Hey everyone,

This week, something we shipped early became real because of you.

QuickHub was a preview. You gave feedback, found bugs, and pushed the product forward. This week that turned into automatic screen context, snap QuickHub to any window and it loads what's on your screen instantly. Screenshot and accessibility data, no prompts, no copy-paste.

This is what happens when you build in public!

The roadmap isn't ours. It's ours.

Join the community and keep shaping what comes next →

Switch between the Notch and the QuickHub during your day

Enable QuickHub Mode in Settings. The notch isn't going anywhere, this is your choice, and we want you to have time to explore.

But we think playing with it is a great way to see what works, what doesn’t before we shut down the notch entirely.

So keep the feedback coming!

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Automatic screen context: Snap QuickHub to a window to load screenshot and accessibility context automatically—no manual capture flow.

• Notifications: Redirected notch notifications to floating notification surfaces, including a glass background on Tahoe; removed legacy notch notifications in favor of surfaces.

• Meeting & recording: In-meeting audio settings; ProcessTap as the default capture path; improved sleep and wake handling using IOPMAssertion instead of caffeinate.

• QuickHub: Better keyboard shortcuts for attach and detach.

• New Models: Minimax 2.7, GLM 5.1, Qwen 3.6 Plus

Bug Fixes & Stability

• QuickHub: Fixed typing lag after the shortcut; reworked attached focus and window layering; resolved cmd-drag delay and kept drag tied to active focus; fixed top content clipped by the title bar, window frame resets after computer-use cleanup, full-screen and close behavior, appearance settings respect, streaming from QuickHub into the Hub, pending context on new chat with AppSense sync and other windows incorrectly resurfacing on close.

• "Add to Alter" / Finder: Restored adding content to QuickHub as well as the main app.

• Audio & microphone: Fixed empty meeting recordings; clearer error surfacing; preserved failed meeting audio for recovery; cleared stale transcription failure indicators.

• Menubar & notch: Quit handling across custom windows; menubar quit button; meeting recording state synced with the meeting controls aligned to the menubar.

• MCP & auth: Ephemeral loopback for OAuth and token refresh; deferred remote MCP startup for login-item launches; simpler remote MCP success page; authentication checks on schedule jobs and across views.

• Settings & usage: Clamped max tokens to 8192 in manage settings; duplicate Settings menu entry removed; delete confirmations aligned between Hub and Quick Hub; window-relative delete alerts where possible.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

This week, we are doing something a little different.

We are giving you a first look at the future of Alter. Not a final release. A preview. And we want you to be the first to try it.

The Notch Is Gone. This Is What Replaced It.

Alter has lived in your notch since day one. But we have been thinking bigger than the notch for a while now.

Too many apps are fighting for that space. There are conflicts with menu bar managers. And honestly — a lot of you are not even on a MacBook. The notch was never your experience.

So we built something new.

A newer floating window. And it changes how Alter fits into your day.

Meet the New Alter Window

This is not just a design change. It is a different way to work with Alter.

Here is what it can do:

All your chats in one place
One floating window holds every conversation you have open. Switch between them instantly. It feels like tabs — but cleaner. No tabs needed.

The Switcher
Press one key. Everything surfaces at once — your actions, transcripts, commands, and history.

Behaves like a real macOS window
Move it, resize it, put it wherever you want. Or flip it to always-on-top mode and it stays visible no matter what app you switch to.

Attach it to any app
Snap the window to the left or right of your browser, your editor, anything. Alter lives next to your work — not hiding behind it.

And this is the part we are most excited about.

When computer use activates — when Alter is actually doing something on your screen — the window attaches itself. Automatically. You can see exactly what is happening, and take back control at any moment.

You Asked. We Built It.

A lot of you have been asking for this one specifically.

There is now a cost estimator built into the window. Before you send a message, you can see how heavy your query will be and how it impacts your fair use limit.

No more surprises. Total control. You asked, so we built it.

What About the Notch?

It is not going anywhere. Not yet.

This is a preview. You can try the new window today, or keep the notch — completely your choice. We want you to have time to explore, compare, and decide what works best for you.

But we believe this is the right direction. And we think once you try it, you will feel it too.

How to Try It

Open the Settings and enable the QuickHub Mode

We’re very excited by this release, please share your experience on Discord!

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• QuickHub Preview: Added the new floating QuickHub window as a preview of where Alter is going, bringing chats, transcripts, and quick actions into one movable interface.

• Switcher & Command Palette: Added a faster switcher with cmd+k, prefix support, sections for quick actions, and better ways to jump between conversations, transcripts, and commands.

• Smarter Window Attachment: QuickHub can now attach to the left or right side of a target window, match window height, auto-attach during computer use, and support text selection workflows.

• Hub, Menus & Notifications: Added a new menu for recent chats and transcripts, better notifications outside the notch, and progress feedback on notification action buttons.

• Settings & Usage Visibility: Added a modern Settings UI, shortcuts settings, and a cost estimate indicator so it is easier to understand how much context you are sending.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Notch Transition & Windowing: Improved reopen behavior, reduced notch layout issues across screen changes.

• Chat, Hub & Conversation Fixes: Fixed deadlocks, overlay presentation, focus issues, transcript handling, and reduced unnecessary editor refreshes.

• Audio, Recording & Session Stability: Improved microphone state handling, recording reliability, speaker diarization loading, session recovery, missed schedule handling, and clearer "no session" alerts.

• Workspace, Flow & Skills Fixes: Improved workspace ID handling for ephemeral and flow tool use, reduced skill loading issues, and made generated files surface correctly in ephemeral workspaces.

• Copy, Diff & Rendering Fixes: Restored the diff switch button, fixed diff copy behavior and source persistence, and improved markdown copy output for rich text.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

This week, we’re introducing image generation directly in Alter.

You can now use your fal.ai account, which gives Alter access to a broad ecosystem of generative media models and workflows, to generate images directly in Alter.

That matters because this release goes beyond simple text-to-image: you can generate visuals, edit existing assets, remove backgrounds, upscale images, and experiment with newer models as they become available, all from the same workspace.

🎶 Austher - Memory Code 🎶 

Meet Creative Studio

We have added image generation capabilities directly into Alter. To make this easier to use, we also created a dedicated skill called Creative Studio.

The result is not just image generation. You can handle a full image workflow in one place: create an image, edit it, remove the background, upscale the result, and review everything directly in Alter.

This Agent Skill is open-source, do not hesitate to contribute or to use it with your other tools like Claude Code. https://github.com/alterhq/fal-ai-mcp-creative-studio

How It Works

By default, Alter is now shipped with Creative Agent, ready to go.

When launched for the first time, you will get presented a window to add the missing tools, or MCP connection required to use the agent.

