Bristlenose

Open-source user-research transcript analysis.

Point Bristlenose at a folder of interview recordings – videos, audio or transcripts from Zoom, Teams or Google Meet.

It transcribes, identifies moderators and participants, extracts good verbatim quotes, groups them by screen and theme. Filler words are stripped, editorial context is (sparingly) added [thus]. Emotion and strong language are preserved.

The (HTML) report aggregates all your interview quotes.

Click a timecode to watch the video of that quote.

You can check a summary of unused quotes - to ensure nothing crucial was trimmed by the AI - typically ~20% or less of the original.

You can tag and star quotes to organise them. It auto-tags with sentiment analysis to help you identify moments of frustration or delight.

Filter your quotes, and export via CSV to your boards in Miro, Figjam, Mural or Lucidspark, or spreadsheet - for further analysis.

Bristlenose transcribes locally, and can do the thematic analysis on a (built in) local LLM — but for speedy results you'll want an API key from Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Azure OpenAI. For commercial work, check your org's policies on public LLM use.

A study costs about $0.40 per hour of interview audio, with Claude — LLM provider costs vary.

Pre-release software, without warranty. All feedback welcome.

Bristlenose is built by me, Martin Storey, a practising user researcher. It's free and open source under AGPL-3.0.

Help translate Bristlenose into your language on Weblate — see TRANSLATING.md for details.

Sidequest: what is a Bristlenose?

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What it does

The report includes:

• Sections -- quotes grouped by screen or task
• Themes -- cross-participant patterns, surfaced automatically
• Tags -- your own free-text tags with auto-suggest
• Sentiment -- AI-generated badges per quote
• Charts -- histogram of emotions across all quotes
• Friction points -- confusion, frustration, and error-recovery moments flagged for review
• User journeys -- per-participant stage progression
• Per-participant transcripts -- full transcript pages with clickable timecodes, linked from the participant table
• Clickable timecodes -- jump to the exact moment in a popout video player
• Starred quotes -- star, reorder
• Inline editing -- fix transcription errors directly in the report
• Editable participant names -- click the pencil icon to name participants in-browser; export edits as YAML
• Filter and export as CSV into Miro and more
• Keyboard shortcuts -- j/k navigation, s to star, t to tag, / to search, ? for help; multi-select with Cmd+click or Shift+j/k for bulk actions
• Codebook frameworks -- import Nielsen's 10 Heuristics, Yablonski's Laws, Don Norman, Jesse James Garrett, or the Morville honeycomb, or build your own
• AutoCode -- LLM proposes tags from your codebook; review with a confidence threshold
• Inspector panel -- DevTools-style heatmaps and signal cards with Win/Problem/Niggle/Surprise flags
• Word-level transcript highlighting -- karaoke-style sync with video playback
• Video clip extraction -- export starred quotes as video clips (FFmpeg stream-copy)
• Self-contained HTML export -- one-click bundle for stakeholders, optional anonymisation
• Six languages -- en, es, fr, de, ko, ja (--lang flag)

Install

For LLM analysis, you can use Claude, ChatGPT, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, or Local AI (free, via Ollama) — see Getting an API key below.

macOS (desktop app) — easiest

Download Bristlenose.dmg, drag to Applications, open it. The app prompts for your Claude API key on first launch and bundles everything else (Python, FFmpeg, Whisper). No terminal needed.

First launch: macOS will block it — go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, click "Open Anyway". One time only.

Requires macOS 15 Sequoia, Apple Silicon (M1+).

macOS (Homebrew), Linux, Windows

Requires Python 3.10 or newer.

# macOS (Homebrew) -- handles ffmpeg + Python for you
brew install cassiocassio/bristlenose/bristlenose

# Linux / macOS / Windows (pipx or uv)
pipx install bristlenose
uv tool install bristlenose    # alternative

If using pipx or uv, you'll also need FFmpeg (brew install ffmpeg on macOS, sudo apt install ffmpeg on Ubuntu, winget install FFmpeg on Windows).

If you have Anaconda installed, its bundled Python may shadow newer system Pythons. Either conda deactivate before running pip/pipx, or install via Homebrew (which uses its own bundled Python 3.12).

After installing, run bristlenose doctor to verify your setup.

See the installation guide for detailed step-by-step instructions for your platform, including Python/FFmpeg setup and AI provider configuration.

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Getting an API key

If you've used Claude or ChatGPT before, you might only know the chat interface. Bristlenose talks to the same AI models, but through their API (a direct connection for software). This needs a separate API key -- a password that lets bristlenose call the AI on your behalf.

You need one key:

Option A: Claude (by Anthropic)

1. Go to console.anthropic.com and sign up or log in
2. Click Create Key, give it a name (e.g. "bristlenose"), and copy the key
3. Store it securely:

bristlenose configure claude    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store

Option B: ChatGPT (by OpenAI)

1. Go to platform.openai.com and sign up or log in
2. Click Create new secret key, give it a name, and copy the key
3. Store it securely:

bristlenose configure chatgpt    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store

To use ChatGPT instead of the default, add --llm chatgpt to your commands:

bristlenose run interviews -o results/ --llm chatgpt

Option C: Azure OpenAI (enterprise)

If your organisation has a Microsoft Azure contract that includes Azure OpenAI Service:

export BRISTLENOSE_AZURE_ENDPOINT=https://your-resource.openai.azure.com/
export BRISTLENOSE_AZURE_DEPLOYMENT=your-deployment-name
bristlenose configure azure    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store
bristlenose run interviews --llm azure

You'll need your endpoint URL, API key, and deployment name from the Azure portal.

Option D: Gemini (by Google)

1. Go to aistudio.google.com/apikey and sign up or log in
2. Click Create API key, give it a name, and copy the key
3. Store it securely:

bristlenose configure gemini    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store

To use Gemini instead of the default, add --llm gemini to your commands:

bristlenose run interviews -o results/ --llm gemini

Budget option: Gemini is 5–7× cheaper than Claude or ChatGPT — roughly $0.06 per hour of interview audio instead of $0.40.

Option E: Local AI (via Ollama) — free, no signup

Run analysis entirely on your machine using open-source models. No account, no API key, no cost.

1. Install Ollama (one download, no signup)
2. Run bristlenose — it will offer to set up local AI automatically:

bristlenose interviews

# Or explicitly:
bristlenose run interviews --llm local

If Ollama isn't installed, bristlenose will offer to install it for you (via Homebrew on macOS, snap on Linux).

Trade-offs: Local models are slower (~10 min vs ~2 min per study) and less accurate (~85% vs ~99% JSON reliability). Good for trying the tool; use cloud APIs for production quality.

