Hey everyone,

We are releasing two quality-of-life improvements to Alter focusing on a core goal: giving you more precise control over the trade-off between reasoning depth and execution speed.

🎶 Kano - Ikeya Seki 🎶 (Thank you for the ride Kavinsky)

Optimizing Model Thinking Effort

Not every task requires the same level of cognitive "heavy lifting." Using a maximum-reasoning model for a simple grammar fix is often a waste of time and latency.

You can now manage the Thinking Effort of your models directly from the model picker (accessed via /). We have simplified this into three clear options:

1. Low: Optimized for speed-sensitive, non-complex tasks. Ideal for correcting grammar, cleaning up dictation, or basic formatting.

2. Balance: The default setting, suitable for the majority of general-purpose interactions.

3. Max: Full reasoning power for complex logic, deep analysis, and difficult problem-solving.

To switch levels, simply use the left and right arrow keys in the model picker or click the desired effort level with your mouse.

Instant Dictation

Dictation is a primary way many of you interact with Alter, but the gap between speaking and seeing text on screen has always been a point of friction.

We have implemented a entirely new dictation pipelinethat is significantly faster than before. When combined with the ability to disable dictation cleanup, the results are nearly instantaneous. Your transcribed text now appears on the screen in real-time, creating a much more fluid and responsive experience.

Deepseek V4 has been upgraded

You can now use Deepseek-v4-Flash-0731, a highly efficient and powerful model from Deepseek.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Thinking effort: Choose each model's advertised thinking effort from Hub, QuickHub, or the Action Editor. Alter remembers the choice per model and uses it for future chats and actions.

• Dictation: Improve dictation speed for parakeet processor.

• Custom Endpoints: Context Window size, thinking and vision capabilities are detected automatically for LM Studio, OpenRouter, Ollama, Bifrost and Gemini.

• Action Editor: A new searchable model picker groups the current model, favorites, and other models, with controls for thinking effort, context, image support, and favorites.

• Dictation shortcuts: Dictation now accepts modifier-only shortcuts, including Command, left or right Control, and left or right Option.

• Discord sources: Web search sources are formatted more clearly in Discord responses.

• New models: New models: GLM-5.2 and deepseek v4 flash 0731

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Model selection: Recover automatically when a saved model is no longer available, align switcher metadata consistently, and clarify vision support without redundant selection indicators.

• Tools: Code Runner now shows its sandbox tool.

Hey everyone,

You can now talk to Alter from Discord or Telegram while Alter runs on your Mac.

Send a text or voice note from your phone, run your existing Alter actions, answer follow-up questions with interactive buttons, and receive files directly in chat.

In the video, Sam puts Gateways to a real-world test.

His Airbnb booking is buried somewhere inside a huge Downloads folder. He doesn’t remember the filename, so he sends Alter a voice note from Discord:

Alter transcribes the voice note and turns it into a prompt. When the action needs permission to access the Downloads folder, the question appears directly in Discord with interactive buttons.

Sam approves it from his phone.

Alter then searches the Mac, finds the correct Airbnb booking, and sends the file back through Discord.

No filename. No typing. No searching through hundreds of downloads.

What are Gateways?

Gateways connect Discord or Telegram to Alter running on your Mac.

The message begins in your chat app, but Alter still handles the conversation, actions, models, tools, and files locally on your computer.

Think of Discord and Telegram as new entry points into the Alter you have already configured.

This is not a separate, cloud-hosted version of Alter. The app must remain open and running on your Mac for your gateways to work.

Gateway conversations are also saved on your Mac alongside your other Alter conversations, so you can find and continue them later.

One quick clarification: Gateways are not the same as Alter’s API Gateway. The API Gateway is an OpenAI-compatible HTTP endpoint for third-party tools. The Gateways introduced here are Discord and Telegram bot connections.

What can you do with Gateways?

Here are a few ways to use Alter from your phone:

1. Send text and voice messages: Record a regular voice note in Discord or Telegram. Alter uses the voice processor configured on your Mac to transcribe it and turn it into a prompt.

2. Run your Alter actions: Use the same actions and tools you have already configured on your Mac. Custom actions can be enabled separately for Discord, Telegram, or both.

3. Answer follow-up questions: When an action uses Alter’s Ask User tool, its questions can appear in chat as interactive buttons or keyboards. You can answer without returning to your Mac.

4. Send and receive files: Attach images and documents for Alter to process. Files produced by tools and MCP servers can also be uploaded back into the conversation.

5. Create separate Discord threads: In a server, each new top-level request can start its own Discord thread and Alter conversation.

6. Connect multiple accounts: Create several named gateway configurations—for example, one Discord bot for your team, another for personal use, and a separate Telegram bot.

Set up your first Gateway

First, create a bot for the platform you want to use:

• For Discord, create a bot through the Discord Developer Portal.

• For Telegram, create one through BotFather.