Example prompts used in the video

Use Wan 2.7 pro to generate an image of fireworks where we can read the word Alter

Change the color of my jacket

Remove the background from this image

Upscale this image

Why fal.ai matters here

fal.ai gives Alter access to a flexible and evolving layer of image models. That means we are not tied to one visual engine or one generation path.

It also means Alter can support a broader set of practical image tasks, including:

1. Text-to-image generation

2. Targeted image edits

3. Background removal

4. Upscaling

5. Access to newly released models over time

In short, this makes Alter more useful for real creative work, not just prompting demos.

What image workflow should we solve next? Let us know!

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Creative Workflow: Alter can generate images directly, work with uploaded files, and support richer media workflows from one place.

• Creative Agent: Added the new creative agent action using multiple tools and our open-source creative studio Agent skill.

• Better Tool Outputs in Chat: Tool-produced resources and images now flow through conversations more cleanly, and the tool inspector can show files produced by tools.

• Conversation Rendering Upgrades: Added Mermaid support in conversations and improved how images are handled as resources to reduce token usage.

• Remote MCP Servers: Added Craft, Exa, Fal.ai as new official servers

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Image, Chat & Tool Reliability: Fixed image encoding and display issues from MCP tools, improved tool error surfacing, corrected tool parameter truncation, and fixed snake_case tool name presentation.

• Remote MCP Servers: Fixed authentication issues.

• Action, Hub & Editor Fixes: Fixed the action editor model selector getting out of sync, restored correct new-chat behavior when invoking an action from the Hub, fixed glitchy switching between actions.

• Stability & Performance Improvements: Reduced hangs across AX activation, launch-at-login, menu interactions, modal flows, and choice dialogs; improved notch action list performance; and fixed test build issues.

• Workspace & Flow Fixes: Fixed workspace-bound chats opened from the Hub losing workspace tooling, made replace follow-up behavior consistent with the replace tool, and ensured Flow details return the full schema payload.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

We are closing the Microsoft trilogy today, with Powerpoint. (read here about Word and Excel)

What if you could build professional PowerPoint presentations, complete with custom layouts, grids, and visual assets, without ever opening Microsoft PowerPoint?

🎶 Martin Brodin - Semitone Shuffle (Lauer Remix) 🎶 

Meet PowerPoint Skills

We have embedded PowerPoint capabilities directly into Alter. Simply add the PPTX skill to your workspace, provide your templates or instructions, and let Alter handle the creation, formatting, and export process.

How It Works

1. Setup: Create a workspace and enable the PPTX skill.

2. (Recommended) Prepare: Drop your presentation templates into your workspace folder.

3. Plan: Use Plan Mode to define your slide structure. Alter will refine the plan with you to ensure the output matches your vision.

4. Create: Instruct Alter to build your slides.

5. Review & Export: Alter generates the PowerPoint file, PDFs, and preview images directly in your chat. You can review the visual output inline, and open the files in PowerPoint or Keynote with a single click.

Example prompt (used in the video)

Make a nice logo grid slide with the AI providers shown on this website about Alter 

Make sure 
1. Respect logo aspect ratio
2. Have consistency in term of width
3. Produce both the PPTX and PDF for review
4. Use Template.PPTX for colors, font and design principles 
5. Create also JPG version of the slide for review

Use the logo images served on Alterhq.com homepage

Pro-Tips: Reviewing and Refining Your Slides

Don't just stop at the first draft. Leverage Alter to perfect your deck:

1. Inline Review: Use the generated preview images to instantly check alignment and visual hierarchy without leaving the chat.

2. Suggest Modifications: Found a slide that needs a tweak? Simply ask: "Can you adjust the layout on slide 3 to be more balanced?" or "Change the font size of the titles to be larger."

3. Grammatical Fixes: You can ask Alter to proofread your entire presentation. Try: "Review the text in the deck for grammatical errors and improve the overall tone to be more professional."

4. Iterative Improvements: If you need to change imagery or data, just point to the specific slide and tell Alter what to swap out.

What presentation use case should we solve next? Let us know!

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancement

• Embedded PowerPoint Creation: Added a new PPTX skill so Alter can generate PowerPoint presentations directly, including support for richer visual presentation workflows.

• Media Creation: Images created by tools are now displayed in the conversation, with options to preview, open, download, and copy them.

• Custom Endpoint Management: Custom endpoints can now be sorted by visibility, and a new option lets you decide if newly discovered models should automatically be made visible.

• Tools & Workflow Upgrades: Added alarms to reminders, Apple Mail contexts now list attachments without downloading them, chat messages can be copied as plain text or markdown from the context menu.

• Broader App Compatibility: Added support for the Helium browser.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Custom Endpoints Reliability: Improved compatibility with custom endpoint setups.

• Hub & Transcript Stability: Fixed transcript opening in Hub, prevented crashes when updating transcripts in the sidebar, resolved transcript renaming sync issues, and reduced tab reload loops when many tabs open at once.

• Chat & Conversation Resilience: Improved retry behavior, surfaced connection errors more clearly, and fixed image results not appearing in conversations.

• Workspace, Tools & Sandbox Fixes: Fixed missing workspace_id in tool calls, prevented ghost tools after deleting quick actions.

• Audio, Remote & Build Fixes: Improved server error handling, fixed WhisperPro trial availability, resolved audio recording stop/write timing issues.

• Model & UI Polish: Custom models in the floating window are now sorted by name.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

After last week’s Excel skill, we tackled another tool people still waste too much time in: Word.

You can now review Word docs in Alter, work directly on the file, and get back a new .docx with comments, highlights, and edits in place.

Meet the DOCX Skill

Drop word documents in your workspace with the docx skill enabled. Ask for a review, rewrite, cleanup, or restructure. Alter handles the document and returns a version you can actually use.

That means no copying text into chat, no rebuilding formatting by hand, and no losing context between the document and the feedback.

What it’s good for

1. Contract review
   Upload a contract and ask Alter to flag risky clauses, add comments, and highlight the parts worth negotiating.

2. Proposal cleanup
   Take a messy proposal or client doc and turn it into a cleaner, sharper version in Word.

3. Internal docs
   Rewrite SOPs, memos, and reports without tearing apart the structure every time.

Why this matters

Most AI tools talk about the document.

Alter can work inside it.

So instead of getting a detached summary in chat, you get:

1. Comments where the issue appears

2. Highlights on the clauses that matter

3. A new Word file you can review, share, or keep editing

That lowers the switching cost. It also makes the output far more usable.

How it works

1. Create a workspace with your files

2. Add the DOCX Skill

3. Ask Alter what to do

4. Get back a new .docx file with the result

Example prompt

Review this Word document and create a new .docx with comments and highlights added directly in the file.

