex, multi-step workflows beyond simple one-shot prompts. This beta also launches the OpenCollider framework to significantly enhance how you brainstorm and collaborate with AI, available on the marketplace.

New Features & Enhancements

• Tasks and subagents: Added the Task subagent tool.
• OpenCollider and marketplace: Added action publishing from the action editor and support for the new OpenCollider framework.
• Calendar context and transcripts: Added Calendar Event metadata to Transcript files, Calendar Event contexts, and calendar event details for transcript context.
• QuickHub and hub workflows: Added source-aware QuickHub activation, shortcut handling while typing, a delete conversation confirmation dialog, and reliable focus restoration after context removal.
• Workspace sharing and attachments: Added share-file workspace tooling, and allowed image workspace attachments automatically.
• Doctor: Added a Doctor diagnostics settings screen, better tool arguments error recovery.
• Active tools: Added an active-tools link to the app detail view.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Context handling: Prevented directory context explosion, preserved context-only user messages.
• Transcripts and meetings: Prevented duplicate speaker crashes, guarded generated transcript titles, refined meeting calendar matching, improved microphone startup error messages, and prevented meeting transcription cleanup hangs.
• Hub and QuickHub stability: Restored input focus after context removal and improved QuickHub activation with source-aware context.
• Tool argument decoding: Fixed tool argument parsing and bundled skill dependency resolution.
• Model display: Shortened lighter model names.
• Apple ASR: Improved Apple ASR error handling.

Speaker Suggestion

TL;DR: Alter now suggests likely speakers for meeting recordings using Apple Calendar attendees, making it easier to identify people in transcripts and search your history by speaker. This beta also introduces a more reliable history indexing system, smoother hub interactions, and a range of fixes across mail, notes, tools, and workspace attachments.

New Features & Enhancements

• Speaker suggestions: Improved speaker label editing and rename suggestions.
• History indexing: Rebuilt search indexing on a more reliable foundation.
• Hub & conversation UX: Added document “Open With” from conversations, replaced the hub’s modal action form with an inline form, and polished QuickHub with close-all support plus tab position indicators.
• App tool controls: Added a one-click way to disable all tools for a given app in the Apps Gallery, and disable tools by default for newly created custom actions.
• Flow: Added Flow discoverability hints.
• Ask User tool: Double click to select a reply and continue.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Mail & tools: Prevented duplicate hub send clicks, bounded unread mail fetching, enabled fetching email content by message ID, made AppleScript-based tools timeoutable, and made generated CSV files safer for Excel.
• Workspace attachments: Preserved OCR for workspace-backed images and improved how workspace image attachments resolve source paths.
• Validation & localization: Improved workspace tool parameter validation and corrected mistranslated UI terms.
• Infrastructure: Updated the MCP library to avoid systematic polling failures and suppressed default workspace instructions where they were noisy.

Back-to-Back Meetings

TL;DR: Alter now handles back-to-back meeting recordings more smoothly, while this beta also improves workspace permissions and shell execution, adds Path Finder and Services menu “Add to Alter” integrations, expands hub keyboard navigation, and polishes the Ask User flow with native question handling and UI fixes.

New Features & Enhancements

• Back-to-back meetings: Improved support for consecutive meeting recordings without awkward handoff between sessions.
• Path Finder & Services integration: Added Path Finder support, deduplicated “Add to Alter” pasteboard items, and added an “Add selected text to Alter” Services menu action.
• Hub & shortcuts: Better text editor height calculation, keyboard search handling, and conversation page scrolling shortcuts.
• Ask User UX: Redesigned the Ask User prompt with keyboard support, added an “Other” option, and now shows user questions natively in the hub.
• Workspace management: Added support for deleting workspace-local files.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Workspace permissions: Clearer empty-capabilities messaging, simpler permission prompts, support for macOS temporary paths, and more reliable persistence of temporary directory grants across a user turn.
• Workspace shell: Bash commands now run through the user’s shell, with support for fish and better heredoc preflight handling.
• Hub & QuickHub: Fixed conversation drop target detection, missing mode context in new chats, first-item switcher focus, model switcher stability, and removed the old spotlight layout.
• Shortcuts & settings: Unified shortcut settings, improved shortcut migration behavior, required exact cycle shortcut matches, and added a clickable Settings link for Quick Actions and shortcut configuration.
• Conversations & questions: Fixed transcript deletion crashes, empty assistant message chrome, retry prompt clearing, loading state between tool calls, and white text on selected Ask User options.
• UI polish: Fixed live resize state invalidation, microphone permission recovery, marketplace detail navigation loops, and the incorrect gear/tag icon in the hub tags popover.
• Workspace assets: Fixed image handling so images are sent to the LLM and copied into the workspace directory correctly.

Finder & Bloom Smart Attach

TL;DR: QuickHub treats Apple Finder (and Bloom) as a first-class workspace: dock the hub to a Finder or Bloom window and Alter automatically uses your current folder and files for context—summaries, organization, and natural-language file work without the copy-paste dance. This beta also brings customizable keyboard shortcuts, richer QuickHub tool/context previews, chat search with #, multiple API key endpoints, expanded locales (Italian, Portuguese, Japanese), and a long list of hub, workspace, and marketplace stability fixes.

New Features & Enhancements

• Finder & Bloom smart attach: Automatically attach the active Finder folder or Bloom panel to chat when using QuickHub—your file manager becomes part of the AI workspace
• Default workspace: default workspace provided for Ask Anything and Plan with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint skills enabled.
• QuickHub: Tools and context details previews.
• Hub & chat: Search your chat history with #; ⌘R retries the last message; usage view updates for add-on requests.
• Keyboard shortcuts: User-customizable shortcuts in Settings.
• API keys: Support for multiple custom endpoints.
• Mouse widget: New “add selection to Alter” item.
• *Actions: Handle failing action parsing (prompt to fix).
• Localization: Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese locales added.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Text Selection: Hardened text selection capture.
• QuickHub & Chats: Smoother conversation window dragging and “Return” key sends message more reliably.
• Dictation & audio: Local+ Parakeet model availability fix; improve microphone state UI.
• Windows & shell: Prevent stale hub reopen; don’t pop the hub open when closing Settings; Dock icon surfaces existing Alter windows instead of the Hub.
• Marketplace: Comments polish and less aggressive polling; install/tool-description link fixes.
• Actions: Preserve default action parameter values.