Then, inside Alter:

1. Open Settings with ⌘,.

2. Go to Integrations → Gateways.

3. Select Add Gateway.

4. Choose Discord or Telegram.

5. Give the Gateway a name.

6. Paste your bot token.

7. Choose its default action.

8. Configure its access controls.

9. Save and restart the Gateway.

Once connected, Alter will show the account associated with the bot.

Your bot token is stored securely in the macOS Keychain.

You can find the complete setup instructions here:

• Gateways overview

• Set up a Discord Gateway

• Set up a Telegram Gateway

Choose who can access your Mac

Because a Gateway can run Alter actions and tools on your Mac, access controls matter.

On Discord, you can:

• Restrict the bot to a specific server

• Allow only specific Discord user IDs

• Require the bot to be mentioned in server channels

• Start new discussions in separate threads

On Telegram, you can allow specific users, usernames, or chats.

An empty allowlist means anyone who can reach the bot may be able to use it. Alter’s Doctor will warn you when a Gateway has an open access configuration, but we recommend setting the appropriate restrictions during setup.

Use your custom actions

The bundled Ask Anything action works with Discord and Telegram out of the box.

Custom actions must be explicitly enabled for external platforms.

To enable one:

1. Open the action in the Action Editor.

2. Select the Gateways section.

3. Enable Discord, Telegram, or all Gateway platforms.

4. Save the action.

This gives you control over which actions remain local and which ones can be started remotely.

In Discord, use /actions to see the actions currently available to your Gateway. You can also use commands such as /new, /chats, /use, /history, and /stop to manage your conversations.

Keep Gateways available with the lid closed

MacBooks normally go to sleep when the lid closes, which disconnects active bots.

Alter can keep your Mac awake while Gateways are active. You’ll find this option at the top of Settings → Integrations → Gateways.

Enabling it requires one-time administrator permission. You can also configure safeguards such as:

• A minimum battery level

• Pausing during Low Power Mode

Normal sleep behavior returns when your last Gateway stops, Alter quits, or a battery safeguard activates.

This setting keeps the Mac awake—it does not turn Alter into a cloud service. Alter must still be open and running.

Alter, wherever you already chat

Many of us already spend a large part of the day in Discord or Telegram. Gateways bring Alter into those conversations instead of requiring you to return to the Hub for every request.

• Send a voice note while you’re away from your desk.

• Retrieve a document from your Mac.

• Approve a follow-up question from your phone.

• Run one of your custom actions.

Then continue the same conversation when you return to your Mac.

Discord and Telegram aren’t different versions of Alter. They’re new ways to reach the Alter you already use.

We’re excited to see what you build with them.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Gateways: Multiple Discord and Telegram instances; Discord conversation threads with interactive buttons for access prompts; Ask Anything on Telegram; voice-note transcription in gateway context; Markdown tables rendered for Discord; availability controls to stay online with the lid closed; per-gateway action availability and access settings; doctor checks with docs links; localized gateway settings and Action Editor help.

• Workspace document cache v2: Faster, more reliable workspace document caching for attachments.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub & QuickHub: Shortcut conflicts with split panels; attachment shortcuts route reliably; workspace attachment context and presentation preserved.

• Dictation & transcription: Long transcription results no longer truncated; Argmax custom-vocabulary race during in-flight transcribe; microphone continuation leak in transcript-ready prompt.

• Fair use: Reset countdown uses provider UTC reinit date when available; compile fix for missing fair-use reset countdown.

• Other: MiniMax M3 Flow parameter fix; sandbox container cleanup.

Hey everyone,

Thanks to your suggestions, we’re introducing Split Panel in Alter, a new way to interact with your workspace that lets you break free from a single-panel view.

 🎶 Donna Summer - Bad Girls (Instrumental Version) 🎶

What is Split Panel?

Split Panel allows you to add a second panel next to your current session in the Hub.

Instead of switching between tabs, you can now work in parallel on two different tasks or collaborate on a single complex project without losing your place.

2-for-1

Here is how it changes your workflow:

1. Drag-and-Drop Context: See something interesting in one session? Just select the text and drag it directly into the other panel to ask a question or add it to your current task.

2. Flexible Organization: You can easily reorder your tabs or move a tab from one side panel to the other to keep your workspace organized.

3. Cross-Panel Referencing: Use the @ symbol in your conversation to quickly refer to and add context from another open panel.

4. Integrated File Viewer: You no longer need a third-party editor for your documents. Markdown, HTML, and PDF files can now be opened directly in a side panel. Just right-click a file and select "Open in the other panel" to inspect and interact with your data side-by-side with Alter.

Whether you're coding with documentation open on the side or organizing a recipe into a markdown file, Split Screen makes the process seamless.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Hub Split Panel: Add a second panel next to your Hub session to work in parallel — with shortcuts and stable new-chat / drop behavior.

• Drag-and-drop context: Select text in one session and drag it into the other panel to ask a question or add it to your task.

