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Changelog

Tagged releases follow Semantic Versioning beginning with v5.0.0. The state format and agent contract have independent integer versions. See Compatibility and upgrades for the policy and current upgrade instructions.

A change that users would notice gets an entry here: a change to a command, a setting, a message, a view, the state format or the agent contract, and a change to the documentation that would make someone who read the earlier version act differently, such as a new guide or a corrected instruction. Rewording, layout fixes, refactoring, tests and CI get none. The release notes on GitHub list every merged pull request, so this page lists only what a user upgrading needs to know.

From v5.1.0 on, each release groups its entries under these headings, adapted from Keep a Changelog, in this order, leaving out any heading that would be empty:

  • Breaking for what users must act on before upgrading;
  • Added for new commands, settings, controls and pages;
  • Changed for existing behaviour that now works differently; and
  • Fixed for behaviour that was wrong.

Released changes stay under their release; development changes stay under Unreleased, with the same headings, until they are tagged. From v5.0.0 on, each entry links the pull request or commit that made the change.

Unreleased

v9.8.0 — 2026-11-01

Changed

  • dreamcatcher orders the kinds of agent work as assignment, campaign, conversation. status shows its sections, the web view its tabs, and init its routes and labels in that order, and the kinds take free agent slots in rotation in that order. (#895)

v9.7.0 — 2026-10-29

Added

  • dreamcatcher about prints an explanation of what dreamcatcher can do and how it works, for you or for an agent that helps you outside dreamcatcher, such as one that triages issues and dispatches work for you. (#884, #885)

Changed

  • The documentation keeps "turn" to its harness meaning. A round is one bounded run of a piece of agent work's harness session, a successful or stopped round has consumed its input, and the concepts page notes that Claude Code and Codex use "turn" differently. (#885)

v9.6.1 — 2026-10-29

Fixed

  • The default agent-campaign route now runs the dream plugin's dream:big campaign skill, which dream 44.0.0 renamed from dream:lead. Existing installations must update the dream plugin to 44.0.0 or later, then change their dreamcatcher.toml campaign prompts to /dream:big GH{issue} for Claude and $dream:big GH{issue} for Codex by hand, because dreamcatcher init leaves an existing file unchanged. (#875)
  • Squash-merging an assignment pull request no longer carries a CI-skip instruction onto main. The assignment's draft pull request now runs CI once. (#876)

v9.6.0 — 2026-10-29

Changed

  • Working motifs now follow the web header's rendered height, so they stay beneath a taller or wrapped header. (#868)
  • The home page shows its working-agent motifs on narrower windows, from 1184px wide, in the gutter beside the page's text. (#867)
  • Each repository's web view remembers its own theme, once its daemon has run, so switching the theme on one instance's page no longer switches it on another's. (#866)
  • In the Matrix theme, GitHub's state at the right of a card's first row is plain text on every card, as in Nature, without a box around a pull request's state. (#864)
  • The toggle that opens a tab's ended work reads "3 ended", without a "+" before it, as a campaign's line of sub-issues already does. (#865)

v9.5.0 — 2026-10-28

Added

  • The home page shows each working agent as a small moving motif in the window's side margins: a falling column of glyphs in Matrix, and in Nature a falling dandelion seed on a light page and a firefly on a dark one. A tab with nothing active holds a calm field of the same motif beneath its hint. Nothing moves when the system asks for reduced motion. (#855)

