What's new in Houston

Houston 0.4.1

Big release. Sign in with Google, every Mac runs the same installer, the app speaks Spanish and Portuguese, your phone can manage Houston, and the major CLIs your agents use ship preinstalled. No terminal, no extra setup.

What's new

• Sign in with Google or Microsoft. Houston now has accounts. One click, native OAuth, your session lives in macOS Keychain (never in plain files). Sign out from the sidebar or Settings.
• Houston Store with curated agents. New Store tab ships with team-built agents you can install in one click, with built-in update checks. The store modal is simpler and the GitHub-import detour is gone, so creating an agent feels like adding an app.
• Actions everywhere. Skills are now called Actions and have a real UI. The empty chat shows up to 3 featured Actions, the picker has tabs by category and a Featured row, and starting an Action takes over the composer with a clean labeled form. The conversation shows your Action as a card with all the values you filled in.
• Empty board, one tap to start. Open an agent with nothing on its board and the New Mission picker pops automatically. No more staring at an empty kanban wondering where to click.
• Codex and Composio come bundled. Both CLIs ship inside the signed Houston app, so non-technical users get them preinstalled. Claude Code installs itself on first launch (one tap, no terminal). The download is bigger but the setup is one step.
• Friendly reconnect card when a CLI logs out. When Claude or Codex drops auth in the middle of a session, you now see a labeled card with a one-click reconnect instead of cryptic terminal noise in the chat.
• Functional bug reporter. When something goes wrong the toast says "Houston, we have a problem!" and the Report bug button actually sends the report straight to our team in Slack, with your email if you're signed in.
• Español y Português. Pick your language on first launch. Everything in the app, onboarding, sidebar, Mission Control, agent tabs, settings, dialogs, errors, flips live when you switch languages. Change it any time in Settings.
• One download for every Mac. The installer is now a universal binary, the same .dmg runs on Apple Silicon and Intel. No more guessing which one to grab.
• Mobile companion (beta). Tap "Connect phone" in the sidebar, scan the QR code with the Houston iOS app, and you can manage Houston from your phone. Your Mac stays the source of truth, the phone is a window into it. Action cards render on the phone too.
• Security disclaimer on first launch. A short, plain-English note about what AI agents can do on your behalf. Read once, accept, never see it again unless the terms change.
• Cleaner card actions. Rename, Delete, and Move to done are now three matching icon buttons with instant tooltips that say exactly what each one does.
• Mission Control caught up with the per-agent board. Renaming a card works there, opening a conversation actually shows chat history, and starting a New Mission lets you pick which agent runs it without leaving the page.
• Better link previews. Sharing gethouston.ai on WhatsApp, Slack, or Twitter now shows a real social card.

Before you upgrade

• Quit Houston before installing. macOS doesn't always replace a running app. If in doubt: rm -rf /Applications/Houston.app and drag the new copy in.
• First launch is slightly slower while Claude Code installs itself in the background. You'll see a small status indicator.
• If you had accepted the disclaimer in a pre-release build, you'll be prompted once for the final copy. Takes 10 seconds.

Known limitations

• Windows support is still in progress (engine compiles for Windows, signing + CI are next).
• Mobile companion is beta. Expect occasional reconnects. Keep your Mac awake while using it.
• A handful of rare error messages from Claude or Codex still pass through in English even when you're running in Spanish or Portuguese.
• If you abort the Google sign-in popup on the wrong browser profile, just click the button again to retry.

Houston 0.4.0

First release on the new engine architecture.

What's new

• Product prompts now live in the app, engine is a standalone platform binary
• Data consolidates under ~/.houston/ (workspaces move out of ~/Documents/Houston/ automatically on first launch)
• Real-time reactivity restored — the board updates live when agents write files
• Race-free engine startup + sidecar signing + notarization verified in CI
• Drag-and-drop file attachments fixed
• Onboarding detects your Claude/Codex CLI from any standard install location
• Routines tab auto-detects your timezone (change it in Settings)

Before you upgrade

• Quit Houston first. macOS doesn't always replace a running app.
• Your workspaces will move from ~/Documents/Houston/ to ~/.houston/workspaces/ on first launch. The old location stays as a backup.
• If you have custom scripts pointing at the old path, update them.

Known limitations

• Claude and Codex CLIs must still be installed separately. Bundled-CLI install is coming in a later release.

See the assets to download and install this version.

See the assets to download and install this version.

See the assets to download and install this version.

Houston v0.2.0 — First Release

The framework for building AI agent desktop apps. Rebranded from Keel & Deck.

What's in the box

11 React packages (@houston-ai/*): core, chat, board, layout, workspace, skills, connections, events, routines, review, memory

8 Rust crates (houston-*): sessions, db, tauri, channels, events, scheduler, memory, skills

Houston App: Unified desktop app with experience system — host multiple AI agent experiences in one app

Experience System: Three tiers — JSON-only manifests, custom React bundles, custom Rust capabilities

Quick Start

npx create-houston-experience my-agent
cd my-agent
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev

Links

• npm: @houston-ai
• crates.io: search houston-