Changelog

Unreleased

Recall Shelf

• Find saved material with conversational search prefixes or quoted titles, and keep identifiers and versions distinct from longer lookalikes. Results explain the matching fields, effective search words and indexed coverage; saved links do not imply retained page text.
• Add a reproducible 40-query synthetic retrieval benchmark across file, Postgres and linked storage, with separate development/validation splits and source/passage checks.

Storage

• Enforce clip count and byte quotas atomically per account in Postgres, including concurrent saves and metadata edits. Local stores also check metadata growth; edits that reduce size remain available at the limit.

Core content loop

• Integrate reader wave 2 with full-height reading, separate controls, bounded image retries and improved article extraction while preserving Recall, reading tabs, page find and reading preferences.
• Size clip Share icons consistently with other controls.
• Add a keyboard passage chooser, useful reader destination focus and stable Recall preview focus. Documentation search explains its coverage and GitHub pages show their actual version.
• Keep retained handoff passages available when their source cannot load, with a live-page retry.
• Ignore obsolete source previews and keep detailed OPML import reports. Concurrent imports and retries preserve completed subscriptions; remaining feeds and failures are named.
• Record two rounds of explicitly simulated developer/researcher proxy tasks and logical later-day retrieval, plus a bounded accessibility audit. These are not human usability or adoption evidence.

For hosts and agents

• search_library adds optional library.search details with the effective query and coverage explanation. Existing result fields and input arguments remain compatible; older hosted results still render.
• import_opml adds added, alreadyPresent and deferred result fields. A valid import with no working feeds returns its detailed outcome and leaves a new room unconfigured.
• open_handoff may return { unavailable: true, handoff } when the live source fails; its text still includes the fenced retained passage. No live article content is implied.
• Ship the new successful handoff variant in the next minor release under the compatibility policy; callers must handle unavailable live content before reading article/docs fields.

Installation and upgrades

• Package hosted and local MCPortal as Agent Plugins 1.0, with native Claude overlays and persistent plugin storage. Validate packaged startup and provide an explicit migration that retains existing rooms and account links.
• Check hosted compatibility before local browser sign-in, with required-update and optional-update actions.
• Add repeatable host installation/update probes and document restart and OAuth smoke checks.
• Publish versioned plugin archives and checksums; gate minimum-client increases on replacement availability and a documented deprecation window.

v0.11.0 — 2026-10-08

• Add an "Ask your agent" setup prompt to the landing page, with manual connector and local installation options. Public /install.md and /llms.txt guides use the instance's URL and access policy, with Codex and Claude Code remote commands, browser sign-in and connection verification.

• Refresh the public README with the 22-second promo video, Spaces, room layouts and a clearly marked preview of newer features on main. Add practical guides for reading collections, catch-up, reading watches and Space customization, and update tool, configuration and data references.

• Space can automatically show eligible public room sources and people followed on MCPortal, with independent opt-in visibility and owner previews. Optional pins, ordering and hides preserve existing recommendations and never change subscriptions; private curation stays out of visitor responses.

Reading experiences

• Reading tabs use custom icons from the generated house set: icons with text on wide screens, icon-only navigation below 640px, accessible names/tooltips and 44px touch targets. Selection uses a short underline without a filled pill; keyboard focus remains visible. Comparison selection counts preserve their icon.
• Recall Shelf searches saved links, clip text and reading history together, including older linked records. New kept quotes carry conservative passage locators.
• Private Topic Desks keep source links and clips together, selected live portals, notes and cited agent orientations. Reading trails add ordered steps with explicit finish, skip and undo. Membership removal leaves source material intact.
• Comparison View opens two or three sources with independent panes and compact tabs, keeps selected passages, validates citations in explicit agent interpretations, and saves comparisons as collections.
• Per-portal lists, cards, quotes, gallery and structured GitHub changelogs preserve source settings and placement. Finite catch-up resumes its captured set across restart and acknowledges only that set when finished.
• Changes and Upcoming include private watches, durable worker leases, retry/overdue status, dated text diffs, calendars and verified Ticketmaster artist lookup with a server key. Coverage limits are visible; failures are availability events and missing provider results never imply cancellation.
• Files/Postgres, linked API, additive export/import, sign-out copying, account deletion and scheduled retention support the new stores. Imports pause watches for review; private collections never enter public Spaces.

For hosts and agents

• Additive tools: search_library, open_collection, update_collection, show_comparison, watch_reading, and app-only catch_up. Collection citations use stable clip:ID or url:URL refs. arrange_room.view changes portal presentation; older linked writers preserve omitted views and saved event metadata.

• changes and upcoming are account-owned room source kinds. Full exports include collections and reading experiences, with an 80 MB upload limit and bounded individual documents. Versions remain owned by the release script.

• Follow supported Shopify stores through a preview and confirmed collection or sales-only scope. Shop shows product cards, prices, new arrivals, price drops, sales and saved-product restocks; refresh checks on demand, with partial and stale observations labeled. Follows support pause, resume and removal. Private snapshots work in files, PostgreSQL and linked accounts, export/import version 3 and account deletion.

• Sharing and quick reblogging show a Public / Followers only switch beside submission, with an explanation of public Space visibility. An explicit audience selection is remembered privately across sessions and devices; existing posts and reblog restrictions are preserved.

• For hosts and agents: new shares and reblogs without an audience use the saved explicit preference, or everyone (Public) if none exists. Pass followers for Followers only. The existing audience values are unchanged.

• Continue reading shows source labels, readable titles and progress bars; room and reader navigation gain clearer control groups, visible Room destinations and responsive spacing.

• Preserve source descriptions and thumbnails on saved links and shares, and show them in Spaces, Following and RSS. Reblogs draw previews from the original so removal and privacy changes still take effect; personal notes stay separate.

• Find text within an article or docs page with match counts and keyboard navigation, and adjust reading text size and line width for the current open session.