Changed

  • Every web page keeps its content to a column 1120px wide, where it was 1320px, so that a laptop's window leaves side margins for the motifs. (#855)
  • The web header is narrower: the issues and pulls links sit under the repository name, and the daemon's process identifier replaces "daemon running". (#859)
  • The page that names the things dreamcatcher deals with and says what the words mean is now called Concepts, at docs/concepts.md, and its opening paragraph says it is a glossary with rules. It was called the ontology. The old address, https://alimanfoo.github.io/dreamcatcher/ontology/, no longer resolves. (#829)
  • Each section of Concepts ends with the words that its concepts replace, such as "stage" for a sub-issue. The help of dreamcatcher status now says "requests with no open work", where it said "labels waiting for work". (#838)
  • A card whose status is unknown gives the read that failed, without the words "cannot tell:" before it, because its status already says unknown. (#843)
  • A request that the scheduler holds back has one status, held, where it was blocked, held or routing conflict. Its card says what GitHub says of its issue, such as "open, blocked by #810", and beneath its status what the user has to do, when they have to act. (#843)
  • Every card on the home page, for work or for a request, gives the issue first, then the label and status, then the detail, then the agent's latest output. An assignment with no pull request yet shows nothing where it said "no pull request yet". (#843)
  • In the Nature theme, a status and the agent label of the latest output no longer have a dot before them. (#843)
  • A campaign's sub-issue that has no assignment and no request says whether it is open or closed, and a closed one's title shows as quietly as ended work's. Before, a closed sub-issue looked like work still to do. (#843)
  • A conversation or a campaign card gives its issue's state, open or closed, at the right of its first line. A conversation or a campaign that has ended shows "ended", where it showed "closed", and its card says that the issue is closed. (#849)
  • A conversation or a campaign that the scheduler holds back shows as held, where it showed as idle with "paused, …". Its card says why beside the issue, such as "open, label removed" or "open, labelled by octocat", and says beneath what brings it back, such as "put the label back to resume". Held work comes after idle work and before unknown work. (#849)
  • A campaign's line of sub-issues counts, after how many are closed, the assignments and requests under the campaign by the status that each shows, as in "32 of 35 sub-issues closed · 6 working, 3 waiting, 1 held, 5 completed". The "+" before the line is gone. (#849)
  • Concepts names the card: what dreamcatcher shows for one piece of work, one request or one sub-issue, as a work card, a request card or a sub-issue card. The documentation calls each of them a card where it called some of them rows, and "request row" now means only what the scheduler found for a request. (#853)
  • A work's page opens with its work card, as the home page shows it: the issue and the state of its pull request or issue first, then the label, harness, model and effort, with the status, then the detail. A conversation or a campaign page now says whether its issue is open or closed, and who applied the label that holds it. The issue's number links to GitHub, as on the home page, where the whole heading did, and the strip of labelled facts is gone. (#853)
  • Each row of work in dreamcatcher status gives GitHub's state after the status, as a request's row does: an assignment's pull request and where it stands, or a conversation's or a campaign's issue state, then a semicolon and the detail, as in PR #52 ready; 1 new post to answer. (#853)
  • dreamcatcher view gives a conversation's or a campaign's issue state on an issue line, such as open, labelled by octocat, or closed once the work has ended. Its status line gives the status and the detail, where a held conversation's also said what GitHub holds. (#853)
  • The documentation says "held" where the scheduler holds work back, and keeps "paused" for the user's own act of removing a label or an assignee. (#853)

Fixed

  • On the web page, a feed stops following when you scroll it away from its end by any means, including the keyboard, and follows again when you scroll back to its end. Before, only a pointer press, the mouse wheel or a click on a round link stopped it, so Page Up left the feed jumping back to its end on the next refresh. (#846)
  • On the web page, every new line of a feed shows as soon as it arrives, and a feed that is following stays at its end. Before, the page typed each line in one after another, so a busy agent left blank lines in the feed and the feed fell behind the agent. A card's latest output on the home page now changes in place, without being typed. (#828)
  • The home page and dreamcatcher status no longer show a dispatch label's request card beside the work that just started for it. For a few seconds after an update started work, until the update finished, the issue showed twice. (#830)

v9.4.0 — 2026-10-27

Changed

  • The dreamcatcher.toml that dreamcatcher init writes names each dispatch label after the kind of work that it asks for, not after the skill that its route runs: agent-conversation in place of dream:scout, agent-assignment in place of dream:smith, agent-assignment-easy in place of dream:less and agent-campaign in place of dream:lead. Each route's prompt still invokes the same skill. init leaves an existing dreamcatcher.toml alone, so a repository that already has one keeps its labels. To switch such a repository to the new names, rename each label on GitHub, where an issue keeps its label through the rename. Then rename the route's label in dreamcatcher.toml to match, commit and push the file, and restart the daemon. Rename a conversation or campaign label only when none of its conversations or campaigns is open, because an open one pauses when its label is renamed. An open assignment is unaffected, as the user renames a dispatch label tells. (#820)

Fixed

  • A dispatch label that the user applied still counts as theirs after the label is renamed on GitHub. Before, every issue that carried the label when it was renamed showed its request as held, with the label applied by an unknown account. A label that GitHub shows before it records who applied it now shows that the update cannot tell who applied it, where before it showed as applied by an unknown account. (#819)

v9.3.0 — 2026-10-26

Changed

  • Work starts, and a paused conversation or campaign resumes, only on a dispatch label that the signed-in user applied themselves. A label that a colleague, a bot or a deleted account applied starts nothing, and the request shows as held, naming who applied the label and saying that the user can remove and re-add it. After the upgrade, an open conversation or campaign whose label someone else applied pauses until the user does so. (#809)

v9.2.0 — 2026-10-25

Changed

  • The documentation home page says in one short paragraph each what an assignment, a conversation and a campaign are for. The campaign tutorial, now From parent issue to merged pull requests, opens by explaining why you would use a campaign, and the documentation calls the issues that a campaign carries sub-issues, not stages. Advice on merge queues for parallel pull requests moves to Start a campaign. (#799)
  • A kind of work that the daemon routes no label for tells the user to add the route and restart the daemon to enable it, in place of first saying that the daemon routes none, on the home page and in dreamcatcher view. (#802)
  • Ended work of every kind shows the state it ended in, such as "completed" or "closed", once in place of "ended", on its card, its page and in dreamcatcher view. (#796)