Focus on:
- risky or one-sided language
- vague clauses
- payment terms
- ownership and IP
- termination rights

Keep the original untouched and return a reviewed version.

Use cases

1. Legal and ops
   Review contracts and prep documents for negotiation

2. Founders and sales
   Tighten proposals, agreements, and customer-facing docs

3. Teams
   Edit internal documentation without rebuilding everything manually

What Word workflow should we solve next?

If you use Word for contracts, proposals, reports, or internal docs, reply and tell us where the friction is.

We’ll keep building around real workflows.

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• DOCX Skill: Alter can now generate and review Word documents directly by adding comments, highlights, and edits inside .docx files without opening Word.

• Meeting & Recording Controls: Meetings can now remain active for up to 30 minutes before low-level auto-stop, new experimental method to capture system audio: choose ProcessTap to record FaceTime and WhatsApp calls.

• Workspace & Usage Improvements: Added Copy Name for workspace files and folders and fast mode cycling is less likely to switch you into the workspace unintentionally.

• New Models: Added GPT-5.4-mini and GPT-5.4-nano

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Floating Window & Memory: Removed crash-prone floating window constraints, reduced floating window crashes, and more aggressively discard conversation webviews to lower memory usage.

• Meetings, Audio & Microphone Handling: Fixed auto-meeting detection across Teams and other apps, microphone input selection shows only physical devices, and the stuck microphone "processing" indicator is resolved.

• Code Runner: Fixed various file not found errors when using skills.

• Quick Actions, Hub & Notch Reliability: Restored quick action shortcuts, prevented duplicate notch submissions, only auto-execute the first quick action response, fixed canceled retry and escape-to-stop behavior in Hub, and resolved lingering notch windows after external display disconnects.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

What if you could create professional Excel files, dashboards, and analysis, without ever opening Microsoft Excel?

 🎶 Ankhoï, Luch - The Future (Notre Dame Remix) 🎶

Meet Excel Skills

We embedded Excel directly into Alter.

Drop your files (PDFs, CSVs, bank statements, whatever).

Ask for what you need. Alter handles the rest.

Real examples:

1. Personal Finance Hub
   Add bank statements → Ask for a dashboard → Get categorized spending, trends, and insights—all in Excel

2. Investment Research
   Upload financial PDFs → Extract data → Create multi-tab dashboards with overviews, growth analysis, and investment summaries

3. Business Analytics
   Feed raw data → Define calculations → Automate monthly reporting in Excel format

How It Works

1. Create a workspace with your data

2. Add the Xlsx Skill

3. Ask: "Create a dashboard" or "Extract and analyze this data"

4. Alter builds the Excel file with formulas, charts, and structure intact

5. Download and use it anywhere

No Excel expertise needed. No manual data entry. No complex formulas to write.

What You Get

• Automated dashboards with proper formatting

• Multi-tab Excel files with linked data

• Real-time calculations and summaries

• Professional-grade financial analysis

• Files you can share, edit, or build on

Use Cases

Finance teams — Auto-generate FX reports, budget tracking, cash flow analysis

Researchers — Extract data from PDFs into structured Excel analysis

Investors — Build investment thesis dashboards from company filings

Creators — Turn raw metrics into professional financial reports

The Real Power

Pair Excel Skills with Workspaces.

Example of prompt used where bank statement are stored:

Create an Excel personal finance dashboard from scratch using the transaction data in the Data folder (feb.csv, march.csv, april.csv).

Requirements:
* Currency: pounds (£)
* Raw data sheet: Import all transactions with all columns
* Dashboard sheet with:
* Key metrics: total income, expenses, net savings, savings rate
* Monthly summary table by category (Feb-Apr)
* Category breakdown with percentages
* Visual charts (pie expense distribution, line trend)
* Category analysis sheet: monthly breakdown with averages and trends
* Professional formatting, color-coding, and currency formatting
* Save as dashboard.xlsx in the Personal Finance folder root

What Excel use case should we solve?

Let us know how you use Excel, and what workflow should we built around!

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Excel Skill: Alter can now turn source documents and raw data into Excel files, dashboards, and analysis through a simple chat workflow.

• Voice Processing: Updated Argmax to latest version.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Transcript Recovery: Reworked transcripts to be recoverable and reindexable.

• Recording Reliability: Fixed first-recording startup issues, improved recovery from screen recording interruption, and fail fast when Whisper models cannot load.

• Audio & Dictation: Fixed voice processor selection issues, better error handling when loading transcription mdoels, enabled cloud dictation on the trial plan, and resolved dictation stop/copy-paste race conditions.

• Chat & Editor UX: Fixed long tool-call URL overflow in chat, preserved new lines when copying code blocks, and restored the missing YouTube transcript icon in the context strip.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

What if search just happened automatically when it should?

🎶 Roosevelt - Feels Right (Gerd Janson Remix) 🎶

Native Web Search: The Better Way

Today, we're shipping Native Web Search, baked into Alter's router models.

Pick best, fair, fast, or light, and web search is automatic.

No tool setup. No extra steps. The model retrieves current information from the internet when it's needed, everything handled on the backend.

You ask about currency conversion? It searches for today's rates.

You need recent data? It finds it automatically.

You ask about a recent event? It gets the facts.

How It Works

1. Choose a router model (best, fair, fast, or light)

2. Ask your question normally

3. Web search happens automatically in the background

4. Get current, accurate answers every time

No configuration needed. No extra friction.

Ground It In Your Workspace

The real power is in workspaces. Set context-specific instructions:

When discussing currency or financial transactions, 
always search online for the most up-to-date exchange rates.

Now every financial question automatically gets today's rates. Every currency conversion is accurate. Every calculation is correct.

Real use cases:

• Finance workspaces that always pull current FX rates and market data

• Research workspaces that automatically surface recent articles and news

• Project workspaces that verify the latest APIs and documentation

• Sales workspaces that check current pricing and competitor info

Still Want Tools? We Got You

Native search is the default. But we know you might need alternatives:

• WebSearch Tool — Uses Duck Duck Go, free, works everywhere

• WebSearch Gemini — Uses Google's Gemini backend, included in Alter Pro

• Third-party integrations — Linkup, Tavily, Firecrawl, Exab and more

Use what works for your workflow.

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Native Web Search: Added automatic backend-powered web retrieval to Alter's router models so current information is fetched from the internet when needed.

• Workspaces: Now code runner and full-access are exclusive to avoid confusion, full rework of the sandbox system for both bash sandbox and code container, and added previews for all workspace root files.

• Meetings: Automatically copy transcripts in Markdown format with sync support.

• New Default Skills: Embedded Anthropic skill for DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX files.

