Empryo on your phone, an engine that outlives the window, and worktrees in tabs

Thank you, Liiro

Liiro is now a monthly sponsor of Empryo. Find Liiro at github.com/Liiro. Thank you!

Empryo on your phone

• Empryo can now go with you on your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. The app is in beta. It drives the chats on your computer: the agent still runs there, with your files, keys and settings. It needs iOS 26 or later. Ask on Discord for an invite.
• Connect from anywhere. Run /remote in the desktop app or the terminal app and scan the code. The phone then reaches your Mac, Windows or Linux computer on the same Wi-Fi, over Tailscale, or from anywhere with /remote quick, an end-to-end encrypted link that needs no account. A new phone waits until you allow it on the computer.
• Do everything from the phone: watch every step, steer or queue a turn, answer questions and approvals, switch projects, pick the model and effort, attach photos, talk instead of typing, and create routines.
• Know when it needs you. A notification tells you when a turn finishes, fails or needs you, and opens that chat. A Live Activity follows the running chat on the Lock Screen, in the Dynamic Island and in StandBy, and the Apple Watch shows the same.
• The same chats everywhere. A chat closed or reopened on the phone, the desktop app or the terminal app closes or reopens on the others, and pictures sent from the phone show everywhere. A phone that opens a chat mid-turn sees everything that already ran, and empryo phone picks up the phone's chat in your terminal.
• /remote background on keeps phone access running after you quit, so the phone can start work on its own. /remote forget removes a paired phone.
• Hearth, the Telegram and Discord remote, is turned off. The phone app replaces it.

An engine that outlives the window

• Empryo can now keep working after you quit the desktop app. The engine finishes the turn, and the chat shows what it did when you open the app again.
• The desktop app, the terminal app and headless runs share one engine per project. A desktop window asks before it joins a project the terminal app already has open, and a chat from another folder opens in that folder's window.

Worktrees in tabs

• Empryo can now give each tab its own git worktree, a second checkout on its own branch, so two tabs can change the same files without getting in each other's way.
• In the desktop app, the line above the prompt box shows where the tab works. Pick another place to move the tab there with its conversation, its draft and your uncommitted changes, or choose New worktree… to create the branch and move in.
• In the terminal app, /worktree adds, opens, lists, removes and prunes worktrees, and /worktree agent <task> starts an agent on a task in a new one.
• The agent can create a worktree, open a tab on a task in it, and move its own tab there once its turn ends.
• The file tree, search, diffs, git and the code map follow the tab's worktree. A new worktree gets its code map in seconds, and removing one works after Empryo has used it.

Voice

• Live dictation: words appear as you speak, and recording stops on its own when you go quiet, without cutting you off mid-sentence.
• Hands-free sends each pause as a message, in the desktop app, the terminal app and the phone, from one setting.
• Voice transcribes on your ChatGPT plan by default when you are signed in. The desktop app has a Voice settings page and /voice commands.

Models

• Service tiers: /tier ultrafast picks OpenAI's ultrafast service tier for GPT-6 Astra.
• Cursor and Devin models show their own context windows and prices, and custom providers can list the effort levels each model offers.
• The desktop app shows the speed notices ChatGPT sends with a reply.
• Very large GPT-5.2 and newer requests can be compacted on OpenAI's side. It is off by default; turn it on in the OpenAI provider options.
• When the agent looks up models for you, it only suggests ones you can run with your keys and sign-ins.
• Tools and Cells that take a set of named options work with OpenAI models.
• Signing in refreshes the model picker right away.

Learn and set up

• Terminal lessons on empryo.com replay the real terminal app one feature at a time. /onboard opens them from the terminal app, and starts a guided tour of every part of the window in the desktop app.
• All settings in /settings lists every setting the terminal app reads, shows where each value comes from, and changes it for this project or for all of them.
• Computer use sets itself up: install, update, start and allow Cua Driver from Settings → Computer use, /computer cua or empryo cua. It starts the first time computer use needs it and keeps running after the app that started it quits.

Windows and Linux

• The desktop app on Windows opens repositories that live in WSL and runs the agent inside that Linux distro, with its own tools and sign-ins.
• Empryo on Windows starts without waiting for old language servers to close, and attaching an image no longer garbles the terminal app.
• The Linux AppImage and .deb start on a stock system.

What's new

• Reopen closed tabs with /tab reopen in the desktop app and the terminal app, or Ctrl+Shift+T in the terminal app, which remembers the last ten.
• No step limit: a turn no longer stops after a fixed number of steps. You can still set a step budget in settings.
• Routines can be stopped while they run, removing one stops its run, and the phone tells you when a scheduled run finishes.
• An approval for a page fetch or for work outside the project can allow that kind of request for the rest of the session.
• /steer steers a running headless chat, and headless output says which folder and worktree it runs in.
• The code map covers QML files, and you can set how many files it maps.
• The terminal app greets you with a living Mote when it starts, on the landing screen and when it quits.

Quality of life

• Faster everywhere: a long chat opens in about half a second on the phone, switching between big chats on the computer no longer stalls, the terminal app no longer stalls when it starts, opens a tab or searches files with @, and long desktop transcripts scroll smoothly.
• Updating Empryo keeps every project's code map, and restoring a session or editing an instruction file keeps the prompt cache.
• Web search moves on to the next provider when one fails.
• In the terminal app, Alt+O opens a folded paste so you can edit it, each tab keeps its own context meter, and loading a session shows its progress.
• On a wide window, desktop answers stay in a centered column, and a copied image file pastes as the image on macOS.
• A message you send while a review runs shows that it waits for the review.
• Unknown keys in a config file are named when Empryo starts.

Bug fixes

• Sessions: a session left locked by a crash opens again, deleting a session never touches the one you have open, a headless run killed mid-turn resumes where it stopped, and updating from the terminal keeps the terminal and the session open.
• Stopping: Stop works while a request waits to retry, and a prompt you stop before the reply starts can be edited and sent again.
• Terminal app: scrolling back through a long session no longer jumps or crashes, a new tab starts with an empty prompt, and images show in any terminal that supports Kitty graphics.
• Desktop app: text you type while the app connects is kept, and an invalid default mode in a config file is reported instead of crashing the app.
• Phone app: no more crashes when the chat list or an agent sheet updates, and answers keep the right light or dark colours.
• Long chats keep what earlier compactions summarised.
• Empryo now has an immune system. 312 agents hunted bugs across Empryo, a second agent on a different model reproduced each report before it counted, and every fix ships with a check so the same bug can't come back.
• Plus many smaller fixes across the desktop app, the terminal app, the phone, worktrees, Windows, WSL and translations.