Skip to content

Changelog

All notable changes to Herald are documented here. Format follows Keep a Changelog.

[Unreleased]

Added

  • project_type field in project config (poc, solo, open_source, team, enterprise) — controls which template variant is scaffolded at !addproject time
  • Type-specific CLAUDE.md templates: templates/poc/ (minimal) and templates/open_source/ (full docs, keepachangelog, CONTRIBUTING.md reference)
  • MkDocs Material docs site with blog plugin, deployed to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions
  • docs/index.md home page
  • Blog posts: launch post (2026-02-28) and March update (2026-03-02)

[0.2.0] — 2026-03-02

Added

  • .herald/ directory layout — SOUL.md, MEMORY.md, and humans/ profiles now live in .herald/ in each project repo (CLAUDE.md stays at root — Claude Code requires it there)
  • Multiple agents per project and integration test suite added to Phase 2 roadmap
  • Multiple coding tool backends added to Long-Term roadmap

Changed

  • _scaffold_project_files creates .herald/ directory and places MEMORY.md and humans/ profiles inside it
  • _maybe_bootstrap_soul checks .herald/SOUL.md (was SOUL.md at root)
  • autonomy.py pre-flight checks .herald/SOUL.md
  • All schedule task prompts updated: "Read .herald/SOUL.md and .herald/MEMORY.md."
  • .gitignore: humans/ → .herald/humans/* with !.herald/humans/keith.md

[0.1.5] — 2026-03-01

Added

  • Autonomous development mode — per-project weekly minute budget; daily pre-flight check (SOUL.md, roadmap items, operator idle, gap, daily cap); !autonomy Discord command with on/off/status/budget/reserve subcommands; data/autonomy.json tracking with ISO-week and calendar-day reset logic
  • Python package restructure — all source moved to herald/ package; pyproject.toml with entry point, pytest config, and ruff lint
  • Test suite — tests/test_queue.py, tests/test_config.py, tests/test_autonomy.py (70 tests total covering queue invariants, config validation, and autonomy pre-flight)
  • Claude Code CLI flags — --output-format json for structured token count output; --model and --max-turns per-project overrides
  • File attachments in project channels — images, logs, and text files attached to Discord messages are downloaded and injected into the agent task
  • !push / !cancel commands — manually check for unpushed branches; cancel queued tasks

Changed

  • Usage limit errors (rate/quota) during scheduled tasks log a warning and skip silently; interactive runs still surface the error
  • Autonomous runs use record_activity=False to keep the accountability clock honest

[0.1.0] — 2026-02-28

Added

  • Discord bot (discord.py 2.x) with commands: !run, !status, !projects, !help
  • Serial asyncio task queue — one agent runs at a time, globally
  • APScheduler cron jobs per project, staggered +15 min by index
  • Claude Code CLI wrapper — cd <project_path> && claude -p "<task>" --print
  • Git push-approval flow — agent commits → Discord proposal → 👍/👎
  • Activity tracking — data/activity.json, per-project last-run timestamps
  • Accountability checker — 14d nudge / 21d direct / 28d roast (daily 9am cron)
  • SOUL.md soul check on startup — warns if project is missing one, offers to create
  • Docker Compose deployment with named volumes for data and agent memory
  • Agent design pattern — docs/agent-pattern.md and templates/
  • MEMORY.md tiered memory system — Core / Long-Term / Short-Term / Humans sections
  • Deploy feature — deploy.py, !deploy command, auto_deploy_on_push flag
  • Dockerfile — Docker CLI + Compose plugin baked in
  • Webhook support — per-agent Discord identity (name + avatar) via webhook; !addproject creates channel + webhook automatically
  • !addproject — register a new project end-to-end from Discord: clones repo, creates private channel, creates webhook, writes YAML, hot-reloads
  • Hot-reload config — !reload re-reads all YAMLs and restarts the scheduler
  • !schedule — set or update a project's cron schedule from Discord
  • Herald manages itself — projects/herald.yaml registered via !addproject
  • Soul creation flow — missing SOUL.md triggers an automatic bootstrap agent run; agent explores codebase, writes SOUL.md + initial MEMORY.md, posts a self-introduction
  • Conversational project channels — plain messages trigger agent runs with recent channel history as context
  • HERALD_ROOT layout — consolidated into single HERALD_ROOT var; Herald source lives in repos/herald/ like other managed projects
  • Podman rootless support — HERALD_DOCKER_SOCKET env var makes socket path configurable; Docker CLI in image works with Podman's Docker-compatible API
  • Caddy sidecar option — optional Caddy service in compose.yaml; caddy/Caddyfile.example template; herald_net shared network
  • Security threat model — prompt injection chain, Docker socket risk, Podman rootless mitigation documented in docs/spec.md
  • Watchdog service — watchdog.sh + systemd unit; polls every 15s and restarts Herald if the container is down (required for self-deploy to complete)