Use whichever provider you already have an API key for. If you don't have one yet, Option A (Claude) is the default. A typical 8-participant study costs roughly $1--3 with any cloud provider ($0.20 with Gemini).

Note: A ChatGPT Plus/Pro or Claude Pro/Max subscription does not include API access. The API is billed separately — you need an API key from console.anthropic.com or platform.openai.com.

Making your key permanent

macOS and Linux: The recommended way is bristlenose configure (shown in Options A--D above). It validates your key and stores it in your operating system's secure credential store:

• macOS — saved to your login keychain. You can view or delete it in the Keychain Access app (search for "Bristlenose")
• Linux — saved via Secret Service (GNOME Keyring / KDE Wallet). Requires secret-tool to be installed (included by default on most desktop Linux distributions)

The key is loaded automatically on every run — no environment variables needed. Run bristlenose doctor to verify your key is detected (it will show "(Credential Store)" next to the API key check).

Windows: Credential store storage is not yet supported. Set the key permanently with setx (built into Windows):

setx BRISTLENOSE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY "sk-ant-..."

For ChatGPT, use BRISTLENOSE_OPENAI_API_KEY; for Gemini, use BRISTLENOSE_GOOGLE_API_KEY. Close and reopen your terminal after running setx — the variable only takes effect in new windows.

Alternative: shell profile (macOS/Linux). If you prefer environment variables over the credential store, add the export to your shell startup file:

# macOS (zsh is the default shell):
echo 'export BRISTLENOSE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...' >> ~/.zshrc

# Linux (bash is the default shell on most distributions):
echo 'export BRISTLENOSE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...' >> ~/.bashrc

Then open a new terminal window (or run source ~/.zshrc / source ~/.bashrc).

Alternative: .env file. Create a .env file in your project folder -- see .env.example for a template.

Troubleshooting: Run bristlenose doctor at any time to check your setup — it verifies your API key, FFmpeg, transcription backend, and other dependencies.

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Quick start

bristlenose interviews

That's it. Point it at a folder containing your recordings and it will produce the report inside that folder. Expect roughly 2--5 minutes per participant on Apple Silicon, longer on CPU.

Open interviews/bristlenose-output/bristlenose-interviews-report.html in your browser.

What goes in

Any mix of audio, video, subtitles, or transcripts:

.wav .mp3 .m4a .flac .ogg .wma .aac .mp4 .mov .avi .mkv .webm .srt .vtt .docx

Files sharing a name stem (e.g. p1.mp4 and p1.srt) are treated as one session. Existing subtitles skip transcription.

What comes out

Output goes inside the input folder by default:

interviews/                              # your input folder
├── Session 1.mp4
├── Session 2.mp4
└── bristlenose-output/                  # output folder (created inside input)
    ├── bristlenose-interviews-report.html   # the report -- open this
    ├── bristlenose-interviews-report.md     # Markdown version
    ├── people.yaml                          # participant registry
    ├── assets/                              # static files (CSS, logos, player)
    ├── sessions/                            # per-session transcript pages
    │   ├── transcript_s1.html
    │   └── transcript_s2.html
    ├── transcripts-raw/                     # one .txt + .md per session
    ├── transcripts-cooked/                  # PII-redacted (only with --redact-pii)
    └── .bristlenose/                        # internal files
        └── intermediate/                    # JSON snapshots (re-readable by `bristlenose serve`)

Override the output location with --output: bristlenose run interviews/ -o /elsewhere/

More commands

bristlenose run interviews -p "Q1 Usability Study"    # name the project
bristlenose transcribe interviews                        # transcribe, no LLM
bristlenose analyze interviews/bristlenose-output/       # skip transcription, run LLM analysis
bristlenose serve interviews                             # open a previous report (no analysis)
bristlenose status interviews                            # check project status (read-only)
bristlenose doctor                                       # check dependencies

Configuration

Via .env file, environment variables (prefix BRISTLENOSE_), or bristlenose.toml. See .env.example for all options.

Hardware

Transcription hardware is auto-detected. Apple Silicon uses MLX on Metal GPU. NVIDIA uses faster-whisper with CUDA. Everything else falls back to CPU.

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Roadmap

Analysis

• Your own themes -- create, rename and reorder themes manually, not just the AI-generated ones

Sharing

• .docx export -- download the report as a Word document
• Edit writeback -- save your in-browser corrections back to the transcript files on disk

Platform

• Windows installer -- native setup wizard so you don't need Python or the command line
• Cross-session moderator linking -- recognise the same moderator across sessions (currently each session tracks moderators independently)
• Snap Store -- deferred. CI build is currently broken; will revisit after the macOS desktop alpha

Priorities may shift. If something is missing that matters to you, open an issue.

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Get involved

Researchers -- use it on real recordings, open issues when the output is wrong or incomplete.

Developers -- Python 3.10+, fully typed, Pydantic models. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the CLA, project layout, and design system docs.

Help us test -- we'd love feedback from people using bristlenose with:

• Gemini -- newly added; budget option at ~$0.06 per hour of interview audio
• Azure OpenAI -- enterprise deployments
• Windows -- the pipeline works but hasn't been widely tested
• Linux -- pipx works today; snap is deferred (CI build is currently broken)

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Development setup

Clone the repo, create a virtual environment, and install in editable mode:

# Prerequisites (macOS)
brew install python@3.12 ffmpeg pkg-config

# Clone and set up
git clone https://github.com/cassiocassio/bristlenose.git
cd bristlenose
python3.12 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev,serve,apple]"            # serve extra adds FastAPI/SQLAlchemy/uvicorn; apple adds MLX for Apple Silicon GPU acceleration (omit on other platforms)
cp .env.example .env                          # add your API key

On Linux, install python3.12 and ffmpeg via your package manager. On Windows, use python -m venv .venv and .venv\Scripts\activate.