• New Model: OpenAI GPT-5.4 is available to everyone.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Message Editing Reliability: Fixed floating panel editing, newline handling, deletion at the start of lines, and Escape-to-cancel behavior.

• Speech-to-prompt: Fixed continuous speech-to-prompt when an active chat is open in the hub.

• Custom Model Providers: Fixed model identifier parsing.

• Tool Use: Improved bash tool and reduced malformed tool calls

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

Three weeks ago, we shipped Code Runner, the execution engine that makes anything possible.

Last week, we showed you Plan Mode, how to think before you act.

Today, we're introducing Alter Mode, the missing piece that ties it all together.

🎶 FPU - Crockett’s theme 🎶

Why Alter Mode Matters

Here's the problem most of us face: your work isn't one thing. You're not a single mode of operation. You're a founder doing finance reviews. You're a student jumping between classes. You're a professional context-switching between projects and personal tasks.

Each of these demands different tools, different instructions, different contexts.

Alter Mode solves this by letting you create custom modes linked to workspaces. Enable finance mode? Alter switches your entire workspace, your tools, your system prompt, everything, to that context.

It's not a cosmetic change. It's about controlling your environment so you can focus on the work.

How It Works

1. Create a new action in the Action Editor

2. Attach a workspace (optional)

3. Enable the mode → Alter automatically switches workspaces, tools, and instructions

4. Work in a controlled environment with only what you need

Think of it as having separate desks for separate parts of your life. When you sit at the finance desk, you get the finance files, finance tools, finance context. No clutter. No distraction.

Real examples:

• Finance mode for expense reviews and cash flow

• Personal vs. Professional modes (clear separation of tools and access)

• Student modes (one per topic or class)

• Project-specific modes with dedicated workflows

Performance & Stability You'll Feel

We also rebuilt our conversation architecture from the ground up:

• 90% memory reduction in chat handling

• Faster context switching and window management

• Better transcript editing (transcript-first flow, double-click rename, multi-select delete with cmd+backspace)

• Improved sidebar performance and hub refresh reliability

• New documentation site: https://docs.alterhq.com with automatic sync for always-current docs within Alter.

The Bigger Picture

We're building a platform where:

• Plan Mode helps you think strategically

• Code Runner gives you unlimited execution power

• Alter Mode keeps you organized across contexts

This is the operating system for your workday. Not a tool. A platform.

See you next week.

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Alter Mode + Workspaces: Introduced custom modes with automatic workspace-follow behavior for context-controlled environments

• Hub Productivity: Added transcript-first editing flow, multi-select delete (cmd+backspace), double-click rename in transcript view, and significantly improved sidebar render performance

• Conversation & Chat UX: Rebuilt chat architecture with 90% memory reduction and added command-based dragging for the floating chat window

• Database: Chats now stored unencrypted for faster performance while remaining local to your device

• Flow Engine: Enhanced summarization step to surface links and IDs likely to be used in future turns

• Voice & Meetings Controls: Added recording input-device selection and transcript export to user-defined folders

• Action Editor & Scheduling: New layout in action editor plus schedule trigger to run actions on new transcripts

• Documentation: Launched https://docs.alterhq.com with automatic alter-docs skill updates from the public GitHub repository

• Help Experience: Added one-click Help chat entry in the menu

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Sandbox Runtime Stability: New container with relaxed permissions for apt-get library installation and improved library persistence

• Voice & Recording: Fixed noop notifications on recording cancellation

• Tool Calls: New test suites and recovery system for malformed tool calls

• Hub Refresh: Fixed transcripts not appearing immediately after creation and aligned refresh behavior across controls

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

We're thrilled to introduce Plan Mode to Alter, a new approach to complex workflows that puts thinking before execution.

Here's the simple idea: better planning leads to better results.

Plan Mode asks clarifying questions upfront, lets Alter understand your intent deeply, and creates a structured plan you review before anything happens.

Why Plan Mode Matters

When you're working on something complex, extracting data from multiple sources, building a workflow with specific requirements, or solving a problem with many moving parts, the difference between a rough request and a well-understood one is enormous.

Traditional mode works great for quick tasks. But for complex work, jumping straight to execution can mean:

• Missed details that require rework

• Assumptions about what you actually need

• Changes made before you've had a chance to review the approach

Plan Mode inverts this flow. It makes Alter pause, ask questions, and think through the problem before taking action.

How It Works

1. Activate Plan Mode — Select Plan mode in the Hub, on the bottom left

2. Answer Clarifying Questions — Alter asks targeted questions to understand your intent

3. Review the Plan — You see a structured breakdown of the approach before execution begins

4. Approve & Execute — Only after you've reviewed does Alter move forward

Think of it as having an experienced collaborator who asks "before we do this, can you help me understand..."

New models

We’ve been adding new models in the past few weeks, Sonnet 4.6, GLM 5, Minimax 2.5, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B and FM2-24B-A2B-Preview to the roaster.

Voxstral 2 is also becoming our main STT cloud processor, keeping Deepgram Nova as a fallback.

We'd love your feedback. Hit us up in Discord or email if you have thoughts on how Plan Mode works for you and if you have a new favorite model in town.

See you next week.

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Plan Mode: Introduced Plan Mode to help structure complex workflows by planning before execution

• Flow Engine: Add transform/chaining support between tools and a summarization step to avoid context bloat

• New Models: Added Sonnet 4.6, GLM 5, Minimax 2.5, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B, and FM2-24B-A2B-Preview to the model roster

• Speech-to-Text: Voxtral 2 is now the main cloud STT processor, with Deepgram Nova kept as a fallback

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub Input & Navigation: Fixed hub input expansion and context strip navigation issues

• Hub UI Stability: Fixed flickering scroll with tool calls and removed transparency effects from conversation view

• Conversation & Sidebar: Fixed conversations sometimes not showing in sidebar, plus performance optimizations

• Malformed Tool Calls: Server-side fixes to avoid malformed tool calls

• Usage: Improved fair-use display behavior

• Transcript Indexing: Fixed transcripts renamed from the notch not being reindexed properly

• Menus & Action Editor: Fixed picky click hit areas in Alter menu categories and removed unwanted autofocus in action editor general pane

• Microphone Sessions: Improved recording stop flow by clearing live sessions correctly, avoiding stray sessions, removing duplicate reset handling, improving stop reactivity, and storing failed recordings in history when possible

• Microphone Errors: Better handling of session start failures

• Floating Widget: Reverted change breaking context retrieval

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

Last week, we gave Alter skills. This week, we're giving it a home.

Introducing Code Runner: the execution engine that makes anything possible.

Skills Meet Execution

Last week you learned what Agent Skills can do. This week, Code Runner shows you what they can become.

