What a First Pre-Release Owes the People Who Install It
Arbiter's first public pre-release, 0.1.0, is prepared and going through its final checks. Before it goes out: telemetry you can read before it sends, data that survives an upgrade, bug reports that leave your secrets out, and a download you can verify.
Arbiter has been a working alpha since June. The next step is a first public pre-release, 0.1.0: an early build for early adopters, where the rough edges they find shape the first full version. The candidate is prepared. It is not out yet, and it goes out when its checks pass rather than on a date.
A pre-release is still software a stranger installs on a machine they care about. Before that happens, a few things have to be true that never mattered while every user was in the same room.
Say what leaves the machine, before it leaves
Nothing is sent until Arbiter has shown you a notice saying what it sends. The default level sends
counts, durations, error types and an abstract record of how tasks were routed. It never sends prompts,
code, file names, paths, project names or keys. arbiterctl telemetry status lists every field each
level sends and where it goes, and arbiterctl telemetry off stops all of it. Telemetry is on at that
lite level by default, and we would rather say so here than have you find out later.
Never strand your data across an upgrade
Everything Arbiter keeps lives in encrypted local databases whose keys are bound to your machine and your user account. Each database now carries a version. Before any upgrade step touches one, Arbiter writes an encrypted backup of it first. A database written by a newer Arbiter is refused and left alone, so stepping back a version cannot damage it. The test suite keeps a frozen copy of a home written by the alpha, and the current code has to open it with every row intact.
The frozen copy is the important part. The first public build sets the shape every later build has to read, so the versioning had to exist before anyone outside the project held a copy.
A bug report that leaves your secrets out
arbiter doctor can pack what a bug report needs into a single file: versions, your settings with
every secret masked, the recent lines of each log, and error references. An unexpected failure in the
shipped program shows a short reference instead of its internals, and arbiter error-lookup shows you
the full details behind that reference on your own machine. Neither the app nor the command line ever
displays a stored secret.
A download you can check
A release build will not finish without its signatures. Each release will carry a checksum file covering every artifact, signed with the Code Reality Labs release key, and its Windows programs and installers will be code-signed. The notes that ship with it say how to verify both, and they include the full list of network destinations the program talks to, so you can check that against your firewall rather than against our word.
Where it stands
The candidate is versioned, its changelog is written, and its builds are being checked against the source they came from on Windows and on Linux, which is the subject of Arbiter, Off the Machine It Was Built On. The remote path had its own pass, covered in Remote Control, Stricter by Default.
It needs Windows 10 or 11, or Linux, on 64-bit x86. Claude Code and Codex are installed separately, with Codex 0.158 or newer, and the local model downloads during setup rather than shipping inside the installer. Interfaces may still change before the first full version, and when the databases change with them, they migrate forward.
Arbiter is a proprietary working alpha in public binary release preparation. Follow the public release channel or RSS feed for updates.
Was this useful?