Verify everything works

.venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/    # ~2300 Python tests; frontend has ~1300 Vitest tests (`npm test` in frontend/)
.venv/bin/ruff check .               # lint
.venv/bin/mypy bristlenose/          # type check (some third-party SDK errors are expected)

If you rename or move the project directory, the editable install breaks silently (absolute paths baked into .pth files and CLI shebangs). Fix with: find . -name __pycache__ -exec rm -rf {} + then .venv/bin/python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"

Architecture

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full project layout, but the short version:

• frontend/ -- Vite + React + TypeScript SPA (the product UI in serve mode)
• bristlenose/server/ -- FastAPI + SQLite + SQLAlchemy data layer behind serve mode
• bristlenose/stages/ -- 12-stage pipeline (ingest through render), one module per stage
• bristlenose/llm/ -- multi-provider client + prompt templates (Markdown)
• bristlenose/locales/ -- six UI locales (en, es, fr, de, ko, ja)
• desktop/ -- SwiftUI macOS shell that bundles a signed PyInstaller sidecar
• bristlenose/pipeline.py -- orchestrator that wires the stages together
• bristlenose/cli.py -- Typer CLI entry point
• bristlenose/stages/s12_render/ and bristlenose/theme/js/ -- legacy static-render scaffolding from the React migration; deprecated, on the deletion path

Releasing

Edit bristlenose/__init__.py (the single source of truth for version), commit, tag, push. GitHub Actions handles CI, build, and PyPI publishing automatically. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

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Changelog

0.15.16 — 10 Jun 2026

• Quote extraction no longer fails on dense interviews when the model has a small output limit. Some models cap a single response (ChatGPT's gpt-4o at 16,384 tokens; small local models far less), and on a long, quote-rich transcript the quote-extraction stage could hit that ceiling mid-response — the reply came back truncated and the whole run failed, on roughly one dense ChatGPT run in three. Bristlenose now detects the truncation, splits the transcript at a natural topic boundary (or even halves when there's no confident one), extracts each piece separately, and merges — recursing up to three levels deep (≤8 chunks). Duplicate quotes straddling a split are de-duplicated by verbatim text, and the split is all-or-nothing per interview so a partial failure never leaves a half-analysed session. New typed TruncatedResponseError / OUTPUT_TRUNCATED cause (mirrored on desktop), plus up-to-six retries on rate-limit bursts. Every quote still lands in exactly one report section. Ships on PyPI — benefits every provider with a tight output cap.

0.15.15 — 9 Jun 2026

• Čeština — Bristlenose now speaks Czech. Czech (cs) joins Spanish, Japanese, French, German, and Korean across the desktop app, web report, and settings (Settings → Language → Čeština). A volunteer signed up to translate Bristlenose into Czech on Weblate before we'd shipped the language — the first organic demand signal for a locale — so we machine-seeded a complete baseline (all 8 namespaces + preflight, ~950 strings, with proper Czech four-form plurals) for them to react to and refine. Fill-empty-only: the seed never overwrites a contributed string. Apple-HIG Czech glossary terms added.
• A coverage sweep so more of the app translates — settings, codebook, transcripts, accessibility labels, the desktop pipeline — plus the first Czech-correct plurals. Adding Czech surfaced strings still hard-coded in English (reaching none of the seven languages); this pass wired them through i18n, including the Settings config reference, ~30 screen-reader labels and tooltips, and the desktop pipeline status. The headline fix is grammatical: a hardcoded count == 1 ? one : other selector in the desktop overflow text could never reach Czech's few form (counts 2–4), so a new I18n.pluralCategory() now picks the right CLDR form (proven by a Swift test). Guard tests pin key parity, placeholder consistency, the CLI↔GUI mirror, and four-form completeness. Quality refinement stays the native-speaker community's; this is the mechanical groundwork.

0.15.14 — 7 Jun 2026

• Desktop runs the provider you chose, and stops blaming transcription for LLM errors. Four provider-resolution defects closed: the consent resolver no longer reverts a deliberately-chosen ChatGPT / Gemini / Azure account to Claude when its cached verdict is merely absent; spawn-time overlay injects provider and model as a matched pair (fixes gpt-4o 404'ing under the Anthropic endpoint); the failure classifier checks LLM markers before Whisper and names the provider, so an out-of-credit / bad-key failure no longer reads as "Transcription failed"; and the Settings status board paints eagerly from cache + silently reconfirms instead of lazily, with out-of-credit (402) as its own sticky state. Reviewed by six agents + William. Desktop-only.
• Desktop status polish. Provider explanations are now selectable markdown with one-click copyable shell-command rows (silent copy, Finder/Safari idiom); ⌘, opens native Settings from report focus too (WKWebView was claiming the key equivalent); offline caption softened "Your key is fine" → "Your key was fine"; status vocabulary settled on colour + label, no per-state glyphs. Design docs trued to the data-protection-keychain + eager-status-board reality. Desktop-only; reaches the alpha cohort with the next bundled-sidecar build.

0.15.13 — 4 Jun 2026

• bristlenose pipeline gains per-(provider, model) grain. The pipeline view (0.15.11) now renders a row per (provider, model) pair — each LLM stage shows Claude / ChatGPT / Gemini / Azure with their individual models, per-model quality ratings, and a recommended axis split from default (Opus 4, gpt-4o). CLI + React Settings → Pipeline tab share a sectioned matrix with quality glyphs, a compact symbol key, fixed column alignment across stage tables, and the current row marked by the selection wash + aria-current rather than a loud badge. Payload schema_version 3 → 4; feature rungs and schema are decoupled both ways. Ships on PyPI.
• Desktop: model-first Ollama setup (flow B) + consent activates the chosen provider. A toolbar pill drives the on-device setup popovers (choose model → get Ollama → wait → download), with an honesty rule — static hourglass while waiting on the human, motion only while Bristlenose is working, red only for genuine failure. The AI-consent sheet's Continue/Done now actually activates the chosen provider (was leaving a validated cloud key inert and routing to a stale backend); Stay-local applies the RAM-aware default and pulls the model ambiently so the fetch survives sheet dismissal. 43-key locale layer across 6 locales. Desktop-only.
• CI hardening. Job timeouts on e2e + perf-gate with a bounded-retry around the Playwright install, SHA-pinned third-party actions that touch secrets, read-only default permissions: blocks, and a six-class fragility map in docs/design-ci.md. Workflow + docs only.

0.15.12 — 23 May 2026

• Anthropic credit-exhausted now reports "out of credit", not "model unavailable". Preflight's BadRequestError classifier was substring-matching on credit_balance_too_low (an error.type token that doesn't appear in str(exc)) — the live SDK message is Your credit balance is too low to access the Claude API. ..., so the branch silently fell through to the model-unavailable copy. Substring widened to credit balance; regression-pinned with the real SDK message. Runtime path was already correct; preflight-only miss.
• Desktop: ⌘⌫ no longer beeps on placeholder projects or multi-selection. Project-menu disable gates were over-broad — hasProject required either a non-empty path OR an unavailable project, so brand-new placeholders (empty path, available) and multi-selections (path cleared) both failed and hit AppKit's disabled-shortcut beep. Gates dropped; receivers were already total over empty/mismatched selection. Rename and Move-to-folder kept a narrower gate so they dim correctly on multi-select rather than silently no-op. Desktop-only; reaches the alpha cohort with the next bundled sidecar build.