Code Runner gives those skills a place to run, persist, and scale. Together, they're unstoppable.

With Code Runner, your skills don't just execute once and disappear. They run in a persistent container on your machine. They can start servers that keep running. They can process massive datasets. They can collaborate with other AI agents. They can build things.

What You Can Do Now

1. Create dashboards – Real-time visualizations that stay running

2. Generate reports – Excel files, presentations, PDFs—automatically

3. Process video and media – Render, edit, analyze at scale

4. Run persistent servers – Web apps that keep working even when you're not using Alter

5. Analyze data – Pandas, NumPy, all the tools you need

6. Build mini-applications – Custom tools tailored exactly to your workflow

7. Collaborate with AI agents – Multiple agents working together in the same environment

8. Automate everything – Chain complex workflows with no limits

The world is your oyster. There is no limit in what you can do.

How It Works

1. Open Tools Manager → Local tools →  System and Automation → Code Runner

2. Click the plus icon

3. Install Apple Container (Apple's virtualization technology)

4. Start a new or go into a Workspace

That's it. You now have a 4GB, 4-core container running on your machine.

Security: Built In, Not Bolted On

We tested Code Runner's security extensively. Here's what we found:

Complete isolation from your system. Code Runner runs in a virtualized container that can't break out. It can't access your files, your passwords, your system settings. It can only touch the workspace you've given it permission to access.

Your system stays clean. Your dependencies stay organized. Nothing gets installed globally on your machine.

No privilege escalation. Code Runner runs as a non-root user. There's no way to gain elevated access, no way to modify your system, no way to install software without your knowledge.

Resource limits enforced. Each container gets 4GB RAM and 4 CPU cores—no more, no less. It can't consume your entire machine.

Transparent execution. You can see exactly what Code Runner is doing. Every command, every file access, every network request. Nothing happens in the dark.

This is why we can confidently say: Code Runner is the safest way to execute advanced workflows on your computer. It gives you unlimited power without sacrificing security.

The Future is Now

Skills gave Alter the ability to do more. Code Runner gives it the power to build.

Together, they transform Alter from a conversation tool into a platform. A platform where you can automate anything, build anything, and create anything you can imagine.

The only limit is your imagination.

So what are you going to build?

See you next week.

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

1. Code Runner & Sandbox: A new sandboxed environment for running skill scripts securely inside containers, with runtime and output persistence across sessions. Comes pre-loaded with a rich set of libraries for data science, document processing, visualization, image/audio processing, geospatial analysis, machine learning, and more

2. Intel Mac Support: The Code Runner now works on Intel-based Macs in addition to Apple Silicon

3. Web Server in Sandbox: Containers can now spin up web servers with startup scripts and port mapping

4. Terminal in Container: Open an interactive terminal directly inside a running container

5. Osaurus Endpoint: Added Osaurus as a built-in custom endpoint option

6. Performance: Non-blocking save panels, smoother Hub conversation scrolling, and faster input typing

Bug Fixes & Stability

1. Hub: Fixed model selection UI not updating and model not being changeable during a conversation

2. Streaming: Cancel tool calls properly when streaming is cancelled

3. Title Generation: Avoid triggering multiple title generations simultaneously

4. Scheduler: Better handling of schedules

5. Skills: Display skill name correctly in the installed skills list

6. Crashes: Fixed crash when fetching installed apps repeatedly, fixed crash on selection change

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

This week, Alter evolves. You told us you wanted more power, more customization, more automation. We listened.

Introducing Agent Skills: the game-changer that lets you truly extend Alter's capabilities and shape your AI assistant to your exact needs. Alter always had the brain, but now it has the skills!

Cherry on top, we've implemented a one-click install skill registry to make it easy for you.

NoCPU has used one of his three wishes

What Are Agent Skills?

Agent skills are powerful extensions that allow Alter to perform a wider range of tasks by integrating with various tools and services. Think of them as specialized modules you can plug into Alter, enabling it to:

• Access external data: Fetch real-time information from the web.

• Perform complex operations: Execute custom scripts or interact with APIs.

• Automate workflows: Handle tasks that require multiple steps and external interaction.

These are industry-standard skills, meaning you can use the same skill definitions you might find in platforms like OpenAI or Claude, now directly within Alter.

Real Example: Your AI News Briefing

In our demo video, we show how to create a personalized AI news briefing. With Skills, Alter can:

• Retrieve news from various RSS feeds.

• Organize articles by topic.

• Provide direct links to source content.

Imagine getting a custom, AI-generated summary of your industry news every morning, without lifting a finger. That's the power of skills.

How to Get Started

The Agent Skill Registry in Alter

1. Open Alter's Tool Manager: Navigate to the new "Agent Skills" category.

2. Browse & Discover: Find skills that match your needs.

3. Inspect Skills: Before enabling, always review a skill's description and its potential actions. Skills can range from simple prompts to complex operations that interact with your files, or even run scripts on your machine.

4. Enable & Activate: Add the desired skills to your desired Workspace(s).

We also recommend looking at Anthropic’s repo for best-in-class skills

Most of the time, skills will be required to have full access to work optimally.

Skills are very powerful

Skills are a powerful addition to Alter, significantly extending its capabilities from executing simple prompts to performing complex operations like running scripts and managing files on your computer.

However, this inherent power makes careful inspection critical before enabling any skill. 

As skills can demand extensive access to your workspace and may execute code or modify your system, it's essential to review their functions and dependencies thoroughly. This due diligence ensures you understand their exact actions and any necessary prerequisites, thereby safeguarding your system while fully leveraging Alter's enhanced potential.

How Alter is protecting you from malicious skills

That's why we've built a robust security framework, ensuring you're always in control:

1. Workspace sandbox Environment: When using a skill in a workspace, it operates within its own secure "sandbox." This means a skill can only touch the specific folder(s) you've attached to a workspace, keeping the rest of your system safe and sound.

2. Apple Seatbelt Protection: We leverage Apple's powerful "seatbelt" feature on macOS. This acts as an extra layer of defense, with the operating system itself enforcing strict rules on what skills can and cannot do, preventing any unauthorized actions.

3. You're in Charge of Software: Alter will never install software or packages on your behalf. You decide what dependencies a skill uses, giving you full transparency and control over your system's configuration.

Beyond these layers of protection, we also ensure full transparency in every action. You can inspect any tool call or bash command Alter executes on your behalf by simply clicking on it. This gives you a clear view of both the inputs and outputs, so you always know exactly what Alter is doing for you.

With Alter, you get the best of both worlds: incredible power to automate and streamline your work, backed by layers of security and complete transparency for your peace of mind.

Share your favorite skills

Feel free to join our Discord to share your favorite skills.

We can’t wait to see what you will do with Agent Skills!