• Refine article and documentation reading with clearer typography, Copy on every code block, narrow-view heading navigation, focused Contents controls, and keyboard-friendly section jumps and overflow.

v0.10.1 — 2026-10-07

Room layouts

• Columns gets illustrated source headers and clearer story rows; Shelves gets consistent cover strips, summaries and visible actions; River gets a room heading, a more readable story hierarchy and source art. Shelf arrows reflect the available scroll direction.
• Catalogue, Editorial and Paperback join the room's layout choices. A named toolbar chooser saves each person's preference to their profile, keeping their sources and saved items. The three designs adapt to narrow screens and the host's theme.

v0.10.0 — 2026-10-07

Spaces that feel like someone's

• Your own cover and format: eight paperback ink sets, five motifs, a stored random composition, and paperback, magazine or patch formats. The print shop saves choices, re-rolls the cover and sets web visibility. The same escaped renderer draws chat cards and script-free public pages, with narrow, dark and forced-colors support. Patch avatars appear on social subject surfaces.
• Your expression: pin one of your own posts, choose up to four transmitting topics and six listed fellow travelers, and hide earned stamps. Stamps mark charter membership, bringing people aboard, ten weeks of posting and the Space's volume; they never rank people.
• Read on the web: a claimed Space is public by default at /@handle, with a separate unchecked listing choice. Its RSS feed contains the latest fifty visible posts. Followers-only posts stay private; hidden, removed and private originals cannot leak through reblogs. Public quotes stop at 400 characters; other clips require sign-in. Forty prerendered cover previews ship with the server. Pages and feeds are rate-limited, rechecked before cache reuse and marked noindex, nofollow.
• Updated privacy and portability: turning off Public Space withdraws the page and feed on the next request; copies and feed-reader caches cannot be recalled. Export version 2 includes Space fields; imports map old accents and restore validated cover plates without changing privacy or trusting stamp counts. No database migration.
• Linked clients must update to 0.10.0: accent becomes ink/motif, and the share audience mcportal becomes everyone. The state API's minimum client version is raised in this release. Hosted connectors update with the deployment; local clients and plugins need the new release.

Room layouts

• River is a standard layout, available without a lab flag.
• Reader and source controls stay visible while scrolling, stacking below the main toolbar. Rows wrap on narrow screens, and docs navigation and restored passages account for their height.

v0.9.2 — 2026-10-07

Fixes

• Codex can sign in to the hosted MCPortal: a loopback redirect (http://127.0.0.1/callback) now matches on any port, as RFC 8252 requires. Codex registers its callback without a port and listens on whatever port the system gives it, so every Codex sign-in failed with "redirect_uri is not registered for this client".

v0.9.1 — 2026-10-07

Fixes

• A linked MCPortal whose hosted side is down still starts: initialize and tools/list answer at once (the listing waits at most 3 seconds for the account), and a request that fails gets an error reply instead of leaving the host waiting until it gives up on MCPortal. Tools that need the account return upstream_unreachable.
• A sign-in that's gone says so: a refused refresh, or a hosted MCPortal that has moved (421 or a redirect), returns unauthenticated with "sign in again" (unlink_account, then link_account) instead of "can't reach". Tokens are never sent on to a redirect's target.

Docs from a repo

• Nested docs folders read as one: in a GitHub docs folder without an outline file, pages in deeper folders stay together inside their section, each folder led by its index, and their titles name the folder ("Projects › Workspaces"). Before, every folder's index was a bare "Overview" and the folders' pages were mixed. File names like cli.md and http.md read as "CLI" and "HTTP".

Arranging

• "Changes:" names only what moved: arrange_room's reply (and its changes.moved) lists the portals that were moved, not the ones that only shifted because others moved above them or an emptied column closed up. "Put GitHub on the left" now reports moved: gh (column 3 → 1) alone.

The hosted service is at mcportal.lol

• link_account signs a local MCPortal in to https://mcportal.lol by default (MCPORTAL_HOSTED_URL); the old mcportal-production.up.railway.app address answers 421. The directory listing (server.json, manifest.json), security policy and install guide use the new address.

Landing page, README and docs

• New screenshots show MCPortal in a chat: building a room by asking, reading and clipping an article, reading the uv docs straight from GitHub, and reblogging in the river. scripts/screenshots.ts takes them from the real room UI with live feeds; the old columns, shelves and reader shots are gone.
• A launch video on the landing page: a 22-second tour (a door opens in a chat onto the room, then the uv docs, a clip and a reblog), made from the same real scenes. It waits for a click (no autoplay), plays from this server (the pages' CSP gains media-src 'self'), and the site's files answer Range requests, which Safari needs to play video.
• The landing page moves like a print run, still without scripts: on load the hero's layers land like printing plates, the orbit draws itself and the door swings open on the moon; the headline carries a teal keyline a few pixels off register. Further down, screenshots develop out of a halftone as they scroll in, heading rules print in and step numbers stamp down (in browsers with CSS scroll timelines). With reduced motion the page is still. The hero art is now inlined from brand/hero.svg, so /site/hero.svg is gone. New motion tokens: duration.register, duration.swing, ease.press, ease.swing.
• The landing page has sections for docs and for sharing (Spaces, follows, reblogs, finding people). The tutorial adds a step for opening a project's docs and says what signing in adds. The tool reference covers find_people, suggest_people, pass_person, listed and the Lobby source. Docs no longer say the hosted service is invite-only.

v0.9.0 — 2026-10-07

Finding people

• Every handle opens that person's Space: in the share reader, the river's "@ana shared" lines, reblog notes and Following rows. Back returns to exactly where you were.
• Follow from a post: a share, and a link someone you follow shared, offer Follow for the first person on it you don't follow yet (the author, the original's author, or who it came via). get_share returns canFollow.
• Find people: find_people suggests listed people who match your room, topics, sites or someone you name, with reasons built only from what they made public. Listing is opt-in: a checkbox when you claim a handle, a toggle on your Space, or set_public_profile listed. add_portal and build_room mention listed people who feature the same sources, and open_space says which of their sources are in your room.
• The Lobby: a portal you add yourself of posts shared with everyone by listed people, at most 3 per person per day, minus muted and blocked. Strangers' posts say "not followed". In the river, a story a listed person you don't follow also shared says "also shared by @ana", one name per story.
• The People portal: your agent keeps its picks from find_people in your room with suggest_people, each with a one-line reason in its words. Cards have Follow, their Space, and Not for me, which find_people remembers for 90 days. It accepts only people find_people just returned, suggestions last 30 days, and it stays out of the river. find_people now matches plurals ("cats" finds "cat").
• Space links: /@handle is a bridge page that shows only the handle until you sign in. Signing in there admits a newcomer, and the next time their agent opens their room, it offers to follow the link's owner. The owner hears once that someone joined through their link. Your Space has Copy link, and open_space gives the agent the link. Schema v10 adds mcportal_intros and mcportal_joins.