• Flexible tabs: Reorder tabs or move a tab from one side panel to the other (including on external displays).

• Cross-panel referencing: Use @ to refer to and add context from the other open panel.

• Integrated file viewer: Open Markdown, HTML, and PDF files in a side panel via “Open in the other panel” — inspect documents next to Alter without a third-party editor.

• Audio workflows: Microphone and transcription run as workflows — queued transcription, workflow status in the mic menu and Edge Bar, and local speech diagnostics to help us debug users.

• Shell tools: Shell commands can include a purpose for clearer tool calls.

• ChatGPT tool calls: Tool calls display as they arrive during streaming.

• Localizations: Hub suggestion cards and new split-pane UI strings localized for non-English users.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Blank window presentation, QuickHub hosting constraint loop, model sync feedback loop, overlay inspector with split layout, and input shortcuts on macOS 27.

• Conversation: Preserve generation errors; send queued messages after tools finish.

• Audio / transcription: Invalid microphone devices, meeting input picker flicker, hardened voice workflow processing, and rejection of malformed transcript timestamps; skip corrupt transcript rows during conversion.

• Custom endpoints: Better compatibility with exotic OpenAI-compatible endpoints.

• Editor: Prevent Sonoma sidebar truncation.

• Menubar: Clicks restored on macOS 27; workflow status shown in the menu.

Hey everyone,

Today, we’re introducing Memory in Alter, a way for Alter to remember the useful details from your work so you don’t have to repeat yourself.

🎶 BOY - Little Numbers 🎶

(we tried a new format for the video, let us know what you think of it)

What is memory?

Memory isn’t a transcript. It turns a conversation into a small, durable record, then recalls only what can help with the next answer.

For example, “I always prefer short answer.” becomes a Personal preference that can improve future conversations.

Temporary details, secrets, and sensitive information are skipped.

Memory supports six types of useful context: facts, preferences, goals, decisions, recent changes, and lessons learned through repeated work.

It also evolves without creating duplicates. If you change your mind, Alter replaces the current version.

Personal memories follow you across workspaces, while project memories stay where they belong.

You can manage Memory in your Settings

Learning happens after the answer, and Alter saves at most one useful memory per turn. You can turn on Ask before saving, inspect sources, forget anything, undo changes, or turn Memory off completely.

Finally, open a hub conversation and use Memory Catch Up to review the last 30 days of your chats and meetings, plus your current workspace, to find useful details you may want Memory to know.

Learn more about Memory

We have updated our documentation so you could learn more about Memory.

Memory is durable. Recall is temporary. Access is contextual.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Version 2.0.0-beta102: Memory

TL;DR: Alter know has an advanced memory system allowing you to get organized and never forget things.

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Scoped memory: First-class scoped memory with automatic capture, authorization hardening, and provenance tracking so Alter remembers context without you managing it manually.

• Memory Catch-Up: New workflow to review, refine, and humanize what Alter has learned.

• Memory sources: Open saved memory sources directly from settings; source links are clickable.

• Hub suggestion cards: Redesigned suggestion cards and faster initial Hub tab loading.

• Speech prompts: Speech prompts now always start a new chat.

• Running tool icons: Animated running tool icons in conversation view.

• Alter Docs: Embedded Help documentation updated with the latest features.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub tabs: Left and right clicks on tabs work correctly on external screens (macOS 15).

• Computer use: Hardened URL handling; fixed background action workspace permissions.

• Edge Bar: Re-pin panels after display disconnect.

• Background Jobs: Custom actions with Skills and no workspace retains their ephemeral workspace to avoid permission issues.

Hey everyone,

Last week, we released a big feature: Background Computer Use. This week we made it so much faster 🚀 

Fetching data from your apps now takes 77% less time, and acting on it takes milliseconds instead of seconds.

But that’s not all.

We’re now supporting your ChatGPT subscription directly in Alter.

You can use your favorite OpenAI models to power Alter, including their latest GPT 5.6 Sol model.

How to connect your ChatGPT subscription

Open Alter’s settings and go to the API Keys tab. Click Add provider and choose ChatGPT. Then signin with your account to allow Alter.

Once connected, click Manage Models to choose the models you want to see in Alter.

To choose one, type “/chatgpt” in the Alter promptbox, in the hub or in the quickhub.

We also updated the tool calls UI and made several improvements. As usual, let us know what you think on Discord or by email.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Version 2.0.0-beta101: Codex Sign-In & GPT 5.6

TL;DR: Sign in with Codex and use the new GPT 5.6 models. Computer use is dramatically faster — screen reads up to 77% quicker, and clicks/typing resolve in milliseconds instead of seconds on heavy apps like Notes and Spotify. Queue messages to steer your agent mid-task, and follow along with a cleaner grouped tool-call UI.

