Launcher versions

Added

• Give an app a seed from its card. Paste a farm token once in Settings, then give or take back your seed without leaving the launcher. The card keeps the same seed pile and count as the farm.
• Read and leave comments from the launcher. An app's card carries its conversation and a comment box. The launcher explains when the account needs a verified Tiiny, when the hourly limit resets, and when a token is no longer accepted.
• A farm account in Settings. The token is saved separately with owner-only permissions, is never shown again, and can be removed with Sign out. Every request and the bearer header stay in Rust rather than entering the page.

Added

• An About window that says who made this and where it lives. The panel macOS used to put up named the app, its version and a copyright line, and nothing in it went anywhere. This one is the whole credit roll: Titanium Computing, who build and keep the farm, and Jason Brashear, who wrote it, on GitHub and on his own site. Tiiny, the AI Pocket Lab every app here talks to. The farm itself, and Titanium Bot beside it, the same pair the farm's own footer carries. The launcher's source on GitHub and the licence it is published under. Every one of them has its mark beside it, says in one line what it is, and opens in your own browser rather than inside this app. On a Mac it is the About item in the application menu, which used to put up that panel. Everywhere it is in the menu bar or tray icon's menu, and in Settings.
• Check for updates, on a button. The launcher has looked for a newer version on its own since 0.1.2, when it opens and every four hours after. Now you can also just ask, and be told the answer in words: either you are on the newest one, or the strip at the top of the farm has the button that installs the one that is waiting.
• Show the log. The launcher writes down the few things it decides not to interrupt you about, and this puts that file in front of you. A launcher that has had nothing to say says that instead.

Changed

• The version and the release date in the About window are read from the build and from this file, so there is no number in that window anybody has to remember to change.

Changed

• This release exists to prove the updater. 0.1.2 added the mechanism that looks for a newer version and offers to update and restart, but the newest version its feed could offer was itself. 0.1.3 is the first version a 0.1.2 launcher can see, download, verify and install on its own. Nothing else has changed. If your launcher put up "Tiiny App Farm 0.1.3 is ready" and came back as 0.1.3, the updater works.

Added

• Update available, on the card. An app you have planted that the catalog has moved past says so in the top right corner of its card, over the art, rather than only inside the card. Opening it still shows the same Update button that was always there.
• New, on the card. An app this launcher has never put on your screen before carries a New badge in its top left corner until you open it. The first run of a new install marks the whole farm seen without a word, so nobody's first look is a wall of badges, and an app you have already met does not become New again when it publishes a new version.
• A stack of seeds. Every card says how many seeds the farm has given that app, as a little pile beside the Planted chip that grows with the count: an outline where nobody has given one yet, then the seeds themselves, and from ten up a full pile with the number. It is read once per look at the farm and never holds the cards back.
• The launcher updates itself. It looks for a newer version when you open it and every four hours it stays open. When one is waiting, a quiet strip at the top of the farm says so, with one button that downloads it, installs it and starts the new one. Not now puts that version away for good; the one after it asks again. The menu bar carries the same line. A launcher that cannot reach the farm says nothing at all rather than interrupting you about it.
• Windows and Linux can update themselves too, not only macOS. Every platform's update carries a signature that is checked before anything is installed, and an update whose signature is not ours is refused and says so rather than being installed quietly.

Known limits

• The seed count is read only. Giving an app a seed is still something you do on tiinyapp.farm; a later version brings it into the window.
• The count comes from the farm, so a launcher with no network draws the cards with no piles on them rather than waiting.
• A real self-update is first proven at 0.1.3. This is the release that adds the mechanism, so the newest version the feed can offer it is itself. What has been proven here is every part that can be: the banner, the refusal of an update signed with the wrong key, and that each platform's signature belongs to the exact file published. The download and restart on a real release is witnessed at the next one.
• Nobody on this team has yet run the Linux AppImage on a Linux desktop, so its self-update is signed and verified but unexercised, the same as the AppImage itself has always been.

Added

• Linux. An AppImage for x86_64, carrying the same bundled Python and the same tiinyapp-farm engine as the other two. One file, made executable and run; nothing to install first.
• A release history. Every release, its notes and every file it shipped are published as launcher/releases.json, so older versions stay reachable rather than being replaced by the newest one.

Changed

• The card for an app says which port it will really come up on when that is not the port its manifest asks for, whether the app is running or stopped.
• The engine inside is tiinyapp-farm 0.1.17, which remembers the port an app last used and tries it again before the one the manifest names.

Known limits

• The AppImage is not signed. Linux has no notarisation and nothing a stranger's machine would check a desktop signature against. The SHA-256 of every file is published with the release and is what can be verified.
• The AppImage has been built but never run on a Linux desktop by anybody on this team. The tray, the deep link and the window are untested there.
• The updater covers macOS only. A Linux update means downloading the new AppImage.

The first release.

Added

• A window for the farm. Browse the catalog on tiinyapp.farm, see what an app needs and what it can reach before anything downloads, and install, start, stop, update and remove it without opening a terminal.
• It carries its own Python. CPython 3.11.16 and the tiinyapp-farm engine are inside the app, so there is nothing to install first: no Python, no Node, no package manager.
• A Models pane. What your Tiiny has loaded right now, what is on its disk, and what the NPU budget is. A model that fits can be loaded from the window; a model that does not says how much more it needs.
• What each app needs, in words. Every app card says which kinds of model it needs and whether your Tiiny has them, and an app that cannot run says why instead of failing after it starts. Load and start loads the model it needs and then starts the app, and says which one it loaded.
• A running app that loses its model says so, on its row and in the menu bar, within a few seconds of the model going away.
• Each app opens in its own window, with its own name on it, rather than taking a tab in whatever browser happens to be open.
• The menu bar keeps the list of what is running when the window is closed.

Known limits

• macOS and Windows only.
• The Windows installer in this release is not signed, so Windows warns about it. The macOS disk images are signed, notarised and stapled.
• One Tiiny at a time.