Also, this is just the beginning of our support for Agent skills; expect improvements in the upcoming weeks.

See you next week.

Olivier & Samuel

Version 2.0.0-beta66: Alter now supports Agent Skills

TL;DR: Agent Skills are an open standard that enables Alter to extend its capabilities with modular, reusable functions. Also, for users using their own keys, Alter now supports multiple custom endpoints.

Watch the video

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Agent Skills: an open standard to package expertise, workflows, and best practices into reusable, file-system-based resources.

• MCP Servers: Refresh tool list for remote MCP servers, status badge in server listing, and automatic tool cache clearing when deactivating or removing servers

• Multiple Custom Endpoints: Support for configuring multiple custom endpoints with minor improvements

• Bifrost Integration: Added support for Basic Authentication and Virtual Keys

• Calendar Events: Added participants and descriptions to calendar event results

• Workspaces: Link tools and skills to provide special capabilities to your workspaces.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Actions Context: Fixed actor isolation issues, bad regex context keys, and active app name provider being late to update

• Microphone & Audio: Fixed wrong end-of-meeting detection on MS Teams, microphone state mismatch causing "no audio file" errors, and prevented other errors when starting recordings

• Live Captions: Fixed live transcriptions not being stopped when recording has ended

• Dictation: Fixed cleanup phase using the previous dictation instead of current one

• ApplicationObserver: Fixed crash when activating Enhanced User Interface

• App Sense: Fixed crash when trying to read children

• Floating Panel: Fixed focus stealing when Alter is used while another app is active

• Menu Bar: Fixed clickable area for menu bar item

• MCP Servers: Fixed duplicate entry on edit and API key not enabling saving

• Eagle MCP: Fixed connection issues by sending "initialized" event on connect

• OpenRouter Haiku: Fixed messages follow-up after tool call

• Action Loading: Avoid showing an error when trying to load an action that has no file on disk

• Editor: Minor performance improvements in system and user prompt editors

• Tools: Fixed icon symbols display

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

This week we're diving into one of Alter's most powerful (new) features: grounding files.

If you've ever wished you could tell Alter exactly how you work—once—and have it remember that forever, this is for you.

Alter now supports Alter.md, Agents.md, and Claude.md 

What Are Grounding Files?

Grounding files are markdown documents that live in your workspace and automatically load during every session done in a workspace.

They define:

• Who you are - Your role, expertise, communication style

• How you work - Your processes, preferences, workflows

• What matters - Your priorities, constraints, best practices

Think of them as your personal AI operating manual.

Best Practices

1. Keep it lean - Around 60 lines maximum

2. Be specific - Vague instructions = vague results

3. Use progressive declaration - Link to other .md files for detailed rules

4. Stay organized - One file per concern (checklist.md, templates.md, etc.)

Real Example: Our Release Workflow

Here's how we use grounding files for Alter's weekly releases:

Alter.md (60 lines) (click here to see the real file we use)

• Who we are: Co-founders managing weekly releases

• What we value: Efficiency, clear systems, direct communication

• High-level workflow: Input → WIP → Final → Publish

Checklist.md (detailed)

• Exact folder structure for each release

• Day-by-day execution steps

• Tool-specific workflows (Screen Studio → Auphonic → Beehiiv → Discord)

• Checklists for each phase

How to Get Started

1. Open any workspace in Alter

2. Click "Alter.md" button (or create a new file)

3. Write 50-60 lines describing:

   • Your role and expertise

   • How you prefer to work

   • Your communication style

   • Key workflows or processes

4. Save it - It's now active for all future sessions

5. Reference it - Link to other .md files for detailed rules

The Power of Progressive Declaration

Instead of one massive 500-line Alter.md, use this structure:

Alter.md (60 lines)
├── checklist.md (detailed steps)
├── templates.md (reusable formats)
├── tools.md (software & scripts)
└── best_practices.md (guidelines)

Your main Alter.md stays clean and readable. When AI needs details, it can look in the linked files. Best of both worlds.Full Changelog.

Grounding files are how you scale from "I have a system" to "My system scales itself."

See you next week.

Olivier & Samuel

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace Instruction Files: Support for Alter.md, Claude.md, and AGENTS.md files to provide project context and instructions

• Workspace Permissions: Added read, write, and execute permissions support for workspace operations

• Workspace File System: New workspace_fs tool for complete file system operations without the need of bash

• Hub Stop Button: Added stop button with improved stop streaming between tool calls

• Copy Conversation ID: Add copy ID button in hub to use with Run Action tool

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub Input: Fixed prefix search issues when search term starts with or is preceded by a space

• Transcription: Optimized CPU resource usage

• Model Override: Fixed last message model overriding global user model of choice

• Custom Endpoints: Fixed conversation failure after tool call with empty arguments

• Deleted Conversations: Fixed deleted conversations not being removed from sidebar

• Workspace Performance: Faster glob matching on large folders

• Model Synchronization: Fixed current model synchronization issues in hub

• Workspace Context: Fixed fork reuse of workspace context and proper context removal

• Notch Integration: Fixed workspace attachment as context in notch

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

We're thrilled to announce Alter Workspace with writing tools, a game-changing feature that transforms Alter from a powerful reader into a complete creative and productivity powerhouse.

Now you can create, edit, and manage files directly in your workspace, seamlessly integrated with your Mac ecosystem and third-party tools. No more context switching. No more manual updates. Pure productivity.

What's New: Workspace Writing Tools

With Workspace, you can now:

1. Create files instantly – Generate documents, notes, and content directly in your workspace

2. Edit with precision – Modify existing files with AI-powered suggestions

3. Batch operations – Make multiple edits across files in one conversation

4. Connect your ecosystem – Pull data from Gmail, YouTube, web pages, and more—then write it to your workspace

5. Automate workflows – Create advanced automations that span your entire Mac ecosystem

Why Workspace Writing Tools Matters

Before, Alter could read and analyze your files. Now, you can:

• Write newsletters and content in minutes with AI assistance

• Organize your Obsidian vault automatically with AI-generated notes and templates

• Extract and save information from emails, YouTube videos, and web pages directly to your workspace

• Create task management systems on-the-fly (GTD, Kanban, or custom frameworks)

• Build advanced workflows that connect Gmail, Obsidian, Apple Reminders, and more

• Automate repetitive tasks like processing urgent emails or creating watch-later lists

Examples

Create: "Create a newsletter about this week's AI news. Use my existing newsletter format."

Edit: "Update my README.md with the new features we discussed."

Automate: "Search my Gmail for urgent emails and create Obsidian tasks for each one."

