Releases & Roadmap

A running overview of what's shipped and what's planned. For the full notes and downloads of each version, see the GitHub releases.

Roadmap

Shipped milestones

• ✅ Core — sidebar of all sessions, embedded terminal tabs, resume/fork
• ✅ Organization — favorites, custom names, auto-generated titles, project groups (reorderable, hideable), search, quick switcher
• ✅ Insight — session details, transcript peek, MCP servers & usage, detached / busy / interrupted guide lines, Claude subscription usage panel
• ✅ Workflow — terminal panel per tab, session backgrounding (/bg) & re-attach, graceful Ctrl+C close, per-tab cwd + git-branch footer, Export as Markdown, tab emoji
• ✅ Pull requests — every session's PRs tracked through gh (checks, conflicts, unanswered comments) as sidebar marks, footer chips, and an in-app PR page; merge / auto-merge / ready-for-review / request-a-review actions, with red CI, conflicts, and unanswered comments sendable back to the agent as prompts
• ✅ Editor — a per-tab code editor beside the terminal: file tree, quick open, an agent-files list of what the session just wrote, pop-out to a second monitor
• ✅ Composer — a spell-checked, multi-line prompt box that opens the moment you start typing, floating or docked, with drag-and-drop image attachments
• ✅ Session tools — an in-app MCP server every launched session can call: rename itself, open a file or an image on your screen, notify you when it needs you, attach a pull request to its own row, spawn a sibling session, and read or drive the terminal panel
• ✅ Desktop presence — a status icon with an unread badge, close-to-hide (sessions keep running without a window), notifications wearing each project's own icon, Caffeine Mode
• ✅ Theming — light/dark plus selectable terminal color palettes
• ✅ Localization — English, Hungarian, German, Spanish, French
• ✅ Multi-window
• ✅ Distribution — Ubuntu PPA (ppa:episode6/stable), .deb, PyPI (pipx install collins), one-step tag-driven releases

Exploring next

• 🔭 Flathub distribution
• 🔭 AUR package
• 🔭 Fedora COPR repository
• 🔭 A better native chat — a first-class chat experience for an agent session, beyond the terminal

Changelog

v0.1.2 — UNRELEASED

• An expired Claude login repairs itself. The usage panel and the model pickers ride the OAuth token the claude CLI stores, and only the CLI can refresh it — so when the token is found dead, at launch or when a usage poll under a running app comes back refused (the app outlived its token, or the token was revoked server-side), Collins now runs one throwaway headless claude -p prompt in the background, then re-fetches the usage bars and, when a models query had already failed, the model catalog. Attempts are single-flight and at most hourly, so a login no run can fix never turns into a subprocess-per-poll. Before, the panel sat on Claude login expired — run claude to refresh until you ran the CLI yourself.
• New sessions open onto a new-chat screen. The project's icon and name over the composer, with a Start in a new git worktree checkbox (seeded from the project's setting); the agent starts when the first prompt is sent, with that prompt as its first turn. Ctrl+J's terminal opens beside the screen as it would beside the console. A screen with text on it, or a terminal open beside it, is kept as a draft: closing the tab or quitting leaves a Draft row under the project in the sidebar, and clicking it brings the screen back — text, checkbox and terminal panel included; the row's trash button discards it, closing the open screen with it. When terminals were open beside a worktree launch, Collins offers to cd them into the worktree once it exists.
• A click on a project header starts a session there. From the title on, a click opens the new-chat screen for that project, the same as its
  • button; everything before the title — the strip holding the icon, full row height, the caret under the pointer — is what folds and unfolds the group now, and ←/→ on a focused header do the same from the keyboard. Favorites, with nowhere to start a session, still folds on a click anywhere.
• The PR page's tabs link back to GitHub. A right-click on Conversation or Files opens that view of the pull request on github.com in your browser — the escape hatch for whatever the native page doesn't render.
• The PR page's Checks list folds instead of scrolling. Past four checks the rest wait behind a "Show more" button, the same step the description takes, with the failing and pending rows kept on top. The little in-place scroller is gone.
• No more busy pointer after bringing Collins back from the tray. On GNOME, double-clicking the status icon (or picking Show Collins, a session, or New Window from its menu) left the shell's busy cursor up for fifteen seconds: the host hands over an activation token that doubles as a startup-notification sequence, and Collins was dropping it instead of raising the window with it. The window now comes up on that token.
• The PR page no longer selects its description by itself. A click on "Show more", in the description or on a thread's Reply, followed by any background re-read of the page, left the whole description highlighted — GTK re-placing the keyboard focus onto the first label of the rebuilt page, which selects itself on focus. A rebuild now parks the focus on the page's scroller first, and gives it back to the comment box or the reply editor being typed in, whose cursor a background refresh used to throw out. The other way in — switching to another tab and back after a click in the description — is closed too: GTK's select-a-label-on-focus is off across the app, so text is only ever selected by dragging over it.
• A PR page opened behind another tab gets its full width. A panel page that opens itself in a background tab — an agent attaching its pull request while you read another session — used to come up squeezed to its minimum width when that tab was next selected, however much room the terminal had to spare. The column now takes its proper size the moment the tab is first shown.