Fixed

  • A Claude conversation whose agent waits on background subagents posts the agent's last answer, instead of a message saying that it is still waiting or an error that the harness returned no final output. (#793)
  • A Codex conversation runs in a checkout whose path holds a percent sign or a line ending, instead of stopping the daemon. (#795)

v9.1.1 — 2026-10-25

Added

  • A security policy says how to report a vulnerability in private. (#787)

v9.1.0 — 2026-10-24

Changed

  • A lead round's trigger says that a sub-issue handed back and that its pull request changed, where it said handback and pull request. (#777)
  • The daemon stops when an update cannot complete, for example because a record under .dreamcatcher/ is damaged or a write fails. It prints the file and what is wrong with it, ends its rounds and its web page as Ctrl-C does, and leaves the record of the last complete update in place. Fix the cause and start the daemon again, and the interrupted work carries on. The daemon used to report the failure and try again at every update, and a conversation or campaign whose own records could not be read showed the failure on its row. (#773)
  • An open page whose refresh gets no answer from the server, as when the daemon has stopped, keeps what it shows and warns "Refresh failed. Check the terminal running dreamcatcher." It used to show no warning. (#773)
  • Each card and request row on the web home page keeps GitHub's information at its top and dreamcatcher's at its bottom. (#770)
  • An ended assignment's card on the web home page says "completed" or "cancelled" once, where it said "ended", and every ended card's title is quieter. (#779)
  • A pull request that is ready for review now shows in brighter text than a draft, on an assignment's card and on its page. In the matrix theme, every other pull request now shows in the subdued text. (#780)
  • An assignment whose pull request is merged or closed, and whose wrap-up round has yet to start, is waiting "awaiting wrap-up", where it said that the pull request is merged or closed. (#766)
  • A campaign's sub-issue with no assignment and no request shows only its number and title on the web page, without the "no assignment" line and the open or closed badge. (#764)
  • The first example in the configuration guide includes a campaign route, so it shows each kind of route the guide describes. (#775)

Fixed

  • On the web page, a lead round that names its sub-issues lists its trigger and timing beside its number, on separate lines, as every other round does. (#777)
  • A wrap-up round that finishes as the user cancels its assignment leaves the assignment cancelled, so its worktree, branch and uncommitted work stay the user's. A cancel that comes after the wrap-up round changes nothing, and dreamcatcher cancel says that the assignment has already ended. (#774)

v9.0.0 — 2026-10-23

Breaking

  • Saved state moves to state format 8, in .dreamcatcher/v8/. Saved work from v7.0.0 and v8.0.0 does not carry across: before upgrading, let each assignment reach its wrap-up or finish its pull request by hand, and accept that conversations and campaigns start afresh, as the upgrade instructions describe. (#740)

Changed

  • The feed no longer shows a subagent's steps, so subagents that run at once no longer interleave their lines with each other's and the agent's. A Claude round still shows each subagent when the agent sends it and its report when it finishes, and the report is no longer indented. A Codex round shows a [wait] line as soon as the agent waits on its subagents. (#729)
  • The status views count down to the next update from when the last update finished, and show updating while an update runs, with a pulse on the web page unless the browser asks for reduced motion. The countdown used to start when an update started, so it reached 0s early and stayed there through the next update. (#740)
  • Each update lists the open issues assigned to the signed-in account once, whatever the number of routes, rather than once for each dispatch label. A failed listing now starts no new work of any kind, and shows as one scheduler failure. (#726)
  • A lead round's trigger names each sub-issue that woke it, with what changed, such as #687: checks finished, mergeable, in place of a count of the sub-issues that changed. The web page links each sub-issue. (#741)
  • No view shows the revision of main that a conversation or campaign round was given. (#741)
  • Once an assignment completes, or a conversation or campaign ends with its issue, the next update removes its worktree, and an assignment's local branch, to free the disk. Its record stays, so the home page, dreamcatcher status and dreamcatcher view still show it, without the worktree or a hand-resume command. A cancelled assignment keeps both. A removal that fails is printed with the update and not tried again. (#732)
  • The web home page always shows the Assignments, Conversations and Campaigns tabs, and dreamcatcher status a section for each kind. Before, a kind's tab and section were hidden while the daemon routed no label of that kind and had none of its work. Now the tab says that the daemon routes none of that kind, and links to the documentation that shows how to add the route to dreamcatcher.toml. (#751)
  • Round lists on the web and in the terminal omit successful outcomes, so running and exceptional outcomes stand out. (#753)
  • The upgrade guide explains how to reclaim the disk an earlier state format holds, after keeping any cancelled assignment's work you want. (#742)
  • The campaign guides explain when to use GitHub's merge queue, or leave its up-to-date requirement off, to avoid repeated agent rounds after each stage merges. (#754)