Reader

• The reader's row stays flush in a chat: inline, the row of back, original and save buttons no longer floats a strip below the top, with the article scrolling through the gap.
• Reblog from the reader: the reader's row has the reblog button, beside save. A story someone you follow posted reblogs their post; anything else posts the link.
• Reading hides the room's controls: with a story open, the top bar drops layouts, add, sources, refresh and the account, which act on the room behind it.

v0.8.0 — 2026-10-05

The river and reblogging are on for everyone

• The river is a regular layout, beside columns and shelves, no longer behind MCPORTAL_LABS=river. The front page stays a lab.
• Reblog from anywhere: every story, row and shelf card has a reblog button, not only the river and Following. A story nobody has posted is saved first, then posted to your Space; one someone you follow posted reblogs their post, so the credit stays theirs. Saved items keep their Share button.
• Reblogging is no longer a lab: share takes reblogOf, share_settings is always listed and the API's reblog methods always answer. MCPORTAL_LABS=reblog and =river are now ignored.
• Narrow shelf cards shorten a domain or language before they drop a count, an age or a button.

Standalone pages get a door, and the account page a dashboard

• Door plates: consent, account, invite, import and sign-in pages open with a night-sky plate over the card. The door is lit with the moon in it for a welcome or good news, and dark when a link has expired or sign-in failed (with a brick shadow in place of mustard). A short line over the heading carries the pulp voice where the news is good ("It's alive!", "A door has opened!") and a few words on light failures ("Signal lost"); consent, deletion and account text stay plain.
• Consent screen: the requesting app and MCPortal are joined by an orbit of dots above the text that names them.
• Account page: leads with "Signed in as @you" and sign-out, then tiles for portals, saved items and clips, signed-in apps in rows, each download as a card, and deletion in its own marked-off box. The page is rendered by accountHome(), which the design preview also shows at /account-preview.
• Primary buttons are mustard with a brick offset shadow, like the landing page's call to action.

Reading, retrieval and privacy

• Continue Reading brings back recent unfinished articles and docs pages. Docs now resume and record explicit completion, and reading writes settle in navigation order. Inline columns offer five stories plus More, lane navigation and page controls; shelves keep visible navigation.
• PostgreSQL clips use schema v9 full-text relevance with literal fallback. Docs search includes each account’s fresh cached page bodies within the existing bounded cache; unvisited pages still use their outline.
• Export/import links require the owning account's browser session and uploads validate CSRF. Full exports include mutes, blocks, filed reports and Space preferences; shared-cache timestamps are omitted. Hosted linking requires HTTPS except loopback, credential requests refuse redirects, and new data directories are private. GitHub sign-in requests no scope; the hosted HTTPS origin sends HSTS.
• Bounded protocol observations record recognized version/host categories without raw client identity data. The verified migration assessment corrects the planned modern protocol requirements; modern wire behavior is not implemented.

Launch operations

• A read-only npm run ops:check probe checks storage health and authenticated MCP discovery, with bounded, credential-free JSON output and no redirects or feed fetching.
• The hosted operations runbook records deployment verification, rollback, isolated backup restores, incident response and the remaining launch evidence. Railway IaC preserves explicit sign-up, usage-budget and public-page settings without enabling sign-up.
• The privacy page groups service providers and records policy changes.

Fixes

• Sign-in failures identify the step, HTTP status when available, recovery action and support reference. GitHub errors distinguish expired codes, OAuth app configuration, unverified email and outages; account access messages identify the selected GitHub account. The room and agent can read the last failed attempt and retry with a fresh link. A failed initial portal import keeps sign-in and local data intact and reports a warning in the browser and room. Diagnostic logs omit credentials, callback state and raw provider text.
• The Ghost mode menu's sign-in button now starts login instead of silently failing when its click event is passed to the sign-in flow. Browser regressions cover both sign-in buttons and hosts that support, omit or decline opening links.
• Local sign-in pages refer to your app rather than Claude and show the hosted server's failure reason instead of labelling every denied sign-in as cancelled.

Terms of service and a private security contact (plan)

• Terms of service at /terms, with acceptable use, linked from every page and from the sign-in consent screen, which now also asks you to confirm you're at least 13.
• A private way to report security problems: the security page describes what to send, response times (acknowledged within 3 business days), a 90-day disclosure window and safe harbor for good-faith research. /.well-known/security.txt (RFC 9116) and SECURITY.md point to the same contact.
• One contact address: MCPORTAL_CONTACT_EMAIL is where support requests and security reports go, and the support link defaults to it. MCPORTAL_JURISDICTION names the law the terms are under.
• The support page says how soon we reply, and only mentions invite-only sign-up while sign-up is invite-only.
• The public pages no longer link to the source code, which isn't public yet; MCPORTAL_SOURCE_URL brings the links back.

v0.7.0 — 2026-10-02

The river (lab, MCPORTAL_LABS=river) (how it works)

• One stream across your room: a fourth layout that merges every portal into one column. Your agent's picks first (only when there's an edition), then what's new, a "You're caught up" divider, then what you've seen. Each portal keeps its own order and portals merge by time; the same link from two portals is one story ("also on Hacker News"). More than three in a row from one portal fold into "N more from X", which opens in place. Docs and pinned portals are named at the end rather than merged.
• Stories: the portal and its age on top (its name opens the portal), the picture across at 1.91:1, a larger title, a four-line summary at reading width, every action, separated by rules. j/k move between stories, o opens, s saves. A role="feed" of articles for screen readers.
• Pages that end: ten at a time inline ("10 more", focus moves to a "Stories 11 to 20" separator; "Open the full river" from the third page), twenty in fullscreen, where the next page loads as you near the end, at most twice. Switching modes keeps what's on screen.
• Nothing moves while you read: a refresh or a save updates stories in place; stories new to the river wait behind "N new since you started". Coming back to the page refreshes portals past their freshness, at most every five minutes; nothing polls.
• People you follow: a follow's share of a link in your feeds is that feed's story, lifted to where they shared it, with "@ana shared" above it and their note in their own voice.