How to connect your ChatGPT account to Alter

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Codex sign-in: New Codex provider integration with support for GPT 5.6 latest models

• Faster computer use: Major AppSense optimizations measured on real apps — AX screen reads up to 77% faster (Notes: 4.4s → 1.7s); element resolution for clicks and fills collapsed from 1–4+ seconds to ~1–4 ms on Spotify, Notes, and Reddit (~330–4100× faster). Plus improved app guidance and dynamic app-specific tools.

• Music app tools: Focused Spotify and Apple Music tools, plus a Deezer recipe.

• Queue messages: Send follow-up messages while the agent is still streaming to steer it mid-task.

• Grouped tool calls: Tool calls are now grouped in conversation view with cleaner summaries, attachments, and styling.

• Reasoning effort selector: Choose reasoning effort for supported models (Codex only, Alter next).

• Send shortcut: Configurable keyboard shortcut for sending messages.

• New Models: GPT 5.6 Luna & Terra

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Hub: Respects IME composition for Enter handling; fixed crash when opening QuickHub and text input undo crash.

• Ask user tool: Limited to 5 options per question.

• Audio: Fixed audio recording on input switch and a memory leak

• Search: Faster search index listing.

• Switcher: Ignores pasted switcher command tokens.

Hey everyone,

We are thrilled to announce a game-changing new feature: Background Computer Use.

Until now, using AI to interact with your screen often meant pausing your own work. Not anymore. With Background Computer Use, Alter can now interact with your machine and handle complex tasks in the background while you continue working on other things.

🎶 Doctor’s Cat - Feel The Drive 🎶

Always know what Alter is doing

Background Computer Use is displayed by default as a Picture-in-Picture window so you can always keep an eye on what Alter is doing.

Pocket Calculator

Taking control of your experience

We’ve built a suite of settings to ensure this is seamless and secure:

1. Browser Selection: You can choose which browser Alter uses (we recommend a separate one from your main browser for better organization).

2. Privacy & Security: You can explicitly block specific apps—like your password manager—to ensure your most sensitive data remains private.

3. Customizable Preview: Choose between a large or small preview window to keep an eye on Alter's progress without it getting in your way.

The magic of

Help us evolve
Background Computer Use is at the bleeding edge of technology. To help us make it perfect, we’ve added a "Show Trace" option. If something doesn't work as expected, please export the trace and send it to us. Your feedback is the fastest way for us to improve the system.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Background Computer Use: New tool that lets Alter operate apps in the background while you keep working — with a live preview card, dedicated agent browser with self-cleaning tabs, and optimizations for apps like Discord and Spotify.

• Ask Anything defaults: Computer use, Flow, and Ask User are now default tools for new sessions.

• Edge Bar: Inner-edge placement and updated reveal-distance logic for the activation hotspot.

• QuickHub: Now the default interface for new users; respects fullscreen position preference.

• Task sharing & export: Share task traces and export task chat as markdown.

• Transcripts: Duration shown on ready transcript task cards.

• AppSense: Re-enabled CEF and Qt access; waits for web areas before attaching.

• Scroll tool: Millisecond timing support.

• New models: GLM 5.2, Deepseek V4 Flash & Pro, Minimax M3, Cerebras Gemma 4 31B

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the Future of Alter.

Introducing the EdgeBar, a completely new way to interact with Alter. Invoke it directly from the edge of your screen, whenever you need it.

🎶 Todd Terje - Ragysh 🎶

What is the EdgeBar?

The Edge Bar is a slim, elegant toolbar that sits on the edge of your screen, ready to give you instant access to Alter's most powerful features. Once invoked, you can slide it up or down to reposition the activation hotspot exactly where it feels most natural.

Paired with QuickHub, this will deprecate the notch and the old interface, including the control block taking too much estate in your menubar. The notch will stay until the EdgeBar becomes stable.

Click the blue arrow to reveal all available functions:

• Quick Hub — Launch it with a single click by pressing the plus button. Better yet, the icon below auto-attaches Quick Hub to your current active window. Switch windows and the Quick Hub follows seamlessly.

• Recording — Start recording any meeting (in-person or remote) with one tap on the mic icon. Perfect for capturing ideas, meetings, and conversations without switching context.

• Live Features (Parakeet) — Launch the live notepad or live caption directly from the Edge Bar for real-time transcription during meetings.

• Right-Click Controls — Stop recording, cancel, or switch your input device with a simple right-click.

Fully Customizable

Head to Settings to configure your Edge Bar experience:

• Choose to display it on the right, the left, or both sides simultaneously

• Position it vertically to match your workflow

Going further

• Drag and drop a file on the Edgebar to add it to a Quickhub window

• Browse a Youtube video, add the transcript in one click to an Alter window

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Audio capture pipeline: Rebuilt capture for cleaner, more reliable meeting recordings.

• Cloud transcription: Switched to the new Soniox V5 engine for improved cloud transcription quality.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Meeting history: Fix history saving of meeting recordings.

• Live transcription: Fixed a Whisper live callback deadlock that could stall transcription.

