Release Notes — v0.8.12.0 “Your Key, Your Account”

Date: 2026-09-20 · Cut from: main (see tag v0.8.12.0) · Milestone: MVP — the BYOC/tenancy arc (#1812 family), Security six, acceptance-contract sprint Quality posture: full CI belt green at cut — 10 of 10 gating workflows, first full belt since June; 14,308 tests collected; unit sweep 13,500+ passing; two months of changes since v0.8.11.0 (July 17).

Summary

This release ships the bring-your-own-credentials model end to end: every LLM call Piper makes is billed to the acting user’s own key, the “server key” concept is abolished by ruling and by code, and a keyless turn gets an honest refusal instead of silently spending someone else’s account. Around that core: a security-hardening pass (XSS, unauthenticated twins, cross-user isolation), the acceptance-contract fixes that stop completed flows from swallowing your next command, and a truth-in-rendering pass so Piper stops presenting partial or failed data as complete.

What’s New

Your key, your billing — the BYOC arc

• The server key is not a concept anymore (#1807, #1810, #1812): no fallback to an operator credential, and setup no longer writes your key into a global slot each new user silently overwrote.
• Your stored key is actually used (#1814, #1815): per-user key resolution works on every provider leg, including cross-provider fallback under your own keys only.
• Unbound spend refuses, honestly (#1809, #1819): every completion leg and embeddings refuse a turn with no bound key — with copy that says so, instead of “something unexpected happened” or a silent spend.
• OpenAI-only users are served in Slack (#1822): Slack inbound binds whichever of your keys exist, provider-keyed.
• Consent fails closed (#1816): a failed read of your authorized-provider list refuses the turn rather than assuming “everything allowed.”

Security hardening

• Chat-render and pattern-suggestion XSS fixed; stale unauthenticated page twins removed; demo plugin no longer live-mounted by default (#1732, #1741, #1733, #1690).
• Personality API can no longer clobber global config; per-user isolation regression-tested with idempotent fixtures (#1734, #1813).

Flows that let go — the acceptance-contract sprint

• A finished standup releases your next command (#1617): after “Anything else?”, an issue command reaches the issue rail on the first try instead of re-rendering the summary.
• Offer/arm rails unified (#1652, #1653, #1654, #1694): four separate “the flow ate my message” bugs were one contract, fixed once.

Truth in rendering

• Aggregated answers name failed sources instead of blending them into false emptiness (#1717, #1730).
• GitHub list answers carry honest counts with capped-list offers rather than silent truncation (the #1720/#1762 GitHub-six work).

Known limitations (honest, for alpha testers)

• Web chat still asks for an Anthropic key specifically at the door — the ruled fix (any-provider key suffices, #1823) is scoped and queued but not in this cut. OpenAI-only users are fully served in Slack; on web, add an Anthropic key for now.
• A keyless first “hi” is currently refused at the door; the ruled greeting-passes design (#1818) lands in a following release.
• Personality preferences still lack a per-user store (#1791) — the questionnaire works, but preferences are not yet isolated per account.
• Some docs links 404 (#1793).

Version mechanics

• Cut commit: origin/main tip at tag v0.8.12.0 (this release’s docs commit).
• production fast-forwarded to the cut (it was a clean ancestor, 13,209 commits behind).
• Two months of migrations run automatically on deploy (July 16 droplet baseline → head); DB backup before migrate is part of the deploy procedure and was taken.

Upgrade instructions

Hosted alpha (alpha.pipermorgan.ai): deployed by the team; nothing for testers to do. On first session after upgrade: your stored key keeps working (per-user rows carry over). If you ever see a key-related refusal, add/re-add your key in Settings — and tell us, that’s exactly the class this release is supposed to have fixed.