0.15.11 — 21 May 2026

• bristlenose pipeline + read-only Pipeline tab in Settings. New CLI verb (bristlenose pipeline, with --json and --stage <id> filter) and a matching last-position tab in the React Settings modal render the mixture of models Bristlenose actually uses across its pipeline stages: MLX/faster-whisper for transcription, the chosen LLM provider × model for speaker identification / topic segmentation / quote extraction / quote clustering / thematic grouping, Presidio (or "Off") for anonymisation, and an Apple Foundation Models row that returns Unknown from CLI until the Swift-side probe ships. Read-only on purpose — to change a backend you still edit settings or .env. Host context strip shows OS · arch · RAM · keys present · ollama status. Cross-language schema lock at tests/fixtures/pipeline-view-contract.json keeps the Python emit and React consumer in agreement. 28 new tests.

0.15.10 — 17 May 2026

• Release pipeline actually fixed (test-only — wheel unchanged). PyPI had been stuck at 0.15.3 since ~10 May — six tag pushes (0.15.4-0.15.10) reached GitHub but the perf-gate CI job failed on each one, blocking the release workflow. Root cause: the server-rendered status page interceptor was returning "Nothing to see here, yet." against the Playwright smoke fixture because the fixture had never carried a pipeline-events.jsonl. #bn-app-root mounted empty, perf-gate's DOM-nodes test timed out, and the cascade silently masked the cause for five releases. Fix: ship a RunCompletedEvent line in the smoke fixture, plus a mount-precondition test at the pytest layer and a standalone Playwright mount gate so the next silent regression fails loudly. CLAUDE.md release flow grows a post-push PyPI verification step — pushing a tag is not the same as shipping a release. Test-only fix; v0.15.10's wheel is byte-identical with or without it.
• --codebook=<slug> flag + bristlenose codebooks subcommand. Pick an AutoCode codebook framework from the command line. bristlenose codebooks lists the nine available templates with title and author; --codebook=<slug> on run and analyze validates the slug against the YAML inventory and exits cleanly with the available list on a typo. Validation only for now — the pipeline doesn't auto-run AutoCode yet; the flag stores the preference for a follow-up branch to wire the consumer.

0.15.9 — 16 May 2026

• Multi-project Phase 2 #11 + #14 — drag-onto-folder copy + folder watcher. Drag-onto-existing-project now uses a copy path (CopyMachinery) with progress pill, NewFilesSheet stub, and collision-rename + folder-name-preservation regression tests. Folder watcher: NSFilePresenter + SQLite ingested-set, count pill on the row, delta sheet for triage. Two review passes for visual + i18n polish (cloud-evicted glyph swap to icloud outline, pointing-hand cursor on delta button, .footnote typography for session count, .secondary text uniformly, F59 / F62 i18n).
• Sidebar honesty wave 2. .ready now requires disk evidence — re-opened completed projects read "Ready" instantly instead of briefly flashing "analysing…". cantFind glyph specialises per reason (.moved / .cloudEvicted / .permissionDenied / .removed). Volume remount no longer regresses to .moved. AppleDouble (._*) + .DS_Store skipped across every directory scanner — closes a 16 May ExFAT SD-card crash where ._s1.txt looked like a transcript and broke utf-8 decode.
• Pipeline subtitle i18n across 6 locales. Sidebar in-flight stage subtitles ("Transcribing…", "Extracting quotes…", "Clustering themes…", etc.) now translated in es / fr / de / ko / ja.
• Keychain hardening. API keys in the macOS Keychain now require Touch ID (or password fallback) to read — biometric ACL on the keychain item. Debug builds switched from Apple Distribution to Apple Development signing so ACLs persist across rebuilds (was un-dogfoodable; every debug Run re-prompted for access).
• HIG corpus mirror. Local Apple HIG mirror so what-would-gruber-say cites by path + paragraph anchor instead of paraphrasing. Generic scraper for future public release.
• Misc. Window > Bristlenose menu item to reopen the closed main window. Session start time no longer floored to midnight on the dashboard. In-flight switch modal: "Continue analysing" reframed as the cancel role (default-action stays non-destructive per HIG).

0.15.8 — 14 May 2026

• Honesty everywhere — the pipeline, the install path, and the sidebar all stop faking success. Walks-fix-walks groundwork across three currents:
  • CLI honesty (A-stream). bristlenose doctor hard-errors with a brew/pipx/pip-aware fix message when [serve] extras are missing (zsh-glob-safe quoted); bristlenose run / serve / analyze gate serve_deps in preflight; mid-run abandons surface a researcher-facing banner (QUOTA, AUTH, NETWORK, API_SERVER, DISK, MISSING_INPUT, MISSING_BINARY) instead of a generic "Failed". The static-render naming is sealed: bristlenose render removed, --static deleted, --no-serve restored as a hidden flag for the desktop sidecar's auto-serve suppression.
  • Stage-cache honesty (A4). Failed analysis stages no longer cache empty output and silently re-serve it on the next run; mark_stage_complete refuses empty content_hash; s10/s11 hard-fail at the LLM call site before fallback runs. Privacy contract on cause.message (class name + provider + stage, never str(exc)).
  • Long-audio quality (B1). collapse_adjacent_repeats() post-processor catches Whisper looping ("thanks thanks thanks") without harming natural interjection doubling. Three Whisper params tuned for mlx-whisper. Speaker-propagation regression-pin tests + INFO log surfacing the LLM-splitter's sample-window limit.
• Multi-project foundation (Phase 0 through Phase 2 partial). ProjectAvailability enum (ready / not-found / cloud-evicted / permission-denied) with last_seen_at; undoable Remove via 5-second toast; "Locate…" flow for not-found projects (Spotlight 2-second one-shot → NSOpenPanel fallback → security-scoped bookmark capture). Phase 2 #1/#2/#3 landed: sidebar-clicking a different project tears down + respawns the sidecar with HIG-correct in-flight-run confirm sheet; drag-onto-existing-project adds files via addFiles; project-onto-project drops surface a non-modal toast pointing at the two right gestures. Sidebar drop hit-test refactored to native per-row .dropDestination (since macOS 13) — replaces ~209 lines of bespoke .onDrop + GeometryReader + DropDelegate coordinate-space machinery. Cache-Control: no-store on /api/projects/* belt-and-braces against WKWebView HTTP cache surviving the .id() rebuild.
• Pipeline-failure trust-UX. Re-running an already-analysed project no longer reads as "project is broken" — new outputExists failure category, researcher-register copy ("Already analysed — re-analysing would replace the existing results"), Retry button replaced by destructive-confirm "Re-analyse…" that spawns with --clean.
• Locales reach the host bundle under sandbox. "Copy Sidecar Resources" script phase marked alwaysOutOfDate=1 so non-anchor locale edits actually trigger the rsync — closes the "raw desktop.chrome.* key strings in alerts" surface.
• CI hygiene. .tool-versions pins node 24.6.0 + python 3.12.13 (mise/asdf/rtx + CI workflows derive from the same file); no-red-CI-merges policy in CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Workflow tooling. /end-session sign-off sentinel + /close-branch drift check; /new-feature --print-launch-url; new /sitrep skill (situation-report with sprint-aware grid format).
• Agent ecosystem. New what-would-james-bach-say reviewer agent (test-placement / context-driven-testing tradition). /true-the-docs v2 with --claude-pointers mode.
• Sidecar build. PyInstaller bundle now ships inflect + typeguard .py sources for inspect.getsource(); resource-copy switched to rsync -aL (was cp -RL — broke mlx metallib rpath symlinks under sandbox).
• Frontend bundle ceiling 210 → 215 kB. Node 24's zlib re-baseline; runtime currency outweighs sub-1% size headroom.

