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GAIA v0.17.0 Release Notes

Run AI agents locally on your PC — analyze documents, execute tools, and accomplish tasks without sending data to the cloud. GAIA v0.17.0 introduces the Agent UI, a privacy-first web application that puts a local AI agent on your AMD hardware.
Why upgrade:
  • Keep sensitive documents on your machine — Ask questions about medical records, contracts, financial data, or any of 53+ file types and get answers with page citations. Nothing leaves your PC — the agent runs 100% locally on your AMD hardware
  • An AI agent you can trust — Tool guardrails require your approval before the agent executes commands or writes files, so you stay in control of what happens on your machine
  • Works on modest hardware — A 78% smaller system prompt means GAIA now runs reliably on smaller models like Qwen3.5 without timeouts, so you don’t need top-tier hardware to get started
  • Access from anywhere — Built-in ngrok tunnel lets you use your local GAIA instance from your phone or tablet while your data stays on your PC
Get started with the Agent UI guide — install, launch, and run your first task in under 60 seconds.

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What’s New

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GAIA Agent UI

A privacy-first web application for running AI agents locally on your AMD hardware (PR #428). Analyze documents, generate code, search files, execute tools, and accomplish tasks — without sending anything to the cloud. What you can do:
  • Analyze your documents — Drag-and-drop PDFs, Word docs, or any of 53+ file formats and get answers with page-level citations, powered by local RAG
  • Execute tools safely — The agent can run shell commands, write files, and use MCP tools — but only after you approve each action
  • Search and browse files — The agent can find files, explore directories, and locate content across your projects
  • Access from your phone — Built-in ngrok tunnel lets you use your local GAIA instance from any device
  • Watch the agent think — Real-time streaming with <think> block rendering shows the agent’s reasoning process inline
  • Pick up where you left off — Create, switch, and persist sessions with full history
  • Monitor performance — Hover tooltips show token counts, latency, and throughput metrics per response
Under the hood:
  • FastAPI backend + React/TypeScript frontend + Electron shell with SSE streaming
  • Redesigned Settings modal with system dashboard, model load/download actions, and live MCP server connection status with tool counts
  • Terminal-inspired design: typewriter welcome animation, pixelated AMD cursor with red glow, glassmorphism, smooth crossfade transitions (PR #568)
  • prefers-reduced-motion support — all animations respect OS accessibility settings
  • Path traversal prevention, SQL parameterization, and input validation throughout
  • 13+ bug fixes across backend, frontend, and integration layers
See the Agent UI guide for full setup, prerequisites, and onboarding.

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Tool Execution Guardrails

AI agents are powerful but can be unpredictable. This release adds a safety layer so you approve every sensitive action before it happens (PR #565):
  • Confirmation popup — Allow, Deny, or Always Allow before run_shell_command and other write/execute tools
  • 60-second timeout — Auto-denies if you don’t respond within a minute
  • Expanded coverage — Extended to cover all write/execute tools, not just shell commands (PR #604)

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Device Support Detection

Not sure if your hardware is supported? GAIA now tells you upfront and offers workarounds (PR #593):
  • Supported devices — AMD Ryzen AI Max processors and AMD Radeon GPUs with ≥24 GB VRAM
  • Clear banner messaging — Shows your processor name and links to a GitHub feature-request
  • --base-url flag — Point to a remote Lemonade Server to use GAIA on any machine
  • GAIA_SKIP_DEVICE_CHECK=1 — Environment variable override for advanced users

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System Prompt Optimization

If you previously experienced timeouts or slow first responses on smaller models, this release fixes that (PR #617):
  • 17,600 → 3,853 tokens (78% reduction) — Two-tier RAG gating only injects document context when relevant, meaning 4–5× faster prompt processing
  • Qwen3.5 timeouts eliminated — Smaller prompt fits within context window of constrained models
  • Timeout increased to 600s — Prevents premature timeouts on complex queries

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Security

  • Document upload vulnerability fixed — Closed a TOCTOU race condition that could allow file substitution during upload. Now uses atomic O_NOFOLLOW + fstat validation and serializes concurrent uploads via per-file asyncio.Lock (PR #564)

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Bug Fixes

  • LRU eviction silent failure — Fixed unbounded memory growth: added pre-flight rejection at capacity, logging on all failure paths, and fixed cache-load bug where cached files weren’t tracked. New CLI flags: --max-indexed-files and --max-total-chunks (PR #567)
  • Lemonade v10 device keys — Updated device key references: npu → amd_npu, gpu → amd_igpu/amd_dgpu. Fixed NPU detection in Hardware Advisor (PR #548)
  • Agent UI rendering — Fixed post-tool thinking visibility, FileListView layout, and text spacing (PR #566)
  • Agent UI guardrails & Windows paths — Tightened JSON safety regex, added platform context to system prompt for native Windows paths, cleared messages before session switch (PR #604)
  • RAG indexing guards — gaia init now installs RAG dependencies for all profiles. Fixed crashes that occurred when optional dependencies weren’t installed (PR #605)
  • Reverted accidental changes — Restored per-file upload locking, tool confirmation flow, CSS design system, and formatting utilities accidentally reverted during a stale merge (PR #608)
  • v0.16.1 release notes — Added missing PRs to previous release notes (PR #589)

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Upgrade

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Full Changelog

13 commits since v0.16.1:
  • 2d08088 - fix: reduce system prompt 78% to fix Qwen3.5 timeouts + MCP runtime status (#609) (#