Reblogging (lab, MCPORTAL_LABS=reblog) (how it works)

• Pass someone's post on, with the credit staying theirs: a reblog references the original rather than copying it, so its note and clip are drawn live, and the count pools on the original. Reblogging a reblog reblogs the original and credits who you saw it through ("via @ben"). One reblog per person per post; unshare undoes it.
• The author decides: each post says who may reblog it (anyone, their followers, nobody), with an account default (set_public_profile's reblogs). Followers-only posts can't be reblogged at all. Authors can change it later or remove their post from one reblog for good (share_settings); the reblog then says its author removed it. A deleted, hidden or suspended original leaves the reblogger's note and the link. Blocks with the original's author hide the reblog; muting someone hides their posts reblogged by others too.
• In the room: a door-shaped reblog button with a menu (Reblog, Reblog with a note, Undo reblog), the moon filling the doorway once you have, a new ink green, and a small print-stamp effect (not with reduced motion). If you haven't opened a story, the menu offers "Read it first?" without getting in the way. In the river, several follows reblogging one post are one card ("@ben and @dee reblogged @cy") with at most two notes: the original's and one reblog's. Your own post's card shows who reblogged it, removes it from one, and sets who can reblog it.
• For agents: share takes reblogOf and reblogs; get_share says who reblogged a post; share_settings is new. All of it is listed only while the lab is on.
• Postgres schema version 8: shares gain root_id, with an index for finding reblogs and a unique index for one reblog per account per post.

Under the hood

• Labs per server: labs now travel in each request's tool context (default MCPORTAL_LABS), and a tool can declare arguments that exist only while a lab is on, so a lab costs the model nothing until it's on. Token budgets gain a hosted-labs profile.
• The inline room sets its own height after every size change as well as telling the host, for hosts that read the page's height instead.
• Fix: a Saved story's share button no longer drifts away from the other actions.

v0.6.1 — 2026-10-02

Deleting an account leaves nothing behind (plan)

• Nothing names you after you delete your account: the sign-in records of apps only you used (which can carry your computer's name) go with it, the audit log no longer says whose entries were yours, reports you made or that were about you stop naming you (open reports about you are closed), and your handles stay reserved for 30 days without saying whose. In file mode, unreadable copies of your room and an empty clips file go too. A test creates every kind of data, deletes the account, and searches what's left.
• Admins can delete an account for you if you can't sign in any more: mcportal admin delete <login> --confirm, recorded in the audit log.
• Retention on a schedule: expired highlights and handoffs, reports resolved more than 180 days ago, invites unused for 90 days, audit entries older than a year and app registrations unused for 180 days are removed every 6 hours, so the privacy policy's "how long" holds on a quiet server too. The policy now states each.
• Under the hood, the server and the admin CLI open storage the same way (src/storage.ts).

Shipping device linking (how it works)

• Sign in from the welcome screen: a local MCPortal's first-run screen offers Already have a portal? Sign in to bring it here, which starts the same sign-in as the account chip.
• Privacy policy: a section on MCPortal on your own computer: ghost mode sends nothing to the service; signed in, your room is stored by the service while feeds are still fetched from your computer, tokens stay in a file only you can read, and you can revoke a computer from the account page.
• Support and README: organizations that block custom connectors can install MCPortal locally and sign in.
• CONTRIBUTING: how linked mode fits together and how to try signing in without touching your own link.

v0.6.0 — 2026-10-02

MCPortal becomes one portal, local or hosted: run it on your computer in ghost mode or sign in to keep it in your account, with sharing, a Space and a handle. The room gains layouts led by your agent's picks, the tool surface is reworked for the long run (breaking; see "A tool surface for the long run" and "For hosts and agents"), and the service gets ready for directory review. 0.5.0 was never released on its own; its changes are here.

Releases

• One command per release step: npm run release -- prepare <x.y.z | patch | minor | major> sets the version everywhere it's stated (package.json and its lockfile, the plugin, SERVER_INFO, then the generated server.json and manifest.json), moves "Unreleased" under it, runs npm run check and opens a release PR. After the merge, npm run release -- publish tags it and creates the GitHub release from that version's notes. --dry-run previews either step. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Ready for directory review (plan)

• Every tool states what it does: readOnlyHint, destructiveHint and openWorldHint are set on every tool, and a test keeps them consistent with what each tool does. Open-world means a tool reaches the web or makes something visible to other people (share, relationship, set_public_profile). build_room is now marked destructive (it replaces the layout), and export_data is no longer read-only (it writes a file, or makes a download link).
• The room's content-security policy (no external origins) is on the resources/list entry as well as resources/read, so hosts can review it when they connect.
• Logs can't name you: the user reference in logs is a keyed hash whose key is made at startup, so it can't be traced back to an account (an unkeyed hash of a GitHub id could be).
• The privacy policy matches what's stored: it now lists reading history, seen marks, highlights, pages sent to a new chat, device names in app registrations and the account-page cookie; it no longer promises backups that aren't set up; it says what outlasts deleting your account; and it names WordPress.com's image service.

Signing in from the room

• The room follows your sign-in: after Sign in to sync and share, the open room notices when you finish in the browser and redraws as signed in. It also re-checks who it belongs to when it comes back into view, so signing in or out through your agent shows up too.
• Claim a handle in the room: the account menu's Claim a handle opens a form (suggested from your GitHub login) and opens your new space when it's done. Before, it only showed an error.
• Fix: the account menu no longer closes itself when one of its buttons changes it, which hid the sign-in follow-up and the sign-out confirmation.
• For hosts and agents: a local MCPortal sends notifications/tools/list_changed after signing in or out and after claiming a handle, so the agent sees the sharing tools without restarting.

