Relay 0.5.28

In-app updates

Relay can now update itself.

Checks on launch. Relay checks for a new version once each time it starts. You can turn this off under Settings → Updates → Automatic update check. Check for updates in the overflow menu and the command palette works either way.
Verified downloads. Every update is checked against Relay's release signature before it is installed.
Installs when you quit. When an update is ready, Restart to update appears at the bottom of the sidebar. Your workspace is saved as usual first, and the next launch tells you which version you are now on.

One sidebar for workspaces, canvases and layers

The sidebar now shows everything in one place.

Each canvas shows how many agents are running and a dot when something needs your attention.
The current canvas lists its layers underneath it. Click a layer to switch to it, restore an archived one, or open a failed one to see what went wrong. Each layer row has its own menu with Open and Archive, or Retry and Remove for a failed layer. New layer is the last row.
Deleting a folder, workspace or canvas now asks first and tells you what it contains.
Ctrl+Up (Cmd+Up on macOS) opens the sidebar and puts the keyboard on it. Use the arrow keys, Enter and Escape to move around.
Right-clicking a sidebar row or the empty space in the sidebar opens the sidebar's own menu, never the canvas's.

The Layers button on the canvas is gone, since the layers now live in the sidebar. The zoom controls have moved to the bottom-right corner.

Setting up an agent

Terminals are now created and edited in one window.

New terminals. Placing a terminal, Ctrl+T or Shift+Ctrl+T opens the agent window. Pick the agent, account, model, role, icon and name, then press Start agent. Cancel or Escape discards it.
Editing. Configure on a terminal's bar opens the same window. Changing the agent, account or model shows a notice and a Save and restart button. The role, orchestrator setting, icon and name apply without a restart. Each save is a single undo step.
A simpler terminal bar. The bar above each terminal now has icon buttons only: Configure, Connect, Send prompt, Disconnect and Delete.
Agents are always listed in the same order: Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Grok, Antigravity, Shell, Custom.
The footer shows the folder the agent runs in, with your home folder written as ~. Hover it to see the full path.
An orchestrator shows the Relay mark on its bar. Hover it to see how many connections it has, or click it to open its settings.

The Shift+T launcher and the separate preset picker are gone. Change preset now opens the agent window.

Roles

The role window has been redesigned. It has a name, instructions, and an appearance section with a short list of icons and colours. More… lets you search the full icon set. You can save a role for reuse, or use it just once.

Models

The model lists now match what each agent accepts today:

Claude Code: fable, opus, sonnet and haiku, each shown with the model it currently points to, such as "Opus 5.5".
Codex: gpt-6 and gpt-5.6.
Grok: grok-4.7, grok-4.6 and grok-build-0.1.

A terminal saved with a model that is no longer offered now starts with the agent's default model instead of failing to launch.

More reliable tasks between agents

Tasks sent between agents, on one canvas or across canvases, no longer get stuck without an answer:

If a message cannot be delivered to the recipient's terminal, the sender is told it failed instead of waiting forever.
If relay ask or relay next is stopped early, for example when an agent's tool times out, the answer is no longer lost and no task is claimed on its behalf.
Deleting a terminal fails the tasks it was working on, and their senders are told.
Tasks sent to a terminal that was deleted while its canvas was closed now fail instead of waiting forever. This only happens when the canvas opens normally, so a canvas that fails to load never loses its queued work.
Agents on a canvas you close and reopen can send and receive tasks again straight away.
On Windows, a task that could not be saved is no longer left marked as delivered.

Look and feel

Relay now uses the Geist and Geist Mono typefaces.
Forms across the app have clearer labels, more even spacing and larger fields. The accounts manager is now two panes, with the number of accounts for each provider.
Buttons stay readable in every state. A pressed primary button no longer loses its label, and disabled buttons are easier to read.
Escape closes the window on top, and the keyboard returns to the window underneath or to the canvas.
A window opened on top of another now closes any list left open underneath it, so a model list no longer shows through the accounts manager.
Copy and Paste in a terminal's right-click menu have clipboard icons.