Fixed

  • A campaign's sub-issue card shows a new assignment in the update that starts it, instead of waiting one more update. (#739)
  • The documentation home page's headline fits a phone held sideways. (#743)
  • An invalid web feed position is now called a position in its error message, matching the terminal feed. (#748)
  • Switching theme on the web keeps the page's place in the address, so the home page stays on the tab it showed. (#744)
  • The feed shows the report of a Claude subagent that hands its report back, where it showed only a line saying the report was delivered elsewhere. (#729)

v8.0.0 — 2026-10-23

Breaking

  • dreamcatcher view replaces dreamcatcher assignment, dreamcatcher conversation and dreamcatcher campaign, and stop and feed no longer take --assignment, --conversation or --campaign. retry, stop, cancel, view and feed each take GH<n> for the one piece of agent work at the issue, of any kind, or an agent work identifier for that exact work. retry clears the fault of that one piece, or reports that it is not in fault, so it now reaches a conversation in fault that is not the newest at its issue. When the issue has more than one piece, the command changes nothing and prints a command for each piece, with its identifier, so the view no longer lists the other work at the issue. (#691)

Changed

  • The default dream:less recipes now use Sonnet at high effort for Claude and gpt-5.6-terra at high effort for Codex. Existing configuration files and work already created keep their recipes. (#707)
  • A work page on the web names its kind and opens in the same browser tab, and its < home link returns to the tab of that kind. The home page's tabs are in the address, so the back button moves between them. (#698)

Fixed

  • On macOS and Linux, closing the terminal that runs dreamcatcher run, ending the daemon with kill, or shutting the machine down now ends its rounds as interrupted, as Ctrl-C does. Before, their harnesses carried on without the daemon. (#690)
  • After the machine restarts, starting the daemon no longer ends a program that has taken the process identifier of a round from before the restart. (#690)
  • The reason given when a campaign cannot observe a sub-issue names it by its number alone, and the reason given when a conversation cannot post its answer names no issue, so the web pages no longer show an issue in the terminal's GH12 form. (#692)
  • A conversation round input that cannot be read now fails the status report with the file and what is wrong with it, as an assignment's or a campaign's does. Before, the round's trigger read "comments" and its revision was left out. (#704)
  • On a work page on the web, a round's boundary stays at the top of the feed only while that round is in view, so the end of a long, wrapped boundary no longer shows beneath the next round's. (#700)

v7.0.0 — 2026-10-22

Breaking

  • Saved state moves to state format 7, in .dreamcatcher/v7/. Saved work from v6 does not carry across: before upgrading, let each assignment reach its wrap-up or finish its pull request by hand, and accept that conversations start afresh, as the upgrade instructions describe. (#662)

Added

  • Campaigns, a third kind of agent work. A [[campaign]] route in dreamcatcher.toml names a label and the lead's recipes. Labelling a parent issue assigned to you starts a campaign: the lead takes a round in a worktree checked out at main, posts on GitHub itself, and keeps its final output in the feed. Each comment you post on the parent then wakes the lead in the same harness session, on main refreshed, and comments posted while the campaign is paused reach it when it resumes. Closing the parent ends the campaign. The lead's input also holds the parent's sub-issues and where each one's assignment stands, and a sub-issue that needs the lead's attention wakes it too. The lead leaves the agent marker off its feedback on a sub-issue's pull request, so the assignment's agent is given that feedback as it is given yours. Start a campaign explains how, and the campaign skill contract says what the lead is given. (#662, #667, #671, #672, #674)
  • The web home page has a Campaigns tab, where each active campaign counts its closed sub-issues and expands to show each one's assignment card, request or issue, and the terminal has a dreamcatcher campaign view. stop and feed take --campaign, and retry also clears the fault of the newest campaign at the issue. (#662, #671, #673)
  • The dreamcatcher.toml that dreamcatcher init writes routes the dream:lead label to campaigns, and init creates that label. The route's recipes run the dream plugin's dream:lead skill, which carries a parent issue's sub-issues through their assignments to merge. Start a campaign explains what it does. (#677)
  • Campaigns can be queued: a campaign shows as blocked while an open issue blocks its parent on GitHub, and starts once every blocker is closed. Start a campaign explains how. (#682)
  • A second tutorial, From parent issue to merged stages, takes a parent issue with two dependent sub-issues through dream:lead to merge. (#680)

Fixed

  • Starting dreamcatcher for the first time in a repository no longer fails on Python 3.13 before any agent work exists. (#664)
  • Stop and recover work now says that work resumed after an errored or interrupted round also takes up what arrived meanwhile. (#680)
  • The animated status view on the documentation home page now shows the statuses, round details and dispatch labels that the web home page shows, rather than a "needs user feedback" status that the web page no longer has. (#647)
  • A request blocked by an issue in another repository now names that issue with its repository, as owner/name#123, on the web home page and in dreamcatcher status, and the web page links to it there. It had been shown and linked as an issue in this repository. The web home page also no longer puts a space before each comma between the issues a request names. (#676)

v6.3.0 — 2026-10-21

Added

  • assignment, conversation, feed and stop accept an agent work identifier, such as GH123-20260912-192458-assignment, to select that exact assignment or conversation instead of the newest at the issue. (#628)