Fix: forms in real browsers

• Signing in and the account page work in a browser again. Server-rendered pages were sent with Referrer-Policy: no-referrer, under which browsers send Origin: null with a form POST. Every form is checked for a same-origin Origin, so Continue with GitHub on the consent screen and the account page's sign out, import, Revoke and delete were refused as "Cross-site request refused". Pages now use same-origin, which still sends other sites no referrer. A headless-Chrome test now submits the consent screen and the account page's sign-out the way a person does (test/ui-forms.test.ts).

Room layouts (how it works)

• Your agent's picks lead the room: show_highlights now keeps its picks as the room's edition for 24 hours, replacing the last. open_room returns the picks still in their feeds, in the agent's order, and what the room leads with: the agent's first pick, else the first new item, else the top item of the first feed. Only the refs and the agent's own words are stored; items are found again in the live feeds, so no site text is kept. Editions aren't exported and are deleted with your account. show_highlights is no longer marked read-only. Postgres gains mcportal_editions (schema version 7).
• Front page (lab, MCPORTAL_LABS=frontpage): a third layout made for the chat column. Your agent's lead story and picks with their reasons, then each portal's top three stories (picks aren't repeated) with "5 more" pages, ending with "You're caught up" or how many new stories wait inside your portals. Nothing in it scrolls on its own; the page grows instead. Without highlights, a button asks your agent to pick them. Offered in the toolbar and to the model only while the lab is on.
• Open a portal: a portal's title opens it to fill the room, in every layout: ten stories at a time inline, all of them fullscreen. The reader opens over it and comes back to it; Back or Escape returns to the room exactly as you left it. Where the browser can, the portal grows into place and a story into the reader (not with reduced motion).
• Unseen items read heavier: titles you haven't had on screen are bolder, beside their New mark.
• Under the hood, columns and shelves are entries in one layout registry and items draw through one component with forms, so new layouts don't touch existing ones. Both render exactly as before.

One portal, local or hosted (how it works)

• Who you are, at a glance: the room's toolbar ends with an identity chip. Signed in, it shows your handle (or your GitHub login before you claim one) and opens your space. Running without an account, it shows Ghost mode with a ghost icon and a dashed outline: your portal stays where MCPortal runs and nothing is shared. The old space button is folded into it.
• "Am I signed in?" has an answer: account_settings starts with the mode ("Ghost mode: not signed in…" or "Signed in to the hosted MCPortal as @handle") and returns it as identity; open_room returns identity too, for the toolbar. Sharing and profile tools refused on a local MCPortal now say it's in ghost mode.
• Room revisions everywhere: every profile store (files, memory, Postgres) reports a revision that each write increments and can replace a room only if it's still at a given revision (versioned, replaceIf); a stale replace is a conflict. Profile files keep rev beside the room; older files count as revision 1. Tools reach the social layer and public profiles through narrower interfaces (SocialService, ProfileDirectory) that a linked MCPortal can implement remotely. No behavior change.
• The hosted state API: POST /api/v1/call takes a batch of up to 20 calls (room.get/room.put with revisions, clips, reading, seen sets, handoffs, public profiles, sharing and follows) and is what a linked local MCPortal will use in place of its own files. It takes the same tokens as /mcp and acts only as the token's account. Inputs are checked the way the tools check them. In particular, a clip is rebuilt on the server, a share names a clip or saved item the server looks up, and seen marks and featured sources must be portals in the room. Clients send mcportal-client: <version> and get 426 if they're older than the server supports.
• Signed-in apps and devices: the account page lists everything signed in to your account (Claude, and later your linked computers) with a Revoke button each. POST /oauth/revoke (RFC 7009) lets a client end its own sign-in.
• Fixes: an oversized request body on /mcp now closes its connection, so a client that reuses connections can't have the unread body taken for its next request. A malformed reading URL is an invalid_argument instead of an internal error. ClipStore.add returns the clip as stored.
• The linked side: src/link has the state API client (calls in the same tick go as one request; a refused token is refreshed once) and remote versions of every store the tools use, so the same tools run on a local MCPortal with its state on the hosted account. The room is cached for 30 seconds and written with revisions; when two devices change it at once, the loser re-reads and re-runs its change. A room saved by a newer MCPortal can be read but not changed. Not wired to a sign-in yet.
• Sign in from a local MCPortal: ghost mode's chip opens a menu with Sign in to sync and share (or say "sign in to MCPortal": link_account). You approve on MCPortal's consent screen, which names the computer, and sign in with GitHub. This computer's portal is added to your account (nothing removed), and from then on the same tools run here against your hosted account: your room, clips, reading, sharing and follows, the same on every device. Signed in, the chip shows your handle and offers your space, the account page and Sign out (unlink_account), which copies your portal back to this computer first. export_data and import_portal go through the hosted account in one request each (GET /api/v1/export, POST /api/v1/import).
• Offline, when signed in: if the hosted MCPortal can't be reached, the room shows your portal as last synced, with a notice, and the chip goes dotted; feeds still load (they're fetched on your computer), "new" marks pause, and changes say they need the connection. A newer hosted MCPortal is mentioned once.
• Fix: a one-time notice (such as "your saved layout couldn't be read") is shown on the welcome screen too, instead of being dropped.
• The plan for linking: a local MCPortal will be able to sign in to your hosted account and keep fetching on your machine while your room, clips and shares live on the hosted server. Revised plan in docs/explanation/local-and-hosted.md.

