JoeBro 1.4.0: your coding agents check in

Link Claude Code, Codex and opencode with joebro-plugins, approve them from your lock screen, and build plugins that give JoeBro new tools, rules and panels.

Download JoeBro-1.4.0.dmg below. Like earlier releases it isn't notarized yet: the first time, right-click JoeBro and choose Open. Installed copies update themselves.

Upgrading: nothing to do. Proactive mode is off, and nothing changes until you link an agent or install a plugin.

Added

• Coding agents. Link Claude Code, Codex and opencode with joebro-plugins. They show up in the new Agents panel, on the phone and in the Dynamic Island: working, waiting for you, finished. JoeBro can check on them and queue a follow-up that they pick up when their turn ends.
• Approve from anywhere. An agent waiting on a permission prompt gets Approve and Deny in the Agents panel and on the iPhone lock screen (Face ID to approve). This needs the agent to run in kitty or tmux.
• Pings. Any linked agent can ping your phone when it's done or stuck: at most one a minute and 30 a day per agent.
• Plugins (joebro.plugin/1). A plugin is a folder with a manifest that can add tools, a guardrail and its own panel in the new Plugins tab. Installs are checked and staged, the previous version is kept for rollback, and a new plugin arrives switched off. Panels have no network access. Your coding agents can build them through the joebro MCP server. The standard is in JoeBro/Backend/PLUGINS.md.
• Proactive mode (off by default, then read only or full). JoeBro reads your email subjects, recent documents and calendar in the background. In read only it tells you about confirmed plans; in full it adds them to your calendar, with undo. Email is read without marking anything as read.
• Shopping list. Only you, or JoeBro from your own words, add to it.
• Apple Health. The phone can send daily totals (steps, sleep, heart rate, workouts) to your own backend, with a Sunday-evening recap while proactive mode is on.
• The morning briefing starter mentions your agents when any are linked.

Changed

• Computer use is now Agent Desktop. With Vercel's agent-desktop installed (npm i -g agent-desktop), JoeBro reads apps as an accessibility tree and acts without moving your mouse or stealing focus. Without it, the built-in osascript version is used as before. Blocked apps stay blocked.
• Tools shows each plugin's version, tools, panels and any install error.

JoeBro 1.3.0: JoeBro on your phone

JoeBro now has a phone half. JoeBro Mobile is an iPhone app that talks to the JoeBro on your own Mac. No cloud in the middle, no account, nothing through anyone else's server. It's a source release, so you build it yourself with your own signing team and bundle ID.

Added

• Phone access. Settings > Mobile, turn on Let my phone connect, scan the QR code. Over Tailscale or your Wi-Fi, with a token.
• The phone agent. One chat that follows your default model and delegates hands-on work to chats bound to folders. It starts in Bound folder mode.
• Phone memory. Plain Markdown files you can read and edit. about-me is always in context, the rest by relevance.
• Phone agent tasks. Background tasks that run silently and only post the notification text.
• Heartbeat, pulse and reminders. Off by default. The heartbeat checks calendar, reminders and task results and only calls a model when something changed.
• Inbox tab for everything your agent, tasks and agents want to tell you.
• Push notifications. Optional, with your own Apple key.
• Opt-in weather and location, file moves between your folders, and image captions for text-only models.

Changed

• Tasks gain a Phone agent list.
• The stop button works.

Security

• The phone listener is separate from the local one, token-only, and can't add MCP servers or plugins.
• Everything new is off until you turn it on. No MCP server is ever added for you.

Good to know

The phone only works while JoeBro is open and your Mac is awake. Upgrading needs nothing from you. This build isn't notarized, so on a fresh install right-click JoeBro and choose Open the first time.

Full history in CHANGELOG.md.

New

• Flashcards: ask for a study deck and it lands as a real Anki .apkg — flick through it in the workspace, learned or still learning, or import into Anki
• Learn from sources: point Skills at a folder of past papers or templates and your default model studies them into a skill
• Cloak Mode (on by default): API keys, passwords, emails, card/passport numbers are swapped for placeholders before anything reaches a model — every endpoint, local ones included
• Memory rebuilt: typed facts on topic pages, duplicates merge, and only what's relevant to your message reaches the model
• Advisor plugin: let your everyday model consult a stronger one you pick

Fixed

• Command approval and document-edit approval fully separated — popups only from the commands switch, doc edits use the in-editor Apply/Reject banner
• Chats no longer wedge after a failed turn; endpoint errors always surface
• Tolerant tool-call parsing for models that invent parameter names

Brain map

The Brain tab is now an interactive graph of everything JoeBro remembers — memories cluster by topic, line length shows how closely two memories relate, and the biggest nodes are the hubs your assistant keeps coming back to. Drag nodes around, zoom freely, hover for the full memory, right-click to edit/pin/delete. The list view is one click away.

Computer Use

Settings cog on the bundled plugin: see exactly what it can do, and block apps it may never open, click, or read. Snapshot-first accessibility reading (far cheaper than screenshots), deep element search, and multi-level menu support.

Permissions, properly

"Require approval for AI edits" now shows the Apply/Reject diff banner in the editor for open documents — no more blocking popups or focus-dependent timeouts. Files not open in the editor still get an explicit pre-write prompt, and nothing is ever written silently.

Fixes

• Autosave no longer sticks on "Saving…" when you edit during an agent turn
• Transient network drops no longer surface "Sessions: request timed out" banners
• Email replies from the agent now thread correctly (In-Reply-To/References)
• Leaner backend: deduplicated endpoint, email, and tool plumbing

Headline: Telegram Message Bot

Run JoeBro from your phone. A Telegram bot that orchestrates all your chats and agents: it searches and reads across them, creates new chats, binds them to folders, sets their mode and permissions, and delegates work, then reports back. It also uses your email, calendar, memory, web search and deep research. Replies stream in live and render Markdown. Set it up in Settings > Message Bot. Commands: /chats, /compact, /help.

Also new

• Spreadsheet support — open and edit CSV and .xlsx files as a grid.
• Faster chat loading — large chats now open in under 2 seconds.
• Open chats auto-update when new messages arrive.

Fixes

• Empty-document state now fills the editor pane.
• Unsend is instant.
• Settings permission toggles no longer lag.
• Sidebar file tree no longer shows the previous chat's folder.

Auto-updates via Sparkle. First launch after download needs a right-click > Open (ad-hoc signed).

Headline: tool calling. The new Tools tab surfaces three tiers to the model in Agent mode as callable functions — API Tools (any JSON endpoint, {query} placeholder), MCP Servers (stdio, stateless spawn/init/call/kill with a hard timeout), and Plugins (on-disk folders, foreground or background, incl. the bundled dependency-free macOS Use plugin). Plus: chats now sort into folders (drag and drop), and the zero-dependency backend is split into clean sibling modules. Still stdlib only, still one Xcode Build.

First public release. Drag to Applications; first open = right-click → Open.