0.15.7 — 12 May 2026

• Release-pipeline fix — three CI failures had stacked up since 10 May, leaving PyPI + Homebrew on 0.15.3 while source was on 0.15.6. No new source features in 0.15.7; on upgrade you pick up everything from v0.15.4 / v0.15.5 / v0.15.6 (preflight block, server-rendered status page, SPA auto-refetch, sandbox-safe Export, structured failure causes). The fixes: ffmpeg preflight bypass in the pipeline-abandon test; stub SPA bundle in the cookie auth test; CI Node 20 → 24 (the bundle-size "overage" was an older-zlib measurement artefact, not a real regression)

0.15.6 — 11 May 2026

• Server-rendered status page for runs the SPA can't render — bristlenose serve now serves a server-rendered page (no React mount) when the project has no completed run, or the latest run failed or was cancelled. The SPA's invariant becomes: it only mounts when there's data to render. Three states surfaced — no-run-yet (CLI vs desktop copy), failed (with cause + log tail in a <details> block, sourced from pipeline-events.jsonl), cancelled. Reuses the five-kind MessageKind taxonomy — no sixth kind invented. Styling lives at bristlenose/theme/templates/status-page.css and uses the design system's tokens exclusively. Event-watcher startup seed also widened to seed failed and cancelled termini, not just completed, so non-happy-path runs survive a server restart. English-only in v1; locale fills batched into the next translation pass

0.15.5 — 11 May 2026

• First-run preflight block — Whisper / ffmpeg / API-key / spaCy preflights all fire between ingest and audio extraction, surfacing every "would this run actually work?" question up front. Whisper banner + native HF Hub progress with hardcoded ~1.5 GB; per-distro ffmpeg install table with macOS-brew auto-install offer (default N); paid single-token API-key validation against billing (Anthropic + OpenAI; 24h TTL cached in ~/Library/Application Support/Bristlenose/state.json mode 0600). Closing line "No more questions. ~X min to your report. Ctrl+C anytime." after which no prompt fires
• --no-fetch flag on run / transcribe / analyze — aborts cleanly instead of fetching missing models. Pair with bristlenose doctor --fetch to pre-warm the Whisper cache before going offline
• BRISTLENOSE_SKIP_PREFLIGHT=1 — defence-in-depth env-var escape hatch for spoofed-TTY CI runners
• bristlenose/preflight/{whisper,ffmpeg,api_key}.py new package; bristlenose/llm/billing_hints.py code-owned provider URLs / minimums / recovery copy; new preflight.* i18n namespace across all six locales (English source; es/fr/de/ko/ja mirror en pending native review)
• Documentation truing — design doc carries a post-implementation Status table; SECURITY.md adds preflight bullet + "What Bristlenose writes to your machine" appendix + HF Hub LFS-hash integrity caveat; man page gains a doctor-options section plus --no-fetch / --fetch / --yes / --static / --dev (the last three pre-existing gaps), state.json under FILES, and exit code 2

0.15.4 — 10 May 2026

• SPA: auto-refetch on pipeline completion — new GET /api/projects/{id}/last-run endpoint and LastRunStore (3 s poll, visibility-paused, single timer). Browser SPA now refreshes content within ~3 s of pipeline completion instead of going silent. All four content tabs and five island consumers wired
• SPA: trust-UX layer — manual refresh button in the NavBar (serve-mode only, hidden in the desktop app), refetch overlay on Quotes / Sessions / Dashboard while a refetch is in flight, post-zero-quotes empty state on the Quotes tab
• Desktop: Export downloads route via WKDownload + NSSavePanel — sandbox-safe Export. The previous synthetic <a download> click was silently dropped by the App Sandbox; the shell now intercepts the request, hands the response to WKDownload, and prompts via NSSavePanel. Six locales updated for the save dialog
• Desktop: structured failure category surfaced in the failure pill — EventLogReader now exposes the categorised Cause from the events log (10 categories: missing input, missing binary, all-LLM-failed, etc.). The failure pill renders the category-appropriate glyph + label instead of the generic "Failed" badge
• Pipeline: structured per-stage failure summaries + abandon path — every terminus event (run_completed / run_failed / run_cancelled) now carries an optional PipelineSummary rollup. When every transcription session fails or every quote-extraction LLM call fails, the pipeline now raises PipelineAbandonedError instead of silently writing an empty report. Two new Cause.category values (MISSING_INPUT, MISSING_BINARY)
• Sidecar: sandbox compliance for the bundled FFmpeg $PATH, the libproc start-time check, and the React-bundle static serving — three fixes that unblock the sandboxed desktop sidecar (mlx_whisper's bare "ffmpeg" shellout now resolves; /bin/ps exec replaced with proc_pidinfo; Starlette StaticFiles mmap replaced with in-memory read_bytes for the React bundle)
• CLI: glyphs and colours sourced from a single MessageKind table — CLI, popover, and toast now consult bristlenose.ui_kinds.cli_prefix(kind) instead of ~20 ad-hoc console.print("[colour]...[/colour]") calls
• Desktop: i18n sweep + locale delegated to System Settings — extracted hardcoded English literals from LLMProvider.swift, TranscriptionSettingsView, BuildInfoSheet, default project name (all six locale desktop.json files updated). The in-app language picker is removed on macOS; selection flows through System Settings → Apps → Bristlenose. Web/CLI serve picker unchanged