Reading with your agent (how it works)

• Ask about a passage: select text in the reader or a docs page and a bar offers Ask about this and Clip quote. Asking gives your agent the passage (fenced as the site's text, with the page and the nearest heading), then posts a fixed "Let's talk about the passage I just highlighted" in your voice: the site's words never go into your message. Hosts that can't post messages get the passage as context and a nudge to ask; hosts that can't take context offer Copy quote. Nothing is sent until you click.
• Clip quote keeps the selection as a quote clip with its page as the source.
• What's new since your last visit: items you haven't had on screen are marked New, portal headings say "30 · 7 new", and open_room tells your agent "[hn-top] 30 items, 7 new" with the new ones first. The room records what stays on screen for a second (or that you open) with the app-only mark_seen, in batches every 10 seconds. A portal's first showing is its baseline, so nothing floods in as new; your own Saved and Clips portals never show "new". Seen sets live apart from reading history (500 items per portal), aren't exported, and are deleted with your account. Postgres gains mcportal_seen (schema version 6).
• Highlights: ask "what's worth reading today?" and your agent calls list_new_items (what you haven't seen across the room, in turn by portal, at most 60, with what MCPortal knows of your taste: recent saves and finished reads, clip tags, the sites you read most), picks with the conversation and what it knows of you, and calls show_highlights: a card of the sources' own items, each with the agent's reason. Picks must name items the room really has. Not for me marks one seen. Nothing about the picks is stored.
• Send to a new chat: from the reader's top bar (the whole page) or the passage bar (a selection), MCPortal keeps a pointer to the page, where you were and what you selected under a short code, and shows what to say in a new chat: "Open MCPortal handoff k7q2xm". There open_handoff opens the page as a card at that place, with the passage, and gives the agent its text. Send two pages to two chats and keep driving this one. Codes work only in your account, last 7 days (50 at most), aren't exported, and are deleted with your account. Postgres gains mcportal_handoffs (schema version 5).

A tool surface for the long run (breaking)

See the plan.

• Edit by patch (breaking): arrange_room replaces update_profile. It takes only the changes you name (move, width, retitle, configure, name, layout, openIn), applies them all or none, and can't touch anything it isn't given, so "never drop a portal you weren't asked to" is a guarantee rather than a rule for the model. remove_portal is its own call, marked destructive, so hosts can ask before it runs. Portals are named by id or exact title. get_profile is gone: the room and its ids come from open_room. The room app's layout switch uses arrange_room too.
• One content for clips (breaking): clip takes the clip as content text for every kind but an exchange: a quote, a note in markdown, a markdown table, a link's url, or an image as SVG markup or a data: URI. Exchanges keep turns and quotes keep attribution. text, markdown, table, columns, rows, svg, image and url are gone.
• Social tools for people who use them: a hosted account sees the ways in (open_space, relationship, report, set_public_profile) until it has a handle or follows, mutes or blocks someone; then the rest. Hosts cache the tool list per conversation, so the rest arrive in the next one, and the result that unlocks them says so.
• Budgeted results: read_doc_page returns long pages in parts (part: 2 for the next), read_article gives the model the first part (the reader card has the rest), and open_room summarizes each portal's first items.
• Shorter definitions: descriptions and schema prose are rewritten to stand alone when a host's tool search surfaces one tool. Counted as the model sees them (name, description, input schema), about 3,600 tokens local, 4,100 hosted and 4,600 for an active social account (with the reading tools app-only, below), down from 4,700 and 6,000. Each tool has a token ceiling in test/footprint-ceilings.json; npm run footprint -- --exact asks the Claude API's counter.
• The reader records reading: opening an article in the room's reader records it, scrolling saves the furthest point reached (at most every 15 seconds and on leaving), coming back picks up there, and only "Mark as read" marks it read. record_reading and get_reading are app-only now; the model asks list_reading. See docs/explanation/reading.md.
• A frozen eval: evals/tool-selection.ts cases never change; renames are declared in evals/renames.ts, runs repeat (--runs) and results are recorded (--record) and compared (--compare).

For hosts and agents (interface changes)

• Arguments are checked: every tool call is checked against the tool's inputSchema before it runs. A wrong type (column: "2"), an unknown argument or a missing required one is refused with invalid_argument and a sentence naming the problem, where some were silently ignored before. pin_portal still trims extra items and tags rather than refusing them.
• Error codes: a failed call carries structuredContent.error = { code, message, retryable } (codes such as not_found, conflict, limit_exceeded, rate_limited, unavailable, upstream_error). A server bug reports internal with a reference, never its message.
• A smaller footprint: a local MCPortal no longer lists the sharing, space and public-profile tools (they're hosted only), and the longest tool descriptions and the server instructions are shorter (the sharing rules are sent only where sharing exists). What MCPortal costs every conversation it's connected to drops from about 8,000 tokens to about 7,300 hosted and 5,700 local. tools/list is grouped by area.
• Removed export_opml (breaking): export_data with format: "opml" exports sources as OPML.
• Version 0.4.0, for the interface changes in this section.
• Admin API errors are { error: code, error_description }, like the OAuth endpoints.
• find_source candidates carry validated settings, exactly as add_portal will store them.

Health, reliability and distribution

• No lost changes: two tool calls at once can't overwrite each other's change to the room (also across server instances on Postgres), and a failed read of shared data can't replace it with an empty document.
• /health checks storage and answers 503 when it can't reach it; the admin page shows today's usage and per-tool counters.
• Listing files: server.json (MCP Registry) and manifest.json (an MCPB bundle for Claude desktop) are generated from the code by node scripts/distribution.ts, so their tools and version always match.

Design system

• Shared tokens: versioned, typed authoring source generates CSS, browser palettes and TypeScript exports for the room, reading/social cards, public site, account, OAuth and admin.
• Validated themes: an exact host adapter repairs unreadable colour pairs, clears stale colours on theme changes, supports partial/reset inputs and follows system preferences until the host selects a scheme. Functional contrast no longer depends on native contrast-color().
• Consistent controls: visible save actions, separate card-opening and metadata controls, shared focus/selection/target sizes, container-aware layouts and user text sizing. Brand artwork and images keep their colours.
• A lighter toolbar: the layout control is a pill switch whose chosen half fills in, and pressed icons get a soft fill instead of an underline. Inline in a chat the header shows only the Portal mark; the wordmark returns in fullscreen or on wide screens.
• Regression workflow: generation drift and contrast/lifecycle tests plus a reusable fixture MCP Apps host with an 80-case browser matrix. See the guide.

Host themes

• Visible on every host backing: inline welcome tiles and room content paint their own theme-matched background, fixing dark text disappearing over a black iframe until hover.
• Adaptive contrast: a shared luminance resolver derives readable text, muted text, borders and surface colours when host tokens are absent or inconsistent, with light/dark fallbacks, increased-contrast and forced-colour support. Host tokens cannot overwrite internal room palette or layout variables.