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace Tools: Added bash tool, edit and multi-edit tools for file manipulation, and improved sandboxing with PDF syncing

• Workspace: Auto-name workspaces based on folder, and optimized prompt for small models use

• Hub Improvements: Added shortcuts to open Settings, Tools Manager and the Action Editor. Improved search with partial reindexing for chat messages, and better window management with dock access

• Conversations: Auto-scroll to bottom on initialization for better UX

• Providers: Added Privatemode.ai as a custom provider for access to confidential AI cloud models

• Routers: Deprecated cerebras oss-120b in favor of zai-glm-4.7

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Workspace: Improved search with spaces and lowercase matching

• Performance: Optimized keychain warmup, reduced JSON decoding overhead on message loading, fixed action editor and audio processor race conditions, and improved markdown rendering

• Audio Recording: Better handling when WhisperKit is not available, improved audio file URL uniqueness and earlier creation, fixed buffer appending errors, and ensured init tasks complete when stopping recordings

• Settings: Fixed model listing for custom providers

• Hub: Fixed restoration behavior and key window handling on open, improved message selection

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

We're thrilled to introduce our re-designed Workspaces, a powerful new way to organize and interact with your files in Alter, inspired by how Claude Code manages files.

Whether you're managing research documents, Obsidian vaults, project files, or any other collection, Workspaces make it effortless to search, retrieve, and work with thousands of files using AI.

🎶 tiga - extasy surrounds me 🎶 (Alter’s playlist)

What Are Workspaces?

Workspaces are dedicated environments where you can:

1. Add and organize files – Import your documents, vaults, and collections in one place

2. Get intelligent suggestions – Every new chat shows AI-powered question suggestions based on your workspace content

3. Search intelligently – Use natural language to find exactly what you need across thousands of files

4. Filter your history – Keep your chat history organized by workspace, so you only see relevant interactions

How to Get Started

1. Open Alter Hub and click the workspace menu at the top

2. Select "New Workspace" and add your folders or files (Obsidian vaults, PDFs, documents, etc.)

3. Click the auto-description icon to generate a workspace summary instantly

4. Start chatting—Alter will suggest relevant questions and search your files intelligently

Key Features

🔍 Intelligent Search & Retrieval Our new search and list tools work together to find information across your entire workspace, no matter how large.

💡 Smart Question Suggestions Every conversation starts with AI-generated questions tailored to your workspace content—get started instantly.

📊 Transparent Tool Usage Click on any tool to see exactly how Alter searched your files and fulfilled your request.

🔄 Automatic Indexing Add, remove, or modify files anytime—they're automatically indexed and ready to search.

🚀 Coming Soon We're working on write and modify tools so you can create and edit files directly in Alter.

Recommended Models

For the best Workspace experience, we recommend using advanced and premium models:

• Anthropic's latest models

• GPT-5.2

• GLM-4.7 on Cerebras

These models excel at intelligent search, file analysis, and complex workflows.

Real-World Use Cases

• Researchers: Manage papers, notes, and research across multiple projects

• Knowledge Workers: Keep your Obsidian vault, notes, and documents searchable and interactive

• Teams: Organize shared workspaces for collaborative projects

• Content Creators: Manage archives of articles, scripts, and reference materials

We are just starting

We'd love to hear what you think! Let us know how you're using Workspaces and what features you'd like to see next.

Cheers,

The Alter Team

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Workspace System: List, Search Files, Search Patterns and Read tools scoped to the workspace files and folder for security

• File Management: Add files and folders to workspaces, handle large PDF files, and search across workspace contents

• Topic Suggestions: Intelligent topic suggestions and conversation starters based on workspace content

• Workspace Scoping: Scope tabs to workspace for better organization

• Hub Workspace Picker: New workspace picker in toolbar for easy workspace switching

• Open Files/Folders: Double-click to open folders and files in workspace view

• Workspace & Tab Switching: Preserve tabs with state and unload after some times to preserve system memory

• New Model: Cerebras GLM-4.7 at 1,000 tokens per second

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Popover Behavior: Improved popover behavior in hub

• Performance Optimizations: Fixed sidebar performance, input rendering performance, and multiple hangs/render performance issues

• Client Restart: Fixed restarting clients with wrong type and bad camel case tool names

• Hub Fixes: Fixed input model selection clear prefix

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

We’re officially introducing the Hub. Our full window that will change how your work with Alter.

Check the video:

Tell us what you think of it

It is a highly experimental feature, paving the way for Alter’s future. Make sure you give us some feedback in the dedicated Discord channel: #cmd_shift_h

Cheers,

Sam

PS: Alter is now macOS14+

Full Changelog

Features

• Tags & Tabs: Added tag management to sidebar and tabs

• Menubar: Introduced extendable menu bar (can be disabled in the Settings)

• Tools: Added computer use overlay to let you know Alter is controlling your app

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Limited upcoming section loads and fixed chat tag issues

• Hub: Fixed sidebar load more behavior for both short and long history

• Hub: Fixed refresh contexts holder on change

• Inspector: Optimized loading for tool call results

• Inspector: Fixed multiple crash issues on open and empty selection

• Shortcuts: Fixed hub shortcuts resetting to default values

• Tab Management: Fixed select and close preview behavior on tab click

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

Short and sweet: do cmd+shift+h in the latest version of Alter and it will appear.

On top of all the expected features, we added an “Upcoming” section where you can see your upcoming meetings and scheduled Alter Action(s).

2 new global shortcuts are also available in your Settings panel.

Tell us what you think of it

It is a highly experimental feature, paving the way for Alter’s future. Make sure you give us some feedback in the dedicated Discord channel.

Have an amazing end of the year and thank you for using Alter,

Gael & Kevin
Sam & Olivier

PS: Alter is now macOS14+

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• The H Feature

Bug Fixes & Stability

• History: Fixed crash when saving messages

• Background Jobs: Fixed built-in action background job disabling issue

• MCP Status: Fixed async status handling for MCP connections

• AppSense: Better support for Discord

• Recording: Improved wake up/sleep while recording

• Data Races: Fixed data race in process termination

• Transcripts: Fixed transcript renaming

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

Exciting news, Alter now supports sub-agents, enabling you to trigger multiple Alter actions within a single conversation.

Sub-agents let you create complex workflows and get more done, faster. Imagine having a team of experts working for you, all within a single Alter chat.

🎶 Justice - Pleasure x Newjack x Civilization (www)🎶

How to Use Sub-Agents

You can find the “Run Action” tool in your local tools

1. Open Tool Manager → Local Tools → Alter and find the "Run Action" tool.

2. The "Run Action" tool allows you to trigger other Alter actions within a conversation.

3. Grant access to the "Run Action" tool within a custom Alter action (e.g., "Council").

4. Invoke other actions by their ID in the system prompt. Use the action name for built-in actions, and find the ID for custom actions in the General settings.