0.15.3 — 4 May 2026

• Desktop: provider-switching hardened end-to-end — Change-provider flow now activates the new provider across Keychain, sidecar env, and UI; Ollama choice persists before consent log; sidecar key injection scoped to the active provider only; LLM Settings lazy-loads Keychain per row
• Prompt-injection sentinel-tag boundary (Phase A) — defence-in-depth boundary that lets the LLM structurally distinguish transcript content from prompt instructions
• Sidecar bundle trim (S1+S2+S3) — mlx_whisper.torch_whisper excluded, dedicated build venv, torch + onnxruntime evicted, mlx-whisper assets shipped via collect_all. Significantly smaller sidecar
• Doctor: recognises mlx-whisper as a complete backend on Apple Silicon
• Desktop: trusts log tail on sidecar exit-1-after-success; sandbox-on Debug builds load locales + resize correctly on macOS Tahoe

0.15.2 — 2 May 2026

• Bundled FFmpeg/ffprobe discovery for sandboxed sidecar — new bristlenose/utils/bundled_binary.py resolves FFmpeg/ffprobe from a bundle-relative path before falling back to $PATH, so the sandboxed desktop sidecar can find ship-with-app binaries. CLI users see no behaviour change
• bristlenose/server/lifecycle.py — serve-mode lifecycle factored out (parent-death detection, sandbox-friendly bind(0), graceful shutdown)
• PipelineRunner SidecarMode.resolve migration (PR #96) and TLS→certifi redirect under sandbox (PR #97). Desktop-only impact
• Frontend size budget re-baselined to live-SPA gzipped (lazy locales excluded). Budget remains 320 kB
• Docs: manual + README reconciled with shipped bundled-binary-helper; pricing reframed per hour of audio

0.15.1 — 1 May 2026

• Desktop alpha-readiness (Sprint 2 Track C C2–C5) — sandbox-safe API-key injection via Swift Keychain → env vars (no more /usr/bin/security exec from Python), libproc-based zombie cleanup, os.Logger with privacy redaction, key-shape stdout redactor, SidecarMode.resolve + three Xcode schemes, privacy manifests for host + sidecar, per-binary signing, supply-chain provenance. Desktop-only
• Desktop first-run experience (Sprint 2 Track B Branch 1) — BootView unified boot/loading/failed surface, WelcomeView two-variant empty state, Beat 3 round-trip API key validation, Beat 3b Ollama setup sheet for local AI install, boot.* + welcome.* translation blocks across all 6 desktop locales. Desktop-only
• bristlenose serve fall-back to bundled theme CSS — fixes brand-new projects rendering as raw HTML inside WKWebView when no per-project CSS has been generated yet
• bristlenose doctor --self-test — verify sidecar bundle integrity (spec → bundle file presence)
• bristlenose serve fail-loud on missing React bundle — returns a "Build incomplete" 500 page instead of silently falling back to the static render
• Japanese (ja) locale completion — ~614 strings across 8 namespaces, alpha gate cleared
• i18n: tag sidebar — 11 keys across all 6 locales

0.15.0 — 26 Apr 2026

• Pipeline resilience: run-level event log + honest run state — pipelines now write pipeline-events.jsonl recording how each run ended, with a structured Cause (10 categories). Replaces the desktop's old inference path that mis-classified interrupted runs as ready
• Cost as honest estimate — cost_usd_estimate + price_table_version + input_tokens + output_tokens stamped on every terminus event. Surfaced as "~$0.46 (est.)" — never bare dollars
• Stranded-run reconciliation — prior runs that died mid-flight are now noticed on the next bristlenose run and synthesised as failed with cause unknown ("Analysis stopped unexpectedly.")
• Desktop: EventLogReader — Swift consumer of the events log; new PipelineState.partial / .stopped cases. UI verb wiring (Resume / Retry / Re-analyse…) lands in a follow-up iteration
• Desktop: Swift test target wired up — xcodebuild test runs 90 tests including new EventLogReaderTests

0.14.6 — 18 Apr 2026

• CI: e2e gate re-enabled as a blocking check (three P3 items cleared)
• Fix: Analysis "Show all N quotes" toggle now a proper <button> (was an <a> without href)
• Fix: playwright.config.ts shell-quotes paths so worktrees with spaces in the name work
• SECURITY.md: corrected auth-token description (env-override path is real and used by CI fixtures / uvicorn reload; future hardening tracked)
• bristlenose doctor: new Auth token check warns if _BRISTLENOSE_AUTH_TOKEN is set in the shell
• CI: allowlist register at e2e/ALLOWLIST.md — every test suppression categorised and tracked; prevents silent accumulation

0.14.5 — 17 Apr 2026

• CI unblock release: no user-facing changes
• Fix eslint-plugin-react-hooks 7.0.1 → 7.1.0 (eslint 10 peer-range)
• Pin jsdom to 27.x (29 dropped localStorage shims, 140+ test failures)
• Fix stale Vitest mocks after api.ts and i18n changes
• Regenerate e2e/package-lock.json (lighthouse was added without npm install)
• Exclude perf-stress.spec.ts from default Playwright discovery
• e2e CI gate temporarily informational; three P3 findings parked to sprint 2

0.14.4 — 16 Apr 2026

• Pipeline resilience: input change detection (added/removed/modified files trigger re-run)
• Alembic migration infrastructure replaces manual schema migrations
• CI: multi-python matrix (3.10–3.13), split lint from test jobs

0.14.3 — 27 Mar 2026

• Export: video clip extraction from starred and featured quotes (FFmpeg stream-copy)
• Fix: video player "Cannot play" error caused by bearer token on /media/ routes
• Fix: safe_filename() path traversal reassembly vulnerability

0.14.2 — 24 Mar 2026

• Localhost bearer token for serve mode API access control
• Fix: TOC sidebar empty after auth middleware added

0.14.1 — 24 Mar 2026

• French, German, Korean locales — machine-translated across all 8 namespace files, cross-checked against Apple and ATLAS.ti glossaries
• Contextual left-panel labels — desktop toolbar shows Contents/Codes/Signals per tab
• Tags sidebar shortcut (⌘⌥T), keyboard shortcuts design doc