• Dictation cleanup: Ignored dictation cleanup failures so they no longer interrupt workflows.

• Startup reliability: Captured AppKit launch exceptions, removed the placeholder window, and gated hub rendering until explicitly opened.

• Preferences: Sanitized persisted layout values and resolved a runtime concurrency warning.

• Chat rendering: User raw tags now render literally in messages.

• Workspace tools: Fixed Xcode Python shim handling in bash tool execution.

• Notch input: Fixed plain Return key submission from notch input.

• Pasteboard: Fixed a crash when copying to the pasteboard.

• QuickHub shortcuts: Reduced modifier attach sensitivity when opening QuickHub.

• Hub app sense: Refresh app context when focusing the hub.

Hey everyone,

this week's video shows you how to build an advanced Alter Action.

We use the example of a meal planner to show you how you can ingest your latest grocery shopping list and create receipts in your calendar to plan your meals.

The meal planner is available here.

We hope you will enjoy it.

🎶 Syclops - Where’s Jason’s K 🎶

Meeting recording improvement

We are also introducing two new improvement regarding audio recording.

Audio quality improvement

We have rebuilt the way we capture audio with Alter.

The audio files generated are now way cleaner, meaning better transcriptions and much nicer to listen to.

A new Cloud Provider

Our cloud provider is now Soniox and their brand new V5 audio engine, where we saw massive jump in quality with our previous providers.

If you are reading this, we have something for you

Look closely at this week's video, and you will notice an unreleased feature of Alter, paving the way to the future of Alter.

We need your help to improve this feature, so if you are interested in having early access, please fill out this form.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Audio capture pipeline: Rebuilt capture for cleaner, more reliable meeting recordings.

• Cloud transcription: Switched to the new Soniox V5 engine for improved cloud transcription quality.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Meeting history: Fix history saving of meeting recordings.

• Live transcription: Fixed a Whisper live callback deadlock that could stall transcription.

• Dictation cleanup: Ignored dictation cleanup failures so they no longer interrupt workflows.

• Startup reliability: Captured AppKit launch exceptions, removed the placeholder window, and gated hub rendering until explicitly opened.

• Preferences: Sanitized persisted layout values and resolved a runtime concurrency warning.

• Chat rendering: User raw tags now render literally in messages.

• Workspace tools: Fixed Xcode Python shim handling in bash tool execution.

• Notch input: Fixed plain Return key submission from notch input.

• Pasteboard: Fixed a crash when copying to the pasteboard.

• QuickHub shortcuts: Reduced modifier attach sensitivity when opening QuickHub.

• Hub app sense: Refresh app context when focusing the hub.

Hey everyone,

Beside our usual updates on the app, we made another tutorial where you’ll learn to build your Meeting report system.

Think multiple reports with different angles, generated right at the end of your meeting, and saved where you need it.

Timestamps

0:00 - The Problem: Moving beyond basic summaries
0:20 - Introducing the 4-Report System (Overview, Team, Tech, Coaching)
0:46 - Prerequisites (Watch the previous video!)
0:57 - Building the Alter Action
1:14 - Customizing the System Prompt
2:07 - Connecting your Obsidian Vault
2:42 - Linking the action to your workspace
3:07 - Verifying your workflow
3:30 - Testing with a previous meeting
4:01 - Reviewing the generated reports in Obsidian
4:49 - Bonus: Generating HTML charts
5:13 - Automating beyond meetings (daily/weekly recaps)
6:00 - Conclusion

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Action editor: Overhauled action editor state handling, moved search into the sidebar, added row context menus, simplified built-in actions customization, added filters, diagnostics, and multi-selection.

• Chat experience: Updated message rendering with stream animations, added reasoning display.

• Ephemeral actions: Don't clutter your chat history, there's a "Save to History" toggle in the action editor.

• Remote MCP: Added configurable API key headers for remote MCP integrations.

• Calendar selection: Added support for selecting upcoming calendars.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• MCP and startup reliability: Bounded wake restart and tool listing loops, prevented the hub from auto-opening on launch, surfaced prepared action startup failures.

• Workspace attachments: Fix actions misfires with attachements.

• Tool calls and Quick Actions: Repaired delayed OpenAI tool results, improved recovery when automatic quick actions fail.

• Keyboard and shortcuts: Improved paste and vim sequence handling across keyboard layouts, resolved performed shortcuts by layout.

• Action editor polish: Fixed drag-and-drop context buttons in the text editor.

• QuickHub and speaker suggestions: Fixed Quick Action picker empty states, speaker suggestion editing, speaker suggestion keyboard navigation, and speaker grid column widths.

• Tasks Tool: Avoid throwing an error if a tool sent as params is not found.

• Skills and workspace initialization: Overwrote existing workspace skill folders when needed and fixed a workspace initialization crash.

Hey everyone,

We’re publishing our first long video format to help you get the most of Alter.

This first video is about Meetings and everything you need to know to build a system that works for you.