Changed

  • Scheduler failures now show one to a line, apart from the other instance facts, on the web home page and in dreamcatcher status. A failed GitHub read names its gh command without the options, such as gh issue list, rather than the whole command line. (#623)
  • When a refresh fails, an assignment or conversation page now keeps its feed and shows a warning with the reason, as the home page already did. The warning clears once a refresh succeeds. The home page's warning now uses the same words. (#637)
  • The assignment and conversation views list the other work of their kind at the issue, with each one's identifier, dispatch label and status, and stay on the work they opened on when newer work arrives. (#628)
  • The upgrade instructions now say to stop every standalone view, such as dreamcatcher web or a refreshing status, before you install a release with a different state format, and to start the views again from the new installation. A view left running from the old format may show stale status. Upgrades that keep the state format need no such step. See Restart views across state formats. (#639)
  • Looking up the work at one issue now reads only matching work directories, without opening unrelated records. (#640)
  • The user stories clarify how request cards relate to saved work and which local-state failures need user repair. They also record that authorization to start work on another user's instance remains an open question, rather than an endorsed workflow. (#627, #632, #634)
  • The README now directs ideas, suggestions and questions to GitHub Discussions, alongside the documentation link. (#642)

Fixed

  • On Windows, a harness that cannot be started safely now errors its round and never runs. (#625)
  • On a narrow web home page, a long status now moves below the issue's title and wraps within the row, instead of squeezing the title into a column of single characters. (#624)

v6.2.0 — 2026-10-20

Added

  • The user stories describe expected behaviour for normal use, user errors and external faults, including which limitations are accepted. A bug includes a failure of the handling a story promises. (#592, #598)

Changed

  • An idle assignment whose pull request is still a draft now reads "needs feedback" rather than "draft", because the agent is waiting on you. (#612)
  • The web home page shows assignments and conversations in tabs rather than side by side, giving the selected kind of agent work the full dashboard width. (#596)
  • A round that resumes an assignment after a round that did not finish, with nothing new to relay, now shows the trigger "recover" instead of "carry on". (#609)
  • Activity notes now show the current round's worktree as <worktree> wherever its absolute path appears, so more of a command remains visible. (#602)

Fixed

  • Repeated state-document reads from the web and terminal views no longer prevent the daemon from replacing those documents on Windows. (#601)
  • A conversation whose errored or interrupted round's comments the user deleted now shows as idle once the next update finds nothing to answer, instead of waiting for a round that will not start. (#615)
  • Assignments and conversations now show as idle while a finished round awaits the next update, instead of appearing to need another round because the last update's channel reading is stale. (#600)
  • Deleting an open assignment's worktree now errors its next round and lets the daemon continue. A second failure puts the assignment in fault, as the user story promises. (#599)
  • An assignment round that follows an errored or interrupted one is now told to continue the unfinished assignment while its pull request is open, even when no new posts or signals have arrived. Before, an agent could read the empty input as nothing to do and end its turn. (#607)

v6.1.0 — 2026-10-18

Changed

  • The empty commit that starts an assignment now uses the checkout's Git author and skips CI. Checks begin with the agent's first real commit instead. (#582)
  • dreamcatcher cancel says only that the assignment is cancelled. It no longer reads the pull request to name it in the message. (#580)
  • An idle assignment's detail no longer repeats the merge state and check result that its pull request chip shows. It says ready for review, draft, merged or closed, or that checks are still failing after two attempts. (#584)

  • The views say main moved, where they said out of date, for a round that main moving on woke. The pull request chip says behind main or conflicts with main in place of out of date. (#588)

  • dreamcatcher --help lists its commands under "commands", where it said "verbs", and a bare dreamcatcher asks for a command. (#591)

Fixed

  • An assignment's pull request chip keeps showing whether the pull request is draft or ready, its merge state and its check result while a round runs. (#586)

v6.0.0 — 2026-10-17

Breaking

  • dreamcatcher moves to state format 6. It keeps its local state in .dreamcatcher/v6/ and starts with none, so the assignments and conversations that v5 saved are not carried on. Stop a v5 daemon before you start v6. Compatibility and upgrades says what to settle first. (#561)

Added

  • Once an assignment's pull request is ready for review, dreamcatcher wakes the agent without a post from you when the base branch leaves the pull request behind it or in conflict with it, and when a check fails. Each is relayed once for each commit at the head of the pull request, and a draft gets neither. After two rounds in a row woken by failing checks, a failing check does not wake the agent again until a round has something else to relay, such as a post from you. (#571)
  • The views show an assignment's merge state and check result beside draft or ready, and an idle assignment says when its checks are running or still failing after two attempts. (#571)
  • A Claude assignment round may run gh pr checks and gh run view without being asked, so that it can read why a check failed. (#571)
  • An assignment round's input file gains two keys: pull_request_head, the pull request's head commit when the round started, and signals, which lists out_of_date or check_failure when either woke the round. The agent contract stays at version 1, and an assignment skill may ignore both, since the prompt carries the instructions. (#571)
  • A conversation ends when its issue is closed, and the web home page lists it with your other ended work. (#568)

