Release Notes - v0.8.2

Release Date: December 11, 2025, 6:43 AM PT Branch: production Previous Version: v0.8.1.3

Summary

Major milestone release featuring a fully-GUI setup wizard, comprehensive smoke test suite for CI/CD quality gates, and UI stabilization fixes. This release marks a significant step toward production readiness with professional setup experience and automated quality validation. Alpha testers can now rely on stable setup, login, and chat interfaces while we focus testing efforts on workflow features.

What Changed

🎨 GUI Setup Wizard (Major Feature)

What It Does: Complete graphical user interface for initial setup - no more command-line interaction required.

Previous Experience:

# Old way - command line only
python main.py setup
# Enter database password:
# Enter OpenAI API key:
# Create admin username:

New Experience:

Why This Matters:

Implementation:

Files Changed:

🚦 Smoke Test Suite - CI/CD Quality Gate (#277)

What It Does: Automated test suite that validates critical functionality in under 5 seconds, serving as the first quality gate in CI/CD pipeline.

Coverage:

Impact:

Technical Details:

Files Changed:

Documentation:

🔧 UI Stabilization Fixes

Problem: Alpha testers reported several UI bugs causing frustration and blocking workflows.

Fixes Implemented:

  1. Toast Z-Index Fix (#448, tu7)
    • Problem: Toast notifications hidden behind dialogs
    • Fix: Proper z-index layering in web/static/css/toast.css
    • Result: Notifications always visible
  2. Navigation Alignment (#448, 40n)
    • Problem: Hamburger menu and navigation items misaligned
    • Fix: CSS flexbox corrections in templates/components/navigation.html
    • Result: Clean, professional navigation UI
  3. Dialog Styling Improvements (#476, #478)
    • Problem: Confirmation dialogs inconsistent appearance
    • Fix: Enhanced web/static/css/dialog.css with better spacing
    • Result: Consistent, polished dialog experience
  4. Learning Dashboard Cleanup (#475)
    • Problem: UI clutter and alignment issues
    • Fix: Template refactoring in templates/learning-dashboard.html
    • Result: Clean, focused learning interface
  5. Page Transition Speed
    • Problem: Slow page transitions causing perception of sluggishness
    • Fix: Optimized web/static/js/page-transitions.js
    • Result: Snappy, responsive navigation
  6. Gemini API Key Support (40n)
    • Problem: Only OpenAI supported for LLM backend
    • Fix: Added Gemini configuration in services/llm/config.py
    • Result: Multi-provider LLM support

Why This Matters: Core interface now stable and professional-feeling. Alpha testers can focus on workflow testing without being distracted by UI bugs.

🔒 Security: S2 Preparatory Work (#358)

What It Is: Foundation work for encryption-at-rest implementation, preparing for security review.

Deliverables:

Purpose: Preparing codebase for professional security audit and encryption implementation.

Status: Preparatory phase complete, ready for S2 execution phase (future sprint).

🧪 Service Container Re-enablement (#481)

What Changed: Previously disabled service container tests re-enabled after refactoring.

Why It Matters:

Files Changed:

🐛 Other Bug Fixes

  1. Pytest-asyncio Config (#473): Removed deprecated options preventing test execution
  2. Alpha User References Cleanup (#440): Cleaned up hardcoded test data
  3. GitHub Test Import Fix (#277): Added missing pytest import causing smoke test collection failures
  4. Pre-commit Formatting (#33697146): Applied automatic code formatting

For Alpha Testers

🎯 What to Test Now

Working Features (focus testing elsewhere):

Needs Testing (focus your efforts here):

✅ What You Should See After Pulling

# 1. Pull production branch
git checkout production
git pull origin production

# 2. You should see version 0.8.2
grep version pyproject.toml
# Should show: version = "0.8.2"

# 3. Restart server
./scripts/stop-piper.sh
./scripts/start-piper.sh

# 4. Expected startup output:
🚀 Starting Piper Morgan...
✅ Docker Desktop is running
✅ Virtual environment activated
✅ Setup detection: system ready
✅ Backend is healthy
✅ Frontend is healthy
🎉 Piper Morgan is ready at http://localhost:8001!