It starts with the basics, go through the live capabilities of Alter with Live Captions and the Live Notepad, and ends with advanced automation tips.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:34 The full AI meeting workflow in Alter
01:07 Choose the right voice processor
02:24 Check your audio setup before meetings
03:13 Automatic meeting detection
03:56 Customize meeting detection settings
04:33 Why calendar context matters
05:10 Start meetings manually when needed
05:42 Use Live Captions during meetings
06:14 Use Live Notepad during meetings
06:54 Review the transcript and fix speakers
07:55 How speaker matching works
08:39 Generate a meeting report
09:09 Customize meeting reports
09:59 Automate actions with On New Transcript
10:50 Create multiple outputs from one transcript
11:24 Handle back-to-back meetings
12:04 Troubleshooting tips
12:42 Recover recordings and rerun transcription
13:23 Import existing audio and video files
14:09 Search, save, and sync transcripts
15:03 Full workflow recap

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Speaker matching: Added calendar selection for speaker matching and support for matching speakers from calendar contacts, added manual calendar event selection.

• QuickHub shortcuts: Added a Control double-tap QuickHub shortcut, Esc no longer closes the QuickHub.

• Conversation workflows: Improved user experience when forking a conversation from a user message.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Meeting and audio recovery: Added retry recovery for audio input failures, recovered selected input authorization failures, fell back to mic-only mode when meeting audio routes fail, hardened the end-of-meeting detection.

• Speaker and transcript quality: Prevent transcripion from stalling because of bad vocabulary, improved speaker name matching, and restored live transcript context loading in QuickHub.

• QuickHub reliability: Prevented modifier-click misfires, fix background job not being in the background, close blank chat tabs on Command-W when other chats are open, and hardened QuickHub close teardown to prevent a crash when dismissing the window.

• Tools and task stability: Improved tool matching in tasks, preserved OpenAI tool-call history in BYOK scenarios, and improved skill info failure diagnostics.

• AppSense and context handling: Fixed AppSense contexts wrongly being added to messages, table formatting improvements, fixed contexts not following along when forking from the first user message.

• Voice: Display the meeting apps monitored for voice detection.

Hey everyone,

We are excited to introduce Auto Attach, a powerful new way to use Alter.

With this update, you can now double-tap the command key to automatically attach your active window’s context to Alter, making your workflow faster and more intuitive. Beyond active windows, AutoAttach can seamlessly load files, folders, or specific notes directly into your workspace context for immediate action.

🎶 Max Cooper - Perpetual Motion 🎶

How it works

Double-tap the command key, and Alter slides in from your chosen side, with the active window already wired in as context. No copy-paste, no menus—just ask and you're done.

Streamline Your Workflow with QuickHub Attach

We are excited to introduce Auto Attach, a new way to integrate Alter directly into your active workspace. By simply double-tapping your chosen trigger key (configured in your settings), Alter instantly grabs your active window—a browser tab, document, or specific app—and pulls it into your chat as context. No more manual copy-pasting; just a single, fluid gesture to bridge your work and your AI assistant.

How to Configure Your Setup

Setting it up is simple. Open Alter and head to Settings, then navigate to the Shortcut section. Select Auto Attach to choose your preferred trigger key (like Command) for the double-tap gesture. Once configured, you are ready to start attaching context on the fly.

Advanced Context Control: Files and Folders

Auto Attach goes well beyond just grabbing your active window. It is built to intelligently handle your specific files and folders:

• Active Window Integration: When you double-tap in any application, that window is immediately wired into your prompt, allowing you to ask questions or get assistance on what you are looking at right now.

• File & Folder Handling: You can go further by simply selecting a file or folder in Finder before using the gesture. Alter will recognize your selection and automatically load those files into the conversation context.

• Media Transcription: For supported files, such as audio or video recordings, simply select the file and trigger the shortcut. Alter will automatically process and transcribe the content, making it instantly searchable and actionable within your chat.

What's next?

We are just beginning this journey with QuickHub Attach and would love your feedback on how it performs in your specific applications or browser workflows.

Send me an email at Olivier@alterhq.com or join us on Discord to share your thoughts and help us shape how it behaves in the future.

As always, thank you for being a part of this journey.

Cheers,
Olivier & Sam

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Auto Attach: Added double-tap shortcuts for instantly attaching QuickHub to the active app, with context such as selected files and folders. Default: double cmd

• QuickHub attached mode: Added conversation switching from the close pill, automatic selected-file context when attaching QuickHub.

• Shortcut flexibility: Added double-tap Command, Option, and Shift shortcut options.

• Tools and skills: Added a click destination for skills, surfaced connected Applications from the Apps Gallery, and added an action option to disable the Task tool.

• Task and Flow permissions: Better propagation of workspace permissions to Task and Flow tools.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Auto Attach and QuickHub reliability: Fixed crashes when closing attached QuickHub, allowed closing the final remaining tab, handled Enter correctly from text input, opened context strip details reliably.