Changed

  • Assignments and conversations share one set of states: working, waiting, idle, fault, unknown and ended. The states needs user feedback, complete and cancelled are gone. An assignment that needs your feedback reads as idle, and one that completed or that you cancelled reads as ended with that detail. (#565)
  • dreamcatcher status and the web home page list each labelled issue that has no work yet beside the work of its kind, and say why no work has started: available, blocked by an issue, claimed by a pull request, waiting for a comment, carrying conflicting labels, or unknown because a read failed. The sections of available, blocked and routing-conflict issues are gone. (#565)
  • A round that fails before its agent starts, such as an assignment's first round when it cannot push the branch, is an errored round. It counts towards a fault like any other, and the failed setups section is gone from the views. (#562)
  • After a round errors or is interrupted, the next round is given the same input again, with a line saying that the previous round did not finish. The feed and the rounds table say what woke each round. (#562)
  • A conversation belongs to the conversation label that started it. Removing that label, unassigning the issue or adding a second conversation label pauses it, and undoing the change resumes it in the same harness session. Another conversation label starts a conversation of its own once it is the issue's only conversation label. (#568)
  • Every assignment and conversation has an identifier that ends in its kind, such as GH12-20261017-093000-assignment, and an assignment's branch is named after it, such as dreamcatcher-GH12-20261017-093000-assignment. The conversation command, and feed and stop with --conversation, select the newest conversation at the issue, and retry clears the faults of the newest assignment and the newest conversation. (#561)
  • The web page of an assignment or a conversation is at /work/<identifier>. The /assignments/<identifier> and /conversations/<issue> addresses are gone. (#561)
  • An issue with an open assignment no longer has its blockers and linked pull requests read at every update, so the daemon makes fewer GitHub reads. (#568)
  • The web interface's matrix theme drops its boxes, as the nature theme did. Panels become headings over a rule, assignments, issues and conversations are rows divided by rules, and the feed and rounds line up with their headings. The filled chip alone marks an assignment that needs your feedback, and the current round's number shows in inverse video. (#543)

Fixed

  • dreamcatcher status and the web interface read the dispatch labels that the running daemon loaded, where they read dreamcatcher.toml before. They no longer disagree with the daemon after you edit the file, and they still work when it is missing or broken. (#561)
  • Removing conversation label A from an issue and adding label B no longer resumes A's conversation with A's settings. B starts a conversation of its own, and A's stays paused. (#568)
  • An assignment interrupted while it set up its branch, worktree or pull request no longer leaves them behind with no record that names them. The assignment is recorded first, and its next round finishes the setup. (#562)
  • An assignment relays a post by the signed-in account however GitHub writes the login's capitals, and no longer relays a post whose body is only whitespace, as conversations already did. (#573)

v5.6.2 — 2026-10-15

Changed

  • The web interface's nature theme takes a crisper look. Assignments, issues and conversations are rows divided by rules in place of blurred cards, the feed and rounds lose their boxes, and only the states that need you keep a filled pill. The documentation site follows, and its home page now shows a miniature of the web interface. (#539)

v5.6.1 — 2026-10-12

Fixed

  • The web interface's nature theme separates the cards of ended assignments and makes them more compact, so their blurred surfaces no longer run together. (#525)
  • A conversation or assignment page before its first round now leaves the rounds panel blank, and an empty conversation feed invites you to post a comment, where both showed a dashed placeholder before. (#528)

v5.6.0 — 2026-10-12

Changed

  • dreamcatcher run now opens and serves the web interface beside the daemon. Use --noweb to run only the daemon; the standalone dreamcatcher web command remains available for manual control. (#518)
  • dreamcatcher run now includes the installed software version in its startup message. (#522)

Fixed

  • The web interface's nature theme gives each round's heading the page background, so the heading no longer sits in a band of a slightly different colour. (#520)

v5.5.1 — 2026-10-12

Fixed

  • The web interface's nature theme no longer draws a hard outline around the home page cards in its dark scheme, so their edges stay soft as in the light one. (#515)
  • The agent contract, the ontology and the guides to configuring and customising skills now name conversation skills beside assignment skills, where they spoke of conversation prompts before. The agent contract stays at version 1, and existing skills and prompts need no change. (#513)

v5.5.0 — 2026-10-11

Added

  • A how-to guide, "Customise skills", says how to start with dream's skills and how to write and route your own. It replaces the home page section on skills. (#505)
  • dreamcatcher is published on PyPI. Install it with uv tool install dreamcatcher. (#512)