0.14.0 — 20 Mar 2026

• Inspector panel — DevTools-style collapsible bottom panel in Analysis tab with heatmap matrices, signal card selection sync, drag-resize, and m keyboard shortcut
• Codebook sidebar — left-hand navigation panel on every tab with tag groups, counts, and micro-bars
• Finding flags — Win/Problem/Niggle/Success/Surprising/Pattern direction labels on signal cards, computed from sentiment valence, breadth, and intensity
• Settings modal (⌘,) and Help modal (?) — sidebar-nav modals with shared ModalNav organism
• Activity chips persist across tab navigation; new framework codebooks (Nielsen 10, Yablonski Laws)
• Fixes: codebook tab sidebar with trailing slash, codebook grid width, autocode toast behaviour

0.13.7 — 16 Mar 2026

• Spanish locale — machine-translated 102 UI strings across 8 locale files, ready for native-speaker review

0.13.6 — 16 Mar 2026

• Single tag focus mode — click a tag count to solo that tag (mixing-desk style), click again or Escape to exit. Sidebar dims non-focused tags; focused tag row stays at full brightness. "You are here" blue wash highlight on the active count matches TOC sidebar style
• Fix circular dependency crash in production build (SidebarStore → QuotesContext import cycle caused "Cannot access uninitialized variable" error)
• Used/unused tag filter toggle — quickly show only tags that appear on quotes
• Sidebar tag click-to-assign — select quotes then click a tag badge to apply it
• Tier 1 logging instrumentation and PII hardening
• Multilingual UI infrastructure (i18next + Python i18n module, browser language auto-detection)
• Responsive signal cards — grid layout with narrow-screen stacking
• Cache system_profiler results with 24h TTL to avoid slow macOS startup

0.13.4 — 14 Mar 2026

• Fix import FK constraint — delete AutoCode proposals before removing stale quotes during re-import
• Sessions sidebar with live-resize content-adaptive breakpoints

0.13.3 — 14 Mar 2026

• Help modal polish — platform-aware shortcuts (⌘/Ctrl), keycap typography, entrance animation, custom tooltips with shortcut badges
• Bulk actions respect multi-selection on click (star, hide, tag). Shift+click range selection fix
• Sidebar: push animations, 4× faster transitions, rail drag-to-open, drag handle hover-intent, scroll spy Safari fix
• Pipeline CLI: red ✗ for failed stages, yellow ⚠ for partial success
• Speaker badge wrap fix, scroll-margin fix for sticky navbar, TOC overlay clip-path animation

0.13.2 — 11 Mar 2026

• Render refactor — render_html.py (2,903 lines) broken into bristlenose/stages/s12_render/ package with 8 submodules. Static render path formally deprecated (DeprecationWarning). No behaviour change

0.13.1 — 10 Mar 2026

• Responsive layout playground, sidebar TOC overlay mode, minimap component, responsive quote grid CSS

0.13.0 — 10 Mar 2026

• Codebook-aware tag autocomplete — suggestions grouped by codebook section with colour pills and headers, IDE-style
• Sentiment tags unified into the codebook framework system (proper sentiment.yaml codebook)
• Tag provenance tracking — "human" vs "autocode" source on every tag, preserved across edits
• Hidden-group tag UX — eye-closed icon in autocomplete, auto-unhide on accept
• Quick-repeat tag shortcut (r) — re-apply the last-used tag on a focused quote
• Fix: context expansion crash (infinite re-render loop on up chevron)
• Doctor offers interactive MLX install on Apple Silicon for GPU-accelerated transcription
• Sidebar accessibility improvements (focus management, ARIA, reduced-motion support)
• Dashboard stat cards now open in new tab on Cmd+click

0.12.2 — 2 Mar 2026

• Footer feedback restored in React serve mode: "Feedback" now opens a dedicated feedback modal (not the Help modal), and "Report a bug" remains a direct GitHub issue link
• Feedback submit flow parity with legacy behavior: POST to configured endpoint when available, with clipboard fallback + toast if endpoint submit is unavailable
• Health API now includes footer config (links.github_issues_url, feedback.enabled, feedback.url) while preserving status and version
• Exported reports now embed the same health/footer config shape as serve mode for consistent footer behavior

0.12.1 — 1 Mar 2026

• Word-level transcript highlighting — individual words highlight in sync with video playback (karaoke-style). Whisper sessions get per-word timing; VTT/SRT imports fall back to segment-level glow

0.12.0 — 1 Mar 2026

• Dual sidebar for Quotes tab — left: TOC with scroll-spy, right: tag filter with codebook tree and eye toggles for badge hiding. Drag-to-resize, keyboard shortcuts ([ ] \ ⌘.)
• Frontend CI — ESLint, TypeScript typecheck, and Vitest in GitHub Actions

0.11.2 — 1 Mar 2026

• Self-contained HTML export — download button bundles all data as embedded JSON with hash router for file://, optional anonymisation
• About panel redesign — sidebar layout with 5 sections (About, Signals, Codebook, Developer, Design)
• Configuration reference panel — read-only grid of all 63 configurable values with defaults, env var names, and valid options
• Morville honeycomb codebook — 7 groups, 28 tags with discrimination prompts and cross-codebook references

0.11.1 — 28 Feb 2026

• Fix video player broken by double URL encoding and missing subdirectory in source file paths

0.11.0 — 28 Feb 2026

• Full React SPA in serve mode — React Router replaces vanilla JS tab navigation, all 26 vanilla JS modules retired from serve path
• Player integration — PlayerContext manages popout video player lifecycle, glow sync, and progress bar from React
• Keyboard shortcuts — j/k navigation, multi-select, bulk star/hide/tag, ? help modal, Escape cascade
• React app shell — Header, Footer, HelpModal components; serve mode serves Vite-built SPA directly
• Video player links on sessions page and dashboard open the popout player
• Importer finds source files in subdirectories (mirrors ingest scan pattern)
• Speaker display names in sessions grid use normal font size

0.10.3 — 21 Feb 2026

• Split speaker badges — two-tone code+name pills across all surfaces, with "Code and name / Code only" settings toggle
• Always-on sticky transcript header with session selector; serve-mode session links navigate to React transcript pages
• bristlenose status command — read-only project status from the manifest with session counts, intermediate file validation, and -v per-session detail
• Pre-run resume summary — one-line status message when resuming an interrupted pipeline run
• AutoCode frontend — ✦ button triggers LLM tag application, progress toast, confidence-aware threshold review dialog, proposed badges on quotes with accept/deny
• Transcript page — non-overlapping span bars, topic-change label dedup, speaker badge styling, back link stays in serve mode
• Journey chain — sticky header shows full journey with revisits, active step highlighted with hover-tint pill, index-based click-to-jump
• Resilient transcript discovery — serve-mode importer searches four locations instead of one
• Generic analysis matrix and signals API for serve mode
• Man page and docs updated for status and serve commands
• Fix: transcript back link no longer escapes from serve mode to raw static HTML