• Focus and shortcut handling: Prevented QuickHub from focusing the tools manager when opened, ignored command chords for double-command detection, and fixed fullscreen double-command attachment to the current app.

• Attachments and images: Fixed follow-up image attachments, rehomed provisional workspace attachments, removed intermediate image deduplication steps, and improved AppSense screenshot attachment.

• Skills and workspaces: Canonicalized provider tool names, used safer workspace mount aliases, fixed runtime skill permissions for ephemeral workspaces, and fixed path validation for directories in the Task tool.

• Scheduled runs and conversations: Waited for MCP tools in scheduled runs, linked workspace conversations for schedules, and released task conversations with their parent view model.

• Recording and provider stability: Improved recording and transcription failure reporting, and prevented malformed skill names from causing OpenRouter provider errors.

• Tool management: Linked active tools to the remote MCP view from "See all".

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 two quality-of-life features designed to make your daily workflow even more seamless and a showcase of an amazing Alter Action created by Renshu, one of our community member, Artifact Studio.

🎶 Bonobo - Kong 🎶

Speaker Suggestion

Alter now automatically retrieves information from your Apple Calendar to suggest the speakers for your meeting recordings based on the attendees present in the calendar event.

By default, you’ll see the speaker's email address, but if they are already in your Apple Contacts, you’ll see their full name. This integration makes it easier to search through your history by speaker and instantly find every call where a specific person was present.

Enhanced History Management

We’ve also re-indexed your history to utilize a more efficient way of storing data. This update provides a faster and more stable experience when navigating through your past conversations, and it lays the groundwork for more powerful features coming soon.

Community Spotlight: Artifact Studio

A huge shout-out to community member Renchu for releasing Artifact Studio on our marketplace.

Artifact Studio integrates as a Mode, allowing you to create simple dashboards and visual applications in a single action. It’s an ideal tool for data visualization.

Artifact Studio is available now on our marketplace for free, and we highly recommend giving it a try.

See you next week,

Olivier & Samuel

Join the community
https://discord.gg/gvCMmfBRWZ

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Speaker suggestions: Improved speaker label editing and rename suggestions.

• History indexing: Rebuilt search indexing on a more reliable foundation.

• Hub & conversation UX: Added document "Open With" from conversations, replaced the hub's modal action form with an inline form, and polished QuickHub with close-all support plus tab position indicators.

• App tool controls: Added a one-click way to disable all tools for a given app in the Apps Gallery, and disable tools by default for newly created custom actions.

• Flow: Added Flow discoverability hints.

• Ask User tool: Double click to select a reply and continue.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Mail & tools: Prevented duplicate hub send clicks, bounded unread mail fetching, enabled fetching email content by message ID, made AppleScript-based tools timeoutable, and made generated CSV files safer for Excel.

• Workspace attachments: Preserved OCR for workspace-backed images and improved how workspace image attachments resolve source paths.

• Validation & localization: Improved workspace tool parameter validation and corrected mistranslated UI terms.

• Infrastructure: Updated the MCP library to avoid systematic polling failures and suppressed default workspace instructions where they were noisy.

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 focused on making your daily workflows even smoother, including one highly requested feature is now live

🎶 Röyksopp - So Easy 🎶

Continuous Back-to-Back Recording

You can now record meetings back-to-back without interruption. When you finish a recording, start a new one instantly while Alter transcribes the meeting you just completed. No more waiting for the transcription to be finished.

How to use it
Simply use the keyboard shortcut to stop and start recordings. The fastest way to keep up with consecutive meetings without missing a beat.

Native Experience for Plan Mode

Questions asked by Alter in the Hub's Plan Mode are now rendered natively. This creates a more intuitive experience while planning your work.

It's available now in the latest update. Try the back-to-back recording with your next series of meetings and let us know what you think.

See you next week,
Olivier & Samuel

Join the community
https://discord.gg/gvCMmfBRWZ

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Back-to-back meetings: Improved support for consecutive meeting recordings without awkward handoff between sessions.

• Path Finder & Services integration: Added Path Finder support, deduplicated "Add to Alter" pasteboard items, and added an "Add selected text to Alter" Services menu action.

• Hub & shortcuts: Better text editor height calculation, keyboard search handling, and conversation page scrolling shortcuts.

• Ask User UX: Redesigned the Ask User prompt with keyboard support, added an "Other" option, and now shows user questions natively in the hub.

• Workspace management: Added support for deleting workspace-local files.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Workspace permissions: Clearer empty-capabilities messaging, simpler permission prompts, support for macOS temporary paths, and more reliable persistence of temporary directory grants across a user turn.

• Workspace shell: Bash commands now run through the user's shell, with support for fish and better heredoc preflight handling.

• Hub & QuickHub: Fixed conversation drop target detection, missing mode context in new chats, first-item switcher focus, model switcher stability, and removed the old spotlight layout.