🆕 Try the New Setup Experience

If you want to see the new GUI setup wizard:

# Reset setup state (testing only - will require reconfiguration)
python scripts/setup_wizard.py --reset

# Then start server and visit setup page
python main.py
# Navigate to http://localhost:8001/setup

Note: Only do this on a test environment, not your main alpha testing environment.

Files Changed

Major Changes

  1. scripts/setup_wizard.py - GUI setup wizard implementation (763 line refactor)
  2. .github/workflows/test.yml - Smoke test CI/CD integration (43 line update)
  3. templates/components/navigation.html - Navigation fixes (298 line update)
  4. web/static/css/dialog.css - Dialog styling improvements (105 line update)
  5. web/api/dependencies.py - Dependency injection improvements (80 line refactor)
  6. pytest.ini - Smoke test marker configuration

Code Changes (602+ test files marked for smoke tests)

  1. Multiple test files across tests/unit/ and tests/integration/
  2. services/llm/config.py - Gemini API key support
  3. services/llm/adapters/factory.py - LLM adapter factory improvements
  4. web/static/js/setup.js - Setup wizard client-side logic
  5. web/static/css/toast.css - Z-index fixes
  6. web/static/js/page-transitions.js - Performance improvements

Documentation

  1. docs/internal/development/testing/smoke-test-marking-strategy.md - Smoke test strategy
  2. docs/internal/operations/ci-cd-smoke-test-runbook.md - CI/CD runbook
  3. dev/2025/12/09/S2-IMPLEMENTATION-GAMEPLAN.md - S2 security planning
  4. dev/2025/12/09/S2-ENCRYPTION-REVIEW-PACKAGE.md - Security review docs
  5. Session logs and completion reports for December 9 work

Configuration

  1. pyproject.toml - Version bump 0.8.1.3 → 0.8.2

Total: 600+ files changed (primarily test markers), significant refactoring in setup wizard and UI components.

Technical Details

Deployment Process

Timeline: December 9-11, 2025

Phase 1: December 9 - Feature Development

Phase 2: December 11 - Version Bump

Commits Included: 21 commits from f0723a72 back to 97624d21

Rollback Path (if needed)

# If critical issue discovered post-deployment:
git checkout production
git reset --hard 3fc726b2  # Revert to v0.8.1.3
git push origin production --force-with-lease

# Then notify PM immediately

Previous stable version: 3fc726b2 (v0.8.1.3)

Known Issues

Pre-existing issues (carried forward from v0.8.1.3):

New issues: None reported during development.

Note: We’ll review and update Known Issues section during the alpha docs update after this release is verified.

Next Steps for Alpha Testing

  1. Pull this release on your alpha laptop
  2. Verify setup wizard works if needed (or just observe startup is clean)
  3. Test login and chat briefly to confirm stability
  4. Focus testing on workflows:
    • Create/edit/complete todos
    • Manage lists and projects
    • Test file uploads and analysis
    • Verify integrations (Slack, GitHub, Notion)
    • Exercise learning system
  5. Report workflow issues - these are our testing priority now
  6. Enjoy the stable UI - core interface should feel professional and bug-free

Support

If you encounter issues after updating:

  1. Setup wizard not loading: Verify files exist: 
    ls -la web/static/js/setup.js scripts/setup_wizard.py
  2. Tests failing in CI: Check smoke test markers: 
    python -m pytest -m smoke --collect-only

  3. UI issues persist: Clear browser cache and hard refresh (Cmd+Shift+R)

  4. Version mismatch: Verify version: 
    grep version pyproject.toml  # Should show: version = "0.8.2"
python -c "from services.version import __version__; print(__version__)"
  5. Need help: Report in #piper-alpha Slack channel or create GitHub issue

Commits in This Release

Setup Wizard & Testing:

Smoke Test Suite:

UI Fixes:

Bug Fixes:

Security Preparatory Work:

Documentation:

Full changelog: 3fc726b2…f0723a72

Questions? Contact PM (xian) or refer to this release notes document.