Vocabulary

• Room and portals: your whole setup is now your room, and each window onto a source is a portal (it was called a panel). The app, tool descriptions, server instructions, skill, web pages and README use the new words. "Open my portal" still opens the room. See the glossary and rename plan in docs/explanation/architecture.md.
• Renamed tools (breaking): open_workspace → open_room, build_portal → build_room, add_panel → add_portal, pin_panel → pin_portal, refresh_panel → refresh_portal. Parameters panelId → portalId, removePanelIds → removePortalIds and featuredPanelIds → featuredPortalIds; results carry portals, portal and portalId instead of panels, panel and panelId. The old names are gone, with no aliases. Hosts ask you to approve the renamed tools again.
• Renamed in the code: PanelSpec → PortalSpec, PanelResult → PortalResult, the app is src/ui/room.html at ui://mcportal/room.html, and its CSS classes are .portal* with data-portal.
• Stored data unchanged: profiles still keep each column's portals under columns[].panels, and MCPortal exports keep the same format, so existing files, Postgres rows and exports load as they are.
• Product map: docs/explanation/architecture.md maps every vertical, feature, component, variant and primitive.

Docs

• Read any docs site in your room: ask for "docs.stripe.com", "nextjs.org/docs" or "react.dev docs" and find_source offers a docs portal that lists the site's sections. MCPortal reads the site's llms.txt, its Sphinx inventory (Python, Django, NumPy, Flask) or its sitemap, and pages as markdown where the site offers it, else through the reader.
• Docs on GitHub too: "rust-lang/book" or "astral-sh/ruff" turns a repo's markdown docs folder into the same kind of portal, ordered by its SUMMARY.md or _sidebar.md when it has one.
• A docs viewer: contents with search on the left, the page in the middle, "On this page" on wide screens, and a Contents drawer on phones. Search finds pages, and on Python-style docs functions and classes too: pick str.split and the page opens at its signature. Your agent's open_docs shows the same viewer as a card in the chat.
• A Developer docs starter pack: Stripe, Railway, Python and Next.js, on the welcome screen.
• Clean pages: headings, code with its language and a Copy button, tables, notes and warnings as callouts, and links. Docs-site components (tabs, cards, steps, parameter lists) become plain text. Prev and next buttons move through the docs, and links to other pages of the same docs stay in the reader.
• For your agent: open_docs shows a site's contents, search_docs finds pages and (on Sphinx sites) functions like str.split, and read_doc_page reads one page. Only pages of that site can be read, and docs text reaches your agent fenced as untrusted, including text addressed to AI agents.
• Better reader view everywhere: articles keep their tables, code languages, callouts and links too.

Clips

• Keep things from the conversation: say “clip that” and Claude saves a quote, an exchange (verbatim), a note, a table, an image (an SVG, PNG, JPEG or WebP chart or diagram) or a link, with a title, note and tags (clip).
• Find them in later chats: search_clips by words, kind or tag, and get_clip shows one as its own clip card. update_clip and delete_clip edit and remove them.
• A Clips portal: the first clip adds one. Clips open in a viewer with a renderer for each kind. add_portal can add filtered portals, such as only tables or only one tag.
• Safe by construction: clip text is always fenced as untrusted for the model and built as text in the UI. Images are checked by their bytes, and an SVG is only ever shown as an image, so nothing in it runs.
• Storage: files locally (<data dir>/clips/) and a new mcportal_clips table on the hosted server (schema version 2, upgraded in place).

Your data and identity

• Export everything: export_data gives a one-time download link (hosted) or a file (local). You get one versioned MCPortal export (layout, sources, saved items, clips, public profile), saved items as a bookmarks file, clips as Markdown with front matter and images (.tar.gz), or sources as OPML.
• Import: import_portal adds an MCPortal export to any room. It only adds, running twice changes nothing, and every clip is re-validated. On the hosted server, the tool returns a one-time upload link (or you can use the account page), so exports up to 60 MB go straight from the browser to the server instead of through the model. Local MCPortal reads a file path.
• Account page at /account: sign in with GitHub to download everything, import an export, or delete your account. Deletion needs the typed confirmation, and it removes the room, clips and public profile, revokes every sign-in token and removes the account. It is never an MCP tool.
• Public profiles (opt-in): claim a handle (suggested from your GitHub login) with a display name and bio. Other signed-in users can look you up. A handle you give up is held for you for 30 days.

Sharing

• Your space: a public profile is also a space people visit and follow. It has a title (say “liminal webspace”), a bio and an accent colour, your posts as a picture-rich grid (images, quotes and tables inline), and “Sources I read”: feeds you feature from your room, which visitors add to their own with one click. open_space shows anyone's space, or yours, as a card, and the toolbar has a My space button.
• Share from the room: a share button on saved items and in the clip viewer. You write the note and pick the audience yourself.
• Share a saved link or a clip with a note, to your followers (the default) or everyone on MCPortal. It needs a public profile. What you share is copied as it is, and Claude asks you to approve any note it writes.
• Follow people by handle. Their shares appear in a Following portal, which your first follow adds. Mute hides someone from that portal. Block hides you from each other and removes follows both ways.
• Report a share or a person. Admins see reports on /admin and can hide a share (only its author still sees it, marked hidden), dismiss the report or suspend the author. Every action is audited.
• Safe by default: other people's notes and shares always reach Claude fenced as untrusted text, and account ids never leave the server. Deleting your account removes your shares, follows, mutes and blocks, and anonymizes the reports you filed.
• Storage: new Postgres tables for shares, follows, mutes, blocks and reports (schema version 3, upgraded in place).