• Shortcuts & settings: Unified shortcut settings, improved shortcut migration behavior, required exact cycle shortcut matches, and added a clickable Settings link for Quick Actions and shortcut configuration.

• Conversations & questions: Fixed transcript deletion crashes, empty assistant message chrome, retry prompt clearing, loading state between tool calls, and white text on selected Ask User options.

• UI polish: Fixed live resize state invalidation, microphone permission recovery, marketplace detail navigation loops, and the incorrect gear/tag icon in the hub tags popover.

• Workspace assets: Fixed image handling so images are sent to the LLM and copied into the workspace directory correctly.

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 just made your macOS workflow significantly faster.

Starting today, Alter’s QuickHub now seamlessly integrates with Apple Finder, turning your file manager into an AI-powered workspace, by automatically having access to your current folders and files, when attaching your QuickHub window to it.

🎶 Ratatat - Drugs 🎶

What you can do right now

1. Instant File Intelligence: Attach the QuickHub to any Finder window, and it automatically retrieves the content. Ask questions, get summaries, or find specific information across your folders instantly.

2. Smart Organization: Need to clean up? Ask Alter to create folder structures or organize your files based on content, not just names.

3. Direct Manipulation: Rename files, move them, or process them in bulk—all through simple natural language commands in the QuickHub.

How to use it

Just use the Attach function to dock your QuickHub to your active window, either by:

• using your keyboard shortcut

• using Command Palette CMD+K and start writing Attach

Why we built this

Your files are where your work lives, but interacting with them can be tedious. By bringing the Quick Hub directly into Finder, we’re removing the friction between your intent and your data.

Whether you’re managing complex projects or just cleaning up your desktop, Alter is now there to do the heavy lifting for you.

Also working with Bloom

If you are like us, and love Bloom, an Apple Finder on steroid, we are glad to announce that Magic Finder does work with a Bloom window, automatically attaching your current active panel.

It’s available now in the latest update. Attach it to your Finder, give it a task, and see how much faster your workflow becomes.

See you next week,

Olivier & Samuel

Join the community and keep shaping what comes next →

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Finder & Bloom smart attach: Automatically attach the active Finder folder or Bloom panel to chat when using QuickHub—your file manager becomes part of the AI workspace

• Default workspace: default workspace provided for Ask Anything and Plan with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint skills enabled.

• QuickHub: Tools and context details previews.

• Hub & chat: Search your chat history with #; ⌘R retries the last message; usage view updates for add-on requests.

• Keyboard shortcuts: User-customizable shortcuts in Settings.

• API keys: Support for multiple custom endpoints.

• Mouse widget: New “add selection to Alter” item.

• *Actions: Handle failing action parsing (prompt to fix).

• Localization: Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese locales added.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Text Selection: Hardened text selection capture.

• QuickHub & Chats: Smoother conversation window dragging and "Return" key sends message more reliably.

• Dictation & audio: Local+ Parakeet model availability fix; improve microphone state UI.

• Windows & shell: Prevent stale hub reopen; don’t pop the hub open when closing Settings; Dock icon surfaces existing Alter windows instead of the Hub.

• Marketplace: Comments polish and less aggressive polling; install/tool-description link fixes.

• Actions: Preserve default action parameter values.

  
  

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 launched the Alter Marketplace. Starting today, you can discover and install Alter Actions in one click.

🎶 Occams Laser - Descent 🎶

What you can do right now

Browse & Install
Every Alter Action shows you exactly what it does, what tools it uses, and what skills it needs. Click download. It's on your machine.

Customize
Find your installed Actions in the Action Editor. Modify them. Add tools. Make them yours. Nothing is locked.

Publish
Built something useful? Publish it. We review submissions. Users see verified Actions and Actions under review. You decide what you trust.

Why we built this

The best use cases for Alter come from you. Not from us.

A marketplace is how we get out of your way and let the community show what's possible.

We're launching this week. It's open to everyone.

Start exploring. Start publishing.

See you next week.

Olivier & Samuel

Join the community and keep shaping what comes next →

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

• Alter Action Marketplace: Added the new marketplace to easily distribute and install Alter Actions, including the Skills, Tools and MCP servers they need to work.

• Tool management: Reorganized the tools manager sidebar to make installed tools and marketplace content easier to browse.

• Hub input UI: Merged the mode, action, and send controls into a more streamlined input button.

• Context improvements: Sped up active app context retrieval.

• Meeting prompts: Added a minimum meeting duration for mic monitor stop notifications.

Bug Fixes & Stability

• Conversation recovery: Added a retry action for assistant errors in the conversation view.

• Microphone and diarization stability: Prevented stale meeting session control, reduced repeated auto-start prompts after canceling, improved camera attribution handling, and blocked concurrent diarization runs.

• App and settings behavior: Reopened settings correctly from the app menu, stopped polling when the application detail view disappears, kept automation permissions neutral on inconclusive checks, and fixed the tools window navigation sidebar.
  

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, 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