How we use it at Alter

• Council Strategy: Invoke multiple experts when brainstorming on an idea

• Meeting Reporting on steroids: Based on the nature of the meeting, the meeting report actions will create Linear issues and/or Notion entries from the discussion.

• MCP experts: Call the Google Spreadsheet specialist when you need to do some data manipulation on our analytics file and business plan.

New models in Alter this week

Gemini 3 Flash Preview and Mistral Small Creative are now available.

Have fun also playing with Cerebras GLM 4.6 :)

Cheers,

Sam & Olivier

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Run Action Tool: Run Alter actions as sub-agents within conversations, enabling complex multi-step workflows and parallel task execution

• Stop Tool Calls: Added ability to stop tool calls mid-execution, similar to text streaming cancellation

• Internationalization: Added support for Spanish and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) languages with comprehensive translations across the app

• Localized Tool Names: Tool names and descriptions are now translated and localized

• Flow Messages Localization: Flow messages in conversation view are now localized

• Faster Microphone Start: Improved microphone start performance

• Screen Capture: Automatic restart of screen capture streams when the system stops them

• New Models: Gemini 3.0 Flash and Mistral Small Creative

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Notch: Fixed indexing indicator not showing when triggered manually

• Microphone: Avoid low audio cutoff when transcriptions are coming in

• MCP Tools: Return proper ToolError when no response is received from MCP tools

• Crash Fixes: Fixed crash when saving messages

• Data Races: Fixed data race in Models service

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

Yes, the wait is over 🙂

This feature won the poll on our Discord and we delivered!

It took us a bit more time than expected because… we are apparently the first in the world to integrate remote MCP servers with OAuth in Swift.

Gotta do what you gotta do for the community.

What's MCP? Why Should You Care?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a standard that lets you connect any tool—official or custom—directly to Alter. No more opening tabs. No more copying and pasting. No more context switching.

Think of it as giving Alter superpowers to work with the tools you already use.

How It Works

1. Open Tool Manager → Remote MCP Servers tab

2. Choose from official servers or add any custom remote MCP server

3. Authorize once

4. Choose which MCP tools you want to use

5. Use everywhere in Alter

That's it.

Real Examples

Linear: Create issues, update projects, manage workflows—all without leaving Alter. You're in a conversation, need to log a task? Done. No tab switching.

Figma: Access designs, export assets, comment on files—seamlessly integrated. Reviewing a design mockup mid-conversation? Pull it directly into Alter without switching apps.

Canva: Create new designs, autofill templates with content, search existing designs—all from Alter. Need a quick social media graphic? Design and iterate instantly without leaving your workflow.

Where Can I find Official Remote MCP servers

We recommend using PulseMCP to find official remote MCP servers.

A Note on MCP

MCP is still young, and we're adding official servers manually. Let us know which ones you want and which ones work well for your workflow. Your feedback shapes what we prioritize next.

Watch This

How to connect MCP servers to Alter — A 2-minute walkthrough showing Linear and Google Maps in action.

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Remote MCP Servers: Support for remote MCP servers enabling you to connect Alter with your favorite apps and services. Includes Oauth 2.1 and API key authentication modes.

• Transcript Metadata: Added date and duration metadata to transcript files.

• Context Preview: Added right-click menu on context preview cards to create a workspace.

• Flow: Improved effeciency by merging the first two steps in one. Flow is still highly experimental.

• Flow & Websearch Display: Better display of flow steps and websearch results.

• New Models: GPT-5.2 (thinking low) and GPT-5.2 Chat (Instant)

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Audio Recording: Fixed crashes when finishing a recording and starting a new one in succession, plus other issues.

• Message Saving: Fixed crash when saving a message.

• Tool Display: Fixed tool detail pretty name display.

• Speaker Editor: Fixed issue where renaming speakers required a double save.

Videos on Alter

1. AI can now read your clipboard : create incredible workflows

2. Unlock YouTube superpowers - extract info & master anything

3. Live AI chat with any website: documentation, articles & more

4. Automatic email outreach in 3 min - no effort - onboard your new users

5. Write a newsletter in 5 min with AI, walking in a parc

Hey everyone,

We have hear your feedbacks and have some quality of life improvement.

We've shipped a meaningful upgrade to the Reuse function, and it changes how you iterate on your work.

The Problem We Solved

Before, when you used Reuse, it would clear everything and start fresh. That meant losing context, losing snippets, losing momentum. You'd have to manually rebuild what you'd already created.

Not anymore.

What's New: Append Instead of Replace

The Reuse tool now appends new context instead of clearing previous content. This means you can:

• Stack insights from multiple conversations without losing prior work

• Iterate faster by building on what you've already generated

• Keep your momentum instead of starting from scratch each time

Go to Quick Actions and type Reuse, or just use the keyboard shortcut ⌘K.

Real-World Example: Multiple Meeting Reports

Running customer discovery calls? Record your first Zoom meeting Monday and get an instant summary with key takeaways. Wednesday, append your second call's summary to the first using Reuse—no need to start fresh. By Friday, after your third meeting, you've stacked all three insights into one unified document showing common pain points, recurring feature requests, and emerging themes.

Without Reuse, you'd manually copy-paste between conversations, losing time and context.

With Reuse, each new meeting automatically layers onto your growing intelligence, creating a single source of truth ready to share with your team or inform your product roadmap.

What Else We Shipped

While we were at it, we also added:

• New audio settings: Silencing option (instead of ducking) and ability to disable the chime sound

• Bifrost support: Custom endpoints now work with Bifrost

• Better window management: Forked windows now offset for clearer visibility

• Stability across the board: Audio crashes fixed, transcription improvements, scheduling refinements, and dozens of UI polish touches

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

1. Reuse Tool: Appends new context instead of clearing previous content so you can iterate without losing prior snippets.

2. Dictation Controls: Added a silencing option (instead of ducking) and the ability to disable the chime sound.

3. Custom Endpoints: Added support for Bifrost.

4. Forked Windows: Offsets forked conversation windows for better visibility.

Bug Fixes & Stability

1. Audio & Transcription: Fixed various crashes, including ones from the Apple local voice processor, plus fixing the missing audio files error.

2. Scheduling & Automation: Avoid running multiple missed schedules.

3. Models: Fetch models even when custom endpoints are empty.

4. Conversation & UI: Fixed date formatting for history, conversation rename issues, misplaced conversation input in forms, focus issues, and prevented leading/trailing newlines in the replace/insert tool.

5. Drag & Drop: Fixed crash when dropping some items.

6. Security: Improved private key handling and error reporting when creating keys.

7. Live Panels Shortcuts: Avoid resetting defaults when a user clears them.

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