Brand

• A new look: the Portal mark (a door with an orbit through it), a Line version for the interface, and a Jost wordmark, in a mid-century sci-fi print style. The room header, the onboarding screen and the public pages use them.
• Your liminal webspace: the new tagline. MCPortal works in any MCP agent, so the pages and invite messages no longer say it lives "inside Claude".
• Icons everywhere: a favicon, an app icon and a social card for link previews. MCP clients that show server icons get the mark too (serverInfo.icons).
• The public pages in the house style: the landing page opens on a night-sky band with a door, an orbit and a halftone planet, over cream pages (ink in dark mode). Headings are set in Jost, served by MCPortal itself, so the pages still make no third-party requests (the CSP adds font-src 'self'). Pictures sit on an off-register block of colour, and sections open with a halftone rule. /privacy and /support share the layout, and all three pages now talk about "your agent" instead of Claude.
• Icons that match the mark: the room's icons are redrawn on the Line mark's grid and stroke. Columns are two doorways, the bookmark and "open original" have arched tops, a space is someone's doorway, refresh runs around a tilted orbit, and corners share one radius. They're generated with the marks, so they can't drift apart.
• A pulp voice in the room: loading, empty states, onboarding and toasts read like a 1950s sci-fi paperback ("Receiving transmissions…", "All quiet on this frequency… for now.", "Summon my portal!", "It's alive!"), always with a plain line saying what happened or what to do. Tooltips, accessible labels, and account or destructive actions stay plain. Everything that said Claude or "your assistant" now says "your agent".
• Every source its own colour: a feed's dot and its cards' top edge take the lead ink of its fallback art, so they match its pictures and no two sources on screen share a colour (every feed used to be the same teal). Your own portals take the house inks: Saved mustard, Clips teal, Following brick, Pinned ink. Dark mode tints them toward paper so the dark inks still show. The room accent (pressed buttons, the primary button) is teal instead of blue.
• New screenshots on the landing page, showing the new header, icons and colours.
• One source: npm run brand draws every brand file from one script, and a test keeps the committed files in step with it. See brand/README.md.

Pictures

• Fallback art: items without a picture, or whose picture is still loading, show a small portal scene printed like a mid-century sci-fi paperback: flat inks on paper, halftone dots and an off-register keyline. Five motifs (arches, orbits, a doorway with a ring through it, a grid bent by gravity, a starfield through a door) and eight ink sets. Every source on screen gets its own style, and each item its own placement. Dark mode prints on the darkest ink.
• More thumbnails load: when a feed says an image is over the size cap, the thumbnail comes from a smaller one in the post (/Film). Oversized WordPress uploads are resized by WordPress's image service (Colossal). A timed-out or failed fetch is retried on the next load instead of staying blank for a day.

Reader view

• No more share bars: articles no longer open with "Share • Pin • Email" (Colossal), a "Share" heading over "Comments" and "Read Later" (Quanta), or "x.com / Facebook / LinkedIn / Mail" twice (Google blog). A list is dropped only when every item is a short share or utility link, so real lists stay, even ones that name Facebook or LinkedIn.

Hosted service

• Public pages: a landing page at / with screenshots, a privacy policy at /privacy and support at /support. MCPORTAL_SUPPORT_URL and MCPORTAL_OPERATOR configure them.
• Railway infrastructure as code: .railway/railway.ts replaces railway.toml.

v0.3.0 — 2026-09-30

MCPortal becomes a reading platform that lives in your agent, and a hosted service ready for a small invite-only beta.

Reading in chat

• Built for chat hosts: the workspace renders inline in Claude, with no backdrop of its own, and sits in the host's surface.
• Layouts: a sideways-scrolling columns lane, where each column scrolls its own items, and picture shelves, one row per source.
• Opening stories: in the workspace, or as their own reader card in the conversation.
• Look: a custom icon set, denser controls and compact story details. The card height now shrinks back after the reader closes.

Sources

• Add anything: paste a site, feed, r/subreddit, owner/repo, or a YouTube, Bluesky, Mastodon, Medium, PyPI, Lobsters, Stack Overflow or arXiv address. MCPortal finds a feed that works and previews it (find_source, add_panel, and the + sheet).
• Thumbnails for feeds, videos and repos. The server fetches them and hands them over as data URIs, so the view never contacts third parties.
• Starter packs (developer, AI, news, games, art, science, music, film) build a new user's portal in seconds. Every source was checked from a laptop and from the cloud.
• OPML import and export: bring subscriptions from another reader, or take yours anywhere.

Your stuff

• Saved items: bookmark stories into a Saved panel. Layout edits can never drop them.
• Onboarding: "Make it yours" for new users, and "start over" on request.

Hosted service

• Postgres storage for profiles and sign-in state. It's imported once from the old files, and point-in-time recovery is on.
• Per-user usage limits: a per-minute burst allowance and a daily cap, plus a global daily cap.
• Accounts and invites: invite-only sign-in with GitHub, suspension that takes effect within 30 seconds, and admins from MCPORTAL_ADMINS. The old allowlist still works.
• One access gate: authorize() runs before every tool call. Suspended accounts can't act, and tools only ever act on the caller's own portal.
• Admin page at /admin: invites, suspensions and the audit log. It's not MCP, so nothing a model reads can reach it. The same actions are available as mcportal admin … commands.
• Invite links: each invite has a /join/<code> page with setup steps, and the admin page gives you a ready-to-send message.

For contributors

• bin/mcportal-dev.mjs: hot-reloads the server in Claude desktop without a restart. Setup is in CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Plans in docs/plans/: Postgres storage, local and hosted used together, clips, and identity and access (with portability).
• Tests: 59 tests, plus Postgres integration tests that run when TEST_DATABASE_URL is set.

Upgrade notes

• New runtime dependency: pg, loaded only when DATABASE_URL is set. Local MCPortal still needs no npm install.
• New environment variables: DATABASE_URL, MCPORTAL_ADMINS, MCPORTAL_OPEN_SIGNUP, and MCPORTAL_LIMIT_PER_MINUTE, MCPORTAL_LIMIT_PER_DAY and MCPORTAL_LIMIT_GLOBAL_PER_DAY. See .env.example.
• Sign-up: setting MCPORTAL_ADMINS makes the server invite-only. With no admins and no allowlist, sign-up stays open, as before.
• Column limit: up to 8 columns, up from 4.

v0.2.0

Hardened after an adversarial review. OAuth 2.1 with GitHub sign-in and per-user profiles.

v0.1.0

The plugin daily driver: MCP server, workspace app, /portal, Railway config.