Changed

  • The web interface's nature theme now follows the viewer's system light or dark setting. Its dark scheme uses a dusk palette and shows the moon crossing the sky at night; the Matrix theme is unchanged. (#507)
  • The documentation now introduces the dream plugin, says which of its skills run under dreamcatcher, and links to the dream documentation site. (#499)
  • The documentation home page opens with a hero: a short account of what dreamcatcher does over an animated status view. (#500)
  • The documentation site sets its text in Geist and its headings in Instrument Serif, and offers a dusk scheme beside the day one. It follows your system setting, and the header has a switch between the two. (#500)
  • The documentation home page leads with what sets dreamcatcher apart: agents that run in your own setup, that you steer from GitHub wherever you are, and as many at once as you allow. It explains how dreamcatcher works before it introduces the dream plugin's skills, so it no longer reads as if dreamcatcher provides them. (#501)
  • The documentation home page no longer shows a label above its headline, and its account of an assignment includes the rounds that address your review. Its last section says that you can start with dream's skills or write your own. (#502)
  • The documentation home page hero has tighter wording. (#503)
  • The documentation home page lists the how-to guides in the same order as the navigation. (#504)

Fixed

  • Assignment setup no longer runs the repository's commit and pre-push hooks on the empty placeholder commit, so a hook that cannot run in a fresh worktree no longer stops agent work from starting. The agent's own commits and pushes still run them. (#497)
  • The documentation home page says to assign the issue to yourself before you ask a question in a conversation, and it links to the agent-facing contract again. (#512)

v5.4.0 — 2026-10-08

Changed

  • Terminal and web status views now share their daemon, instance, agent-work, and round ordering and wording. (#488)
  • The default dream:less recipes now use medium effort for both harnesses. Existing configuration files are unchanged. (2aa4d8b)

Fixed

  • The web home page's empty panels now tell users to assign the issue to the signed-in GitHub account and apply a route label. The conversation panel also says to comment from that account. (#486)
  • dreamcatcher init now gives suitable next steps when the configuration has only conversation routes or no routes. It no longer fails with a traceback. (#487)
  • The web home page now reports a failed background refresh while keeping the last successful status visible. The warning clears after a successful refresh. (#489)

v5.3.0 — 2026-10-07

Added

  • When a kind of agent work has no current work, the web home page now names the labels that start it in place of an empty panel. (#460)

Changed

  • dreamcatcher.toml may now leave out [[assignment]] routes, as it could already leave out [[conversation]] routes. The web home page hides the panel for a kind of agent work that has neither routes nor work. (#460)
  • The top bar of every web page now links the version number to the documentation site, in place of a separate Docs link. (#464)
  • Dots now separate the repository, issues and pulls links in the top bar. (#466)
  • The documentation site lists Review an assignment straight after the tutorial. (#462)

Fixed

  • A running daemon now stops, along with its rounds, when its lock file goes missing or is replaced, as happens when someone deletes the state directory. A second daemon could otherwise run against the same checkout beside it. (#468)

v5.2.0 — 2026-10-07

Added

  • Every web page now links to the documentation site from its top bar. (#438)
  • The top bar of every web page now links to the repository's issues and pulls on GitHub, beside the repository's name. (#441)
  • dreamcatcher init prepares a repository's main checkout for run. It checks gh, Git and each harness, writes a default dreamcatcher.toml for the harnesses that are installed, installs the dream plugin, and creates the labels the configuration names. The tutorial now uses it. (#439)

Changed

  • Nature is now the default web theme. Matrix remains available from the theme switch, and an existing theme choice is still remembered. (#448)
  • The complete example in the configuration reference now routes conversations to dream:scout and assignments to dream:smith and dream:less. (#437)

Fixed

  • Retrying conversation creation after a failed record write now reuses the worktree left by the earlier attempt. The first round still resets it to fetched main before the agent reads it. (#453)
  • The web home page heads its conversations panel Conversations again, beside Assignments, in place of Issue conversations. (#449)

v5.1.0 — 2026-10-06

Added

Changed

  • The assignment and conversation pages now show Stop and Cancel as stop round and cancel assignment, at the foot of the page beside resume by hand and styled like it. stop round asks you to confirm, as cancel assignment already did. Retry stays at the top. (#427)
  • The product name is now dreamcatcher, in lower case, in the documentation, the help, the messages and the web pages. The web pages now write every issue number as #123, as GitHub does. (#431)