0.10.2 — 21 Feb 2026

• Pipeline crash recovery — interrupted runs resume automatically, only re-processing unfinished sessions
• Per-session tracking for topic segmentation and quote extraction with transparent cache + fresh merge
• CLI resume guard — re-run into existing output without --clean, manifest detected automatically

0.10.1 — 19 Feb 2026

• Desktop app API key onboarding — first-run setup screen, Keychain storage, Settings panel (⌘,)
• .dmg packaging — ad-hoc signed, drag-to-Applications, one-command build via build-all.sh
• Serve mode after pipeline — auto-launches bristlenose serve, report at http://127.0.0.1:8150/report/
• Deployment target updated to macOS 15 Sequoia

0.10.0 — 18 Feb 2026

• Desktop app v0.1 — SwiftUI macOS launcher with folder picker, drag-and-drop, pipeline streaming, View Report in browser
• Xcode 26 project with 4-state UI (ready → selected → running → done), ANSI stripping, report path detection

0.9.4 — 17 Feb 2026

• bristlenose serve — local dev server with SQLite persistence, React islands, live JS reload
• 5 React islands (SessionsTable, Dashboard, QuoteSections, QuoteThemes, CodebookPanel) + 16 reusable primitives (182 Vitest tests)
• Codebook CRUD — drag-and-drop, inline editing, tag merge, pentadic colours, MicroBar frequency bars
• Data API — 6 endpoints sync researcher state from localStorage to SQLite (94 tests)
• Desktop app scaffold — SwiftUI macOS shell with sidecar architecture

0.9.3 — 13 Feb 2026

• Interactive dashboard — clickable stat cards, featured quotes with video playback, session row drill-down, cross-tab navigation
• Fix: logo dark/light swap on appearance toggle

0.9.2 — 12 Feb 2026

• Sessions table redesign — speaker badges, user journey paths, video thumbnails, per-session sentiment sparklines
• Appearance toggle — system/light/dark mode in settings tab
• User journeys — derived from screen clusters, shown in sessions table and sortable journeys table
• Time estimates — upfront pipeline duration estimate after ingest, recalculated as stages complete
• Clickable logo — navigates to project tab
• Fix: llm_max_tokens truncation causing silent 0-quote extraction
• Fix: sentiment sparkline bars now align with video thumbnail baseline

0.9.1 — 11 Feb 2026

• Moderator and observer names shown in Project tab stats row (Oxford comma lists, observer box only when observers exist)
• Fix: clicking [+] to add a tag on a quote now tags that quote, not the previously-focused quote

0.9.0 — 11 Feb 2026

• Tab navigation remembers position across reloads via URL hash; browser back/forward navigates between tabs
• Analysis tab — inline signal cards and heatmaps in the main report (no longer just a placeholder)
• Codebook tab — fixed empty grid bug caused by JS function name collision in the concatenated bundle

0.8.2 — 9 Feb 2026

• Transcript annotations — transcript pages highlight selected quotes with margin labels, sentiment colours, span bars, and playback-synced glow
• Gemini provider — --llm gemini for budget-conscious teams (~$0.20/study, 5–7× cheaper than Claude or ChatGPT); bristlenose configure gemini stores your key in the system credential store
• Jinja2 templates — report renderer migrated from f-strings to 13 Jinja2 templates (internal refactor, no output changes)

0.8.1 — 7 Feb 2026

• Hidden quotes — press h to hide volume quotes from your working view; per-subsection badge with dropdown previews; bulk hide via multi-select
• Codebook — standalone page for organising tags into groups with drag-and-drop, inline editing, and colour-coded badges
• Toolbar redesign — unified round-rect button styling
• Python 3.14 compatibility fix for PII check

0.8.0 — 7 Feb 2026

• Azure OpenAI provider — --llm azure for enterprise users with Microsoft Azure contracts
• Install smoke tests — new CI workflow verifies install instructions on clean VMs

0.7.1 — 6 Feb 2026

• Bar chart alignment — sentiment and user-tag charts use CSS grid so bar left edges align within each chart; labels hug text with variable gap to bars
• Histogram delete — hover × on user tag labels in the histogram to remove that tag from all quotes (with confirmation modal)
• Surprise placement — surprise sentiment bar now renders between positive and negative sentiments
• Quote exclusivity in themes — each quote assigned to exactly one theme (pick strongest fit)

0.7.0 — 5 Feb 2026

• Multi-select — Finder-like click selection (click, Shift-click, Cmd/Ctrl-click) with bulk starring (s key) and bulk tagging; selection count shown in view-switcher label; CSV export respects selection
• Tag filter — toolbar dropdown between search and view-switcher filters quotes by user tags; checkboxes per tag with "(No tags)" for untagged quotes; per-tag quote counts, search-within-filter for large tag lists, dropdown chevron, ellipsis truncation for long names

0.6.15 — 4 Feb 2026

• Unified tag close buttons — AI badges and user tags now use the same floating circle "×" style
• Tab-to-continue tagging — pressing Tab commits the current tag and immediately opens a new input for adding another tag (type, Tab, type, Tab, Enter for fast keyboard-only tagging)
• Render command path fix — bristlenose render <input-dir> now auto-detects bristlenose-output/ inside the input directory

0.6.14 — 4 Feb 2026

• Doctor fixes — improved Whisper model detection and PII capability checking

0.6.13 — 3 Feb 2026

• Keychain credential storage — bristlenose configure claude (or chatgpt) validates and stores API keys securely in macOS Keychain or Linux Secret Service; keys are loaded automatically with priority keychain → env var → .env; bristlenose doctor now shows "(Keychain)" suffix when key comes from system credential store; --key option available for non-interactive use

0.6.12 — 3 Feb 2026

• File-level transcription progress — spinner now shows "(2/4 sessions)" during transcription
• Improved Ollama start command detection — uses brew services start ollama for Homebrew installs, open -a Ollama for macOS app, platform-appropriate commands for snap/systemd
• Doctor displays "(MLX)" accelerator — when mlx-whisper is installed on Apple Silicon, doctor now shows "(MLX)" instead of "(CPU)"
• Provider header fix — pipeline header now shows "Local (Ollama)" instead of "ChatGPT" when using local provider

Older versions →

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Licence

Copyright (C) 2025-2026 Martin Storey (martin@cassiocassio.co.uk)

AGPL-3.0. See LICENSE and CONTRIBUTING.md.