Orka Code 0.2.0 — a much bigger daily-driver preview

0.2.0 is a closed internal Alpha preview for Orka’s selected cohort. It focuses on making Claude and Codex work easier to follow, launch, configure, and recover without weakening Profile isolation or pretending unsupported provider behavior exists.

Clearer live work

• Live activity now preserves provider identity, scope, ordering, delivery receipts, elapsed time, status, failures, interruptions, and final answers more faithfully across Claude and Codex. Usage remains explicitly unavailable when a harness does not expose it.
• Settled tool work and interim prose fold into one readable disclosure while current activity stays prominent. Skill instructions appear with the relevant run, and Codex collaborators use clearer agent callouts and live status views.
• Shell commands, diffs, JSON, YAML, HTML, CSS, and recognized tool output gain syntax-aware presentation.
• Stable activity identity removes duplicate Codex activity, perpetual “working” ghost turns, Markdown noise in previews, and final replies hidden by late stream events.
• Live and restored Sessions preserve their transcripts when you switch Workspaces or return after a cold start. Legacy transcript rows without a truthful owner now fail visibly instead of appearing under the wrong Session.
• Failed and interrupted work stays visible as a settled outcome. Recoverable transcript and launch errors use calm, dismissible notices without exposing internal error codes in the main interface.
• Ingress queues, transcript projection, and recent destination state are bounded and Profile-fenced. Consequential events cross durable persistence barriers before presentation.
• Navigation is latest-destination-wins, restored transcripts load incrementally, and genuine waits show truthful loading and retry states.

Creation and navigation

• New Workspace creation and live Session chat share the ORKA Code Composer while preserving attachments, Skills, semantic controls, context accounting, interruption, resume behavior, and Profile identity evidence where each surface supports them.
• Enter sends; Shift+Enter inserts a newline.
• New Workspace creation is simpler, and launch presets are removed end to end.
• New Session tabs can launch Claude or Codex within the owning Profile instead of following a Claude-only sibling path.
• The Workspace tab-strip + opens Quick create: ⌘T starts a new Session draft, while ⌘⇧T creates a non-overwriting Workspace-relative Markdown file and opens it in Edit mode.
• Session drafts use the compact ORKA composer layout.
• SVG files now preview correctly, and a persistent 10–24 px editor font-size control is shared across file tabs.

Profiles, models, and Project runtime

• One model picker serves Global and Profile settings, New Workspace creation, Session drafts, and live chat. Each Profile shows only the Claude and Codex model catalogs it has connected, stale Profile responses are rejected, and a Profile default can be changed from the composer.
• Generated frontend and Rust model catalogs bind exact recorded fixtures. Release checks fail closed when provider pins, generated catalogs, or compatibility evidence are stale.
• Project Scripts adds Setup, Run, and Archive editors. Named Run targets open and execute in the Session terminal.
• Project variables and Profile passthrough apply to new, resumed, forked, and handed-off Sessions. Restored terminals reconstruct the current matching Profile and Project environment, while protected identity variables remain blocked.
• A restored terminal requires its recorded Profile to still exist and match.

Skills and MCPs

• The Profile-scoped Skills library now has Installed, Explore, and Yours views, with provenance, selected and follow-all policies, explicit updates, offline cache behavior, removed-upstream recovery, transactional rollback, manual Skills, canonical repository identity, and a secure instruction reader.
• A reviewed repository catalog provides an offline floor. Public discovery is best-effort and never borrows ambient Vercel identity.
• The official-only MCP Store includes 22 entries curated from reviewed vendor evidence, with categories, search, setup guidance, provenance, and per-provider compatibility.
• Entries install in one action when no setup is required and open a prefilled setup flow when configuration or secrets need review.
• OAuth continuation, session-free Codex sign-in, Authorize everywhere, provider status, retry and reconnect actions, removal recovery, and Profile-fenced mutation sequencing now work through one lifecycle.
• Installed MCPs, orka, and orka.peer open a detail panel with evidence-backed per-provider tool inventories. Unknown or failed tool inventory remains explicitly unavailable.

Integrations, appearance, sound, and onboarding

• Profile Plugins are removed and no longer materialized. Integrations now presents Linear, ORKA Plan, and Plaud as truthfully Coming soon.
• Follow system is authoritative from first paint through live appearance changes while preserving the Profile accent.
• Sounds are enabled by default at 80%, with a keyboard-accessible volume control and updated event routing.
• Onboarding can stop after authenticated Profile setup with Nothing for now, creating no Project or Session.
• Device sign-in exposes native Open and Copy controls, and newly created Profiles appear immediately without restarting Orka.
• Fresh Claude Sessions no longer hit the false ten-second startup timeout seen during dogfooding.
• Sending to a stopped Codex Session now follows the revive path instead of panicking.

Internal Alpha boundaries

This build is for Orka’s selected internal Alpha cohort only. Install only the signed and notarized DMG supplied through the invited Alpha handout, and do not redistribute it. Before installing or updating, commit or back up irreplaceable work and use this preview only with nonessential repositories. Follow the cohort handout’s current Profile-credential restrictions, and report identity or updater anomalies immediately.

This release carries bounded UNVERIFIED-LIVE debt for some exact-pin Claude and Codex workflows. Automated regressions and fail-closed guards passed, but not every provider workflow was recaptured live for 0.2.0. The packaged 0.2.0 performance campaign was deferred, so this release makes no measured performance claim.

Community MCP browsing, connectable Plaud, and post-Send recall remain unavailable. Provider-native /design, /plan, and /review triggers are also unavailable in Orka and are never sent as ordinary prompt text.