v5.0.0 — 2026-10-06

  • Terminal and web live views now keep following faulted assignments and conversations in fault or with a routing conflict, so recovery appears without reopening the view. They stop only when an assignment ends or a conversation leaves the status report. (#415)
  • Brought the words in the status views, CLI help and messages, and guides into line with each other. An assignment that needs your feedback shows how long since its last output rather than "idle". The terminal and web views share their labels and say "preferred harness" for the daemon's --harness. A scheduler tick is called an update wherever you read about one, so the daemon now reports "update failed". A route's per-harness settings are a dispatch recipe throughout, and the run help says one daemon runs per checkout. (#416)
  • The web pages and the terminal status view no longer report a running daemon as stopped, or its running rounds as interrupted, after the system clock is corrected. The daemon now holds an operating-system lock on .dreamcatcher/daemon.lock for as long as it runs, in place of .dreamcatcher/daemon.pid, so stop a v4.0.0 daemon before you start this release. (#405)
  • Added a config table to a Codex recipe in dreamcatcher.toml. dreamcatcher passes each entry to every Codex round as -c key=value, so that a label can run Codex with settings such as a larger context window. (#402)
  • Added dreamcatcher stop to request a stop for the running round of a selected assignment or issue conversation. (#374)
  • Added dreamcatcher cancel and a Cancel control on the assignment page, so that you can finish an assignment's pull request by hand. A cancelled assignment runs no further rounds and shows as cancelled. The web home page and the terminal status view now group complete and cancelled assignments as ended. (#376)
  • A cancel or a retry request is no longer lost when the daemon records something about the same assignment or conversation at the same moment. (#395)
  • The web home page and the terminal status view show capacity, a global cooldown and the latest update's failures once each. Failures, such as a failed issue listing, appear on a scheduler failures row, and the web home page no longer hides them while capacity is full. The daemon's line for each update says what it launched, then any global cooldown, full capacity and failures. (#389)
  • Reshaped the documentation around reader tasks: a start-to-finish tutorial, focused task guides, complete command and configuration references, this changelog, compatibility guidance and a testing account. (#370)
  • The web assignment and conversation pages now show the "resume by hand" section only while no round is running, and update it without a reload when a round starts or ends. An open section stays open across refreshes. (#385)
  • Corrected CLI help to include routing conflicts among the conditions that end live conversation and conversation-feed views. (#370)
  • Ending a round on macOS no longer fails with a permission error when its harness has exited in the same moment, and starting a round on Windows no longer fails when its harness exits in the moment after it starts: a Windows child is now placed in its job before it runs. (#371)
  • A failed issue listing for an assignment label no longer prevents the rounds that existing assignments require. It prevents only the creation of new assignments. (#387)
  • State format 5 starts with empty local state in .dreamcatcher/v5/; state format 4 is left untouched and ignored. Finish assignments through successful wrap-up, stop the daemon, and accept fresh conversation context before upgrading. See Upgrade from v4.0.0 to v5.0.0. (#364)
  • State format 5 puts the initial conversation title and body under initial_issue. Agent contract version 1 documents that current protocol; declaring the version does not itself change the input. Prompt and skill authors should check their assumptions against the contract. (#364, #370)
  • The prompt that hands an assignment new pull request posts now opens with "User-posts prompt for pull request #N:" rather than "PR-inbox prompt", and each round's input file is round-input.json rather than inbox.json. A skill that recognises the old words should follow the contract instead. (#411)
  • Added a Retry button to the web assignment and conversation pages while the work is in fault. It records the same retry request as dreamcatcher retry for the work the page shows. (#386)
  • A conversation in fault now shows fault even when its issue has a routing conflict, is no longer eligible, or has no scheduler observation yet, so its page offers Retry. Before, it could show idle, unknown or routing conflict. (#394)
  • The "resume by hand" command for a Codex session now sets the work's model, effort and harness config, as every other Codex round does. (#408)

v4.0.0 — 2026-10-01

  • State format 4 began with new local state. Configuration renamed assignment route tables from [[dispatch]] to [[assignment]] and changed the single [conversation] table to repeatable [[conversation]] routes. The assignee setting was removed; dreamcatcher uses the account signed in through gh.

Evidence: state format 4 commit, assignment-route rename, conversation-route change, assignee removal.

v3.2.0 — 2026-09-26

  • Added issue conversations, including follow-up and recovery rounds and support for both Claude and Codex. Older scheduler records within state format 3 became invalid and had to be removed before restarting.

Evidence: scheduler-record change.

v3.1.0 — 2026-09-23

  • Added the local web dashboard for monitoring assignments and their feeds.

v3.0.0 — 2026-09-21

  • Introduced numbered state directories with state format 3. Earlier unversioned local state was left untouched and ignored. Daemon interval and agent capacity moved from configuration into run options.

Evidence: state-directory change, legacy-state removal, daemon-option change.

v3.0.0.beta1 — 2026-09-20

  • Replaced sessions with agent assignments and changed their unversioned saved records. No migration was provided for the pre-release state.

Evidence: assignment-boundary commit.

v2.0.0 — 2026-09-10

  • Replaced the scry command with the board, session and feed views. The release did not change the saved-state layout.

Evidence: command change.

v1.0 — 2026-09-09

  • First tagged release, using unversioned local state.