amenbo 2.0.0 — plugins: your own program runs when a task moves

From this release a program you wrote can run when something happens to a task. One thing also changed in how the CLI is called, and commands that worked before will now be refused — read “On updating” before you upgrade.

Plugins

• Task events call your program — a plugin runs when a task is completed, when its state changes, when a comment is added. You can also run one yourself with amenbo plugin run <name>.
• Install from the Market screen, or from the command line — pick one from the official catalog on the GUI’s “Market” screen, or run amenbo plugin install <name>. There is one entry there today: worktree, which cuts a git worktree per task.
• Installing is not turning on — enabling is a separate step, amenbo plugin enable <name>. Whether that switch is per project or per machine is the plugin author’s choice.
• Signature and checksum are checked before anything lands — what cannot be verified is not installed.
• A plugin is just an executable — write it in any language. amenbo starts it as a child process and hands it JSON on standard input. See Writing a plugin.

What you can read, set, and check

• Open a row and see what you are getting — the detail tells you which events call the plugin and what you will have to configure once it is in, before you install it.
• Settings are a form — the fields the author declares in the manifest become the form. Secret fields are masked, and a project can override the values it needs to.
• amenbo plugin log — the recent runs, with their output and exit codes. This is the place to look when a plugin did not do what you expected.

Serve plugins from your own catalog

• Register a catalog and its plugins sit next to the official ones — amenbo plugin catalog add <URL of catalog.json> --name "Team catalog", and they appear in the same list, ready to install. In-house plugins can be distributed without going through the official catalog.
• A catalog is three static files — no server process to run. See Running a catalog.
• The signing key is pinned when you register — registering shows you the fingerprint of the key the catalog publishes, and agreeing pins it. Plugins installed from that catalog are verified with that key from then on. A catalog whose key has been swapped is refused; a catalog that publishes no key can only be browsed.
• Every row carries the name of its catalog — and the list can be filtered by source. The “official” mark is given only to entries from the official catalog: a third-party catalog claiming it for itself does not get it.
• An installed plugin remembers where it came from — updates are fetched from that catalog, so the same name in a different catalog is never picked up by mistake.

Also in this release

• Reject a decision record from the GUI — write the reason and reject it there. No need to switch to the CLI for it.
• Two settings that had no effect now have one — default_view, the view opened at launch, and date_locale, how dates are written.
• Classify a task as you create it — amenbo task add --dim <axis>=<value>. amenbo task show prints the task’s classification too.

On updating

• --actor is now required on every CLI command that touches the store — it used to be filled in from the AMENBO_ACTOR environment variable, or by a default when you wrote nothing. From this release you write it every time: --actor human when you are typing, --actor ai when an AI is. For example, amenbo task list --actor human. If you had it set through the environment variable, move it onto the commands. The AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md that amenbo places now spell out --actor ai as well. Nothing changes in the GUI.
• The stored data format moves up — the first launch on this version migrates it, and a backup from before the migration is kept automatically. Once migrated, an earlier version can no longer open it. The GUI and the CLI are updated together by the same installer, so do not leave one of them on the old version.

Getting it

Open the installer for your OS from the latest release. GUI and CLI come together, and no admin rights are needed.

• macOS — .pkg, one for Apple silicon and one for Intel (first open shows a Gatekeeper prompt: right-click → Open)
• Windows — setup .exe
• Linux — .deb / .rpm

To update: on the GUI, the “a newer version is available” banner now applies it in place. If you installed only the CLI, amenbo update --apply swaps it.

New here? See Start.