0.23.0 2026-06-06

Netclaw v0.23.0 — Beta channel, streaming-native chat, Docker improvements, and shell reliability fixes

Features

• Opt-in beta release channel — Netclaw can now publish and install prereleases without ever touching a default install. The release manifest gained an additive latestPrerelease pointer (newest of all releases) alongside latest (newest stable); --channel beta / -Channel beta and the rolling :beta Docker tag resolve to it, while stable clients structurally only ever read latest. (#1314)

• Channel-aware, SemVer-correct update check — the binary update check now honors Daemon.UpdateChannel (stable default, or beta) and compares versions by SemVer 2.0.0 precedence. Beta testers are notified of the next prerelease and automatically roll onto a stable release once it supersedes their beta; stable users are never offered a prerelease. (#1315)

• Streaming-native chat-client stack with composable routing — the IChatClient stack has been redesigned so the streaming-vs-non-streaming transport distinction no longer leaks into callers. Netclaw now issues only streaming requests across all 8 providers, eliminating the OpenAI Codex 400 "Stream must be set to true" error and preventing reasoning content drops on some providers. Resilience and observability are compositional via Microsoft.Extensions.AI.ChatClientBuilder — each (provider, model) pipeline is assembled as Logging → Retry → VendorOptions → raw. A RoutingChatClient walks ordered candidate lists for failover, and LoggingChatClient is now stateless with session-correlated log tags (SessionId). The transport-level retry policy is configurable via Session:Tuning:StreamingRetryPolicy. (#1313)

• Bounded tool output with file spill — large tool outputs are now bounded and spilled to a file instead of flooding the session, keeping context lean while preserving the full output on disk. (#1305)

Bug Fixes

• Shell approval patterns no longer match bare integers — fixed a bug where numeric argument patterns (e.g., 1, 42) were incorrectly matched as approval patterns for shell commands. (#1331)

• Shell pipe reads are bounded — pipe reads are now bounded to MaxOutputChars before truncating, preventing runaway memory on huge command output. (#1298)

• Shell verifies the working directory — Netclaw confirms the working directory exists before launching a process, surfacing a clear error instead of a cryptic failure. (#1299)

• Docker self-dropping CLI launcher for root exec — /usr/local/bin/netclaw now transparently re-execs as the netclaw user when invoked as root, so docker exec/kubectl exec -- netclaw works on any orchestrator without gosu/-u knowledge required. (#1322)

• Docker container no longer crash-loops on read-only /tools mount — the entrypoint now treats /tools as best-effort and never recursively chowns it. (#1321)

• Non-root agent can install tools at runtime in Docker — the image now ships user-writable, on-PATH install locations (~/.local/bin, ~/.dotnet, ~/.dotnet/tools, and a mounted /tools/bin) so runtime-installed tools resolve as bare commands. (#1321)

• Docker reaps orphaned subprocesses — the container now uses tini so orphaned subprocesses are reaped instead of accumulating as zombies. (#1306)

• Docker owns the daemon lifecycle — the container is now the sole owner of the daemon lifecycle, fixing conflicting restart behavior. (#1282)

• Docker bind-mount ownership repaired — bind-mount ownership is corrected on startup so mounted data is writable. (#1281)

• Provider modality probing fixed — Netclaw no longer persists guessed modalities, and the model-probe timeout and visibility issues are resolved. (#1311)

• OpenAI Codex calls no longer hang — non-streaming Codex calls are now served via streaming under the hood, so they complete reliably. (#1289)

• Zero context-window models ignored — models that report a zero context window are now ignored instead of breaking model selection. (#1285)

• Init wizard readiness race fixed — init readiness is now gated on a daemon restart generation and a re-resolved endpoint, closing a race in the setup wizard. (#1307)

• Standardized self-animating spinner across probe surfaces — replaced five hand-rolled, drifted probe/validation spinners with Termina's shared SpinnerNode helper. Fixes the frozen ModelManager spinner, the ~1fps crawl on provider validation/probe spinners, and inconsistent animation cadence. (#1312, #1327)

• Lighter daemon memory footprint — netclawd now uses Workstation GC, reducing baseline memory use. (#1295)

• Windows installer uses User-scope PATH — the Windows install instruction now updates the User-scope PATH so netclaw is found in new shells. (#1274)

• Corrected version split in Directory.Build.props — the version parsing logic that extracts major.minor.patch/prerelease segments was fixed to handle all version strings correctly. (#1339)

Dependency Updates

• ModelContextProtocol.Core and ModelContextProtocol.AspNetCore bumped to 1.4.0 — pulls in upstream MCP SDK improvements, including better streaming support that enables the new chat-client stack. (#1329, #1330)

• Aspire.Hosting.AppHost bumped to 13.4.2 — .NET Aspire host updates. (#1318)

• CommunityToolkit.Aspire.Hosting.Ollama bumped to 13.4.0 — Ollama hosting support update. (#1320)

• Grpc.Tools bumped to 2.81.0 — gRPC tooling update. (#1269)

• Verify.XunitV3 bumped to 31.19.0 — test framework update. (#1270)

Documentation & Internal

• Documented beta/stable release process — added documentation for the release workflow. (#1323)

• Cited #648 at the chat-client routing seam — added documentation reference for provider routing behavior. (#1335)

• Archived 8 completed OpenSpec changes — cleaned up completed specification work and synced delta specs. (#1325)

• Added .claude/worktrees to .gitignore — keeps Claude Code worktree artifacts out of version control. (#1336)

• Prepared v0.23.0-beta.5 release — release preparation commits for beta channel. (#1337)

• Prepared v0.23.0-beta.4 release — release preparation commits for beta channel. (#1328)

• Prepared v0.23.0-beta.1 release — release preparation commits for beta channel. (#1317)