v0.1.1 — 2026-08-22

Collins is now installable from an apt repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:episode6/stable
sudo apt install collins

The PPA covers Ubuntu 24.04 (noble) and 26.04 (resolute), and the Ubuntu derivatives that share them — Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, elementary OS, Zorin. Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy) is out of scope: it ships libadwaita 1.1 and GTK 4.6, and Collins uses APIs from libadwaita 1.5 and GTK 4.10.

On Debian, keep using the .deb from the releases page. A Launchpad PPA can only ever serve Ubuntu, so the .deb is not a lesser fallback — it is the channel for Debian and the rest of its family, and it stays. It adds no apt source, so it does not update itself; watch the releases page. Debian 13 (trixie) and newer have everything Collins needs.

• Every keyboard shortcut is rebindable. The sidebar menu's new Keyboard Bindings dialog lists each of them, grouped; click a row and press the new chord and it is live in every window and tab at once. Backspace unbinds, a chord another action holds can be moved over, and each changed row — or all of them — resets to its default. The terminal's copy/paste/find/zoom keys and Shift+Enter are included, as are a few actions that ship without a key (search sessions, swap the panel's sides, focus the editor). Stored under settings.keybindings in state.json.
• Ctrl+Shift+F no longer opens the sidebar search. Ctrl+K (the quick switcher) is the keyboard way to reach a session; the sidebar's search button still works, and the chord is held back for a future session-content search. The win.focus-search action remains for custom keybindings.
• Installs alongside agent-session-manager. Collins' action icons are app-private artwork on generic names, and they were being written into the shared hicolor icon theme, where they collided with the copies upstream's package owns. They now live in /usr/share/collins/icons, which also stops them outranking the system's own icons for every other application.
• The .deb declares what it actually needs. It was missing gir1.2-gtksource-5 and gir1.2-spelling-1 entirely, so it could install on a machine without them and then exit on launch asking you to install them by hand. Both packages now also require libadwaita 1.5 and GTK 4.10, turning a crash on a too-old distribution into an apt refusal that says why.
• Collins is on PyPI as plain collins (pipx install --system-site-packages collins). The wheel carries the app's icons, .desktop launcher, and metainfo, and collins --install-desktop puts the launcher in the app grid.
• The sidebar menu offers the PPA. On Ubuntu (and its derivatives), a Collins that didn't come from ppa:episode6/stable — the GitHub .deb, PyPI, a checkout — shows Add the Ubuntu PPA… in the ☰ menu until the repository is configured. It shows the commands and runs them in a terminal of the current session, where sudo can ask for a password.
• Close hides the window; sessions keep running. The close dialog's third answer, Keep Running (Hide Window), leaves every session exactly as it is with no window on screen; the status icon's Show Collins (Hidden), a notification, or relaunching brings it back, and the When quitting with running sessions preference can make hiding the default. A first-time notice says where Collins went.
• Session tools grow up — start_session takes a model, and a spawned sibling inherits the caller's current model and permission mode by default (bypass mode never inherits — it caps to acceptEdits).
• Generate Icon picks its model per run — a drop-down in the dialog, so a more capable model can be tried for one project without changing the Preferences default.
• Git pull from the project row — a project's right-click menu pulls its checked-out branch, named on the item; git's summary lands as a toast.
• Ctrl+K is the quick switcher and Ctrl+Shift+K clears the terminal panel — the two swapped, so the jump-anywhere key is the easier chord.
• The composer opens on typing by default (still an opt-out), and libspelling is optional — without it the composer is a plain text box, everything else intact.
• A composer draft is never lost. Closing the composer types the draft back into the agent's input box, but when the agent has left the terminal there is nowhere safe to put it — that draft is now kept for the session and comes back the next time you open its composer, as long as the box is empty. Drafts are saved to disk with the rest of the session's state, so closing the tab or quitting Collins keeps them too — including the one still in an open composer when the window goes away.
• A PR page opens wider when the room is free — twice as wide as it can be squeezed (640px) whenever the terminal is already past its maximum width and the spare gutter covers it, or as much of that gutter as covers the page at all; never a pixel out of the terminal, and decided before the page's first fetch lands, so it doesn't resize under its own data.
• Running checks are followed, not waited for. While a PR you're looking at has checks in progress — or none yet, for the first minute after it was opened fresh off a push — Collins asks GitHub every ten seconds whether its head commit's check-runs changed — a conditional request that comes back as an empty, rate-limit-free 304 until one does — and fetches the full status the moment they do, instead of at the next minute mark. Marks, chips and the PR page itself all update on the spot (the page re-reads when it's on screen). Merged and closed PRs are now refetched every ten minutes rather than every one.
• Preferences regrouped — eighteen groups become ten, the CLI path alone under no heading at the top. General follows with language, Dark / Light Mode, status icon, tab drag handles, the sidebar's switches and the icon model; Session behavior gathers everything about how sessions start, get named, are archived and quit (with the title model beside the auto-title switch, and the polling and busy-tracking fallbacks at its tail); the composer's switches leave Terminal for a Composer group of their own; the three pull-request switches that lived under Session list join Pull requests; and Session tools is now Built-in MCP tools. Row names and settings are unchanged (two renames: the app's Color scheme is Dark / Light Mode, and Show folder path is Show folder paths in sidebar), so search finds everything where it was.
• Ctrl+click finishes a wrapped link off the transcript. A URL or file path the CLI broke across rows is stitched back together from the screen when the geometry is unambiguous; when it isn't — the CLI wrapped narrower than the terminal, or a link fills a row exactly — the click now asks the session's transcript, which has the link unwrapped, and opens it when the rows around the click spell that link out. Finished turns only; a link still streaming in keeps the screen-only behaviour.
• The Files view shows a changed image as an image. A PR page's file list used to say Binary files differ for a picture and print path data for an SVG; now .png, .svg, .gif, .jpg, .webp and friends render on a transparency checkerboard — before beside after for a modified file, a click opening the lightbox at full size — with an SVG's real patch kept under its preview. Show embedded images off restores the plain patch and downloads nothing.
• The model list is cached for a day, and across restarts — saved to ~/.cache/collins/models.json, so the first picker of a run opens on real models instead of the CLI's aliases and a network wait. A failed query never evicts the last good list, and a Model list row in Preferences dates it and refreshes it on demand. A one-model answer is served but expires at once, so a cut-short page never sits in the pickers all day. The pickers also group the catalog by family — any newer, unrecognized tier first, then Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Haiku — so like sits with like.
• The composer's spell-check menu aims at the word you clicked. libspelling builds its corrections from the insertion cursor and GTK4's right-click never moved it, so the menu offered fixes for wherever the caret was parked — usually the end of what you just typed. The click now moves the cursor first, the way gspell did.
• A notification comes down when what it says stops being true. The first-hide notice is withdrawn when Collins is brought back by any route, and a notify_user banner goes away with its session's unread flag — so Ubuntu Dock's notification counter stops badging the launcher with a 1 nobody can find.
• Fixes — archiving a session clears its notification and unread count; the status icon's menu no longer draws a stray "Quit" on a separator; a click in the empty gutter beside a width-limited terminal clears the session's unread flag and focuses the terminal, as a click into the terminal does.

v0.1.0 — Collins (2026-08-17)

The first release under the Collins name, and the fork's version reset — Collins forked from agent-session-manager (original project website) and restarted its version numbering at 0.1.0.

• Rebrand to Collins — app name, command (collins), Python package, app id (com.episode6.Collins), docs, and an original Tom Collins glass app icon. Existing settings, names, and favorites migrate automatically from the old ~/.config/agent-session-manager/ (or older ~/.config/claude-session-manager/) location on first run.
• Claude Code only — the upstream Cursor provider was removed; this fork focuses on Claude Code.
• Session tools — an in-app MCP server offered to every session Collins starts, so the agent can drive the window it runs in: notify_user, set_session_title, open_in_editor, show_image (local or URL, with a caption), attach_pr, start_session (spawn a sibling session in the background), and read_terminal / run_in_terminal for the terminal panel. Each tool has its own switch in Preferences.
• Pull requests — every PR a session opens is tracked through gh: checks, conflicts, and unanswered comments roll up into one mark on the sidebar row and chips on the footer, and a native PR page beside the session shows the description, checks, timeline, threads and diff. Merge, auto-merge, ready-for-review, ask-Claude-for-a-review, comment, approve, and reply/resolve from the app; red CI, conflicts, and unanswered comments can be sent back to the agent as prompts. attach_pr and PRs named in a first prompt attach to the session too.
• Editor panel — a GtkSourceView editor beside the terminal (F8): file tree, quick open, an agent-files list of what the session just wrote, clickable file references in the terminal that open at the line, "Add to chat" for a selection, and pop-out to its own window on small screens.
• Prompt composer — a spell-checked, multi-line prompt box over the terminal that opens the moment you type at an empty prompt (Ctrl+.), floating or docked, with drag-and-drop files and image previews.
• Attachments panel — a per-session gallery of every image and file the session has shown or handed over (Ctrl+'), with a lightbox whose arrows walk the gallery; it docks itself beside the terminal when there's room.
• Terminal panel — a second plain-shell terminal per session (Ctrl+J), grown into a dock of splittable strips: tabs of its own, split and move by drag or right-click, rotate (Ctrl+;), take the whole session tab as an overlay, with layout and scrollback persisted per session.
• Status icon — Collins in the top bar with an unread-count badge, and notifications wearing each project's own icon.
• Model switcher — the footer names the model a session is answering with; click it (or the composer's model button) to switch, from a live list of the models your login can use.
• Claude usage panel — subscription limits with reset countdowns under the session list, polled every 5 minutes (paused while minimized/locked).
• Session backgrounding & re-attach — close dialogs and header buttons can background a session (/bg) instead of exiting it; opening a still-running session attaches to the live process instead of resuming a copy. Closing asks the agent to exit cleanly (Ctrl+C Ctrl+C).
• Auto-generated session titles — pre-existing sessions titled locally, new ones summarized by a headless claude -p run; a session can also take its name from its pull request, or follow Claude's own session names.
• Sidebar upgrades — compact single-line rows with a guide line for every status (working, unread, detached, interrupted, waiting on you), per-project icons from project-icon.svg (or one Claude designs for you), drag-to-reorder projects, per-project + buttons, a virtual Chats project, archive with undo, Open In… submenus, a "New Thread" placeholder for just-started sessions, and creation-time sorting.
• Starting sessions — new sessions in a git worktree (claude -w, opt-in), folder trust asked once up front, a setting for where the claude CLI lives, and advanced launch options (model, permission mode, extra directories, continue).
• Caffeine Mode — keep the machine awake while sessions work ("Until idle"), for a set time, or until turned off; screen may still go dark.
• Per-session footer — the agent's live working directory (click to copy), the current git branch, and configurable app-launcher buttons.
• Quality of life — reopen the last active session on launch (opt-in), remembered window size, a searchable Preferences window, Ctrl+W to close a tab, terminal font zoom and smooth scrolling, drop images and files into the chat as @-mentions, move a session to its own window, and retuned defaults (easy copy & paste on, idle notifications off).

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Upstream history

Everything below is the changelog of the upstream project, agent-session-manager by Máté Molnár, as it stood at the fork point. Version numbers are upstream's (unrelated to Collins's own 0.1.0). Note that Cursor support (added upstream in v0.10.0) and the native chat / session replay features (added in v1.0.0) are not currently part of Collins.

v1.0.0 — Native chat, replay & richer sessions

• Native streaming chat (Claude): token-by-token output with interactive permission cards — Allow / Always allow / Deny every Edit, Write, and Bash.
• Cursor chat in read-only (ask) and trusted (auto-run) modes.
• Resume into chat: reopen any session from the sidebar as a live chat tab.
• Session replay: step through any transcript as native chat bubbles.
• Interactive prompt cards over the terminal answer the agent's questions with a click.
• Advanced new-session options: pick a model, permission mode, extra directories, or continue the last session in a folder.
• Open session from file, permanent delete (alongside trash), a folder-path toggle in the sidebar, and a quick tab emoji shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+E).
• A new generic agent icon and banner, replacing the Claude-specific logo.

v0.10.0 — Multi-agent (Cursor)

• Provider framework: session handling is now generalized behind per-agent providers, so the app manages more than one AI coding agent.
• Cursor support: Cursor sessions are discovered and resumed (cursor-agent) right alongside Claude Code. One sidebar lists both, each row badged with its agent icon.
• Per-agent New Session: the New Session menu offers one entry per installed agent. Resume, graceful close, and fork all route through each session's own agent (Cursor force-closes; fork stays Claude-only).

v0.9.0 — Rebrand to Agent Session Manager

• Renamed from Claude Session Manager to Agent Session Manager — the project, repository, app icon, and docs — to reflect upcoming support for more AI coding agents beyond Claude Code.
• Existing settings, names, and favorites migrate automatically from the old ~/.config/claude-session-manager/ location on first run.
• Installed command became agent-session-manager; PyPI package agent-session-manager-gtk; AUR/PPA package agent-session-manager.

v0.8.0 — Distribution & localization

• Localization: full UI translations for Hungarian, German, Spanish, and French, with a language picker
• Terminal color themes: Dracula, Solarized, Gruvbox, Nord, Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, Monokai, One Dark…
• Multi-window support
• Interrupted badge for sessions you stopped mid-task
• AUR and Ubuntu PPA packages; one-step tag-driven release pipeline

v0.7.0 — Insight, export & PyPI

• Waiting badge for sessions where Claude asked a question
• Export a session transcript as Markdown
• Published to PyPI; app ID moved to io.github.r4nd3l.ClaudeSessionManager

v0.6.0 — Navigation & config

• Quick switcher (Ctrl+Shift+K)
• New Session remembers your last folder; resizable, persisted sidebar
• Drag to reorder tabs; read-only MCP servers browser

v0.5.0 — Session insight

• Transcript peek in the details dialog
• Desktop notifications when a background session goes idle
• MCP servers and per-session usage; online documentation

v0.4.0 — Tab usability

• Per-tab emoji, clearer active-tab styling, close-all-tabs button
• Shift+Enter inserts a newline in Claude's prompt

v0.3.0 — Search & graceful close

• In-terminal find bar; closing a tab asks Claude to exit cleanly (/exit)
• Copy session ID; groups collapsed by default; card-style rows

v0.2.0 — Tabs & workflow

• Renameable tabs, per-tab status dots, toggleable sidebar
• Installable .deb

v0.1.0 — Initial release

• Sidebar of Claude Code sessions, embedded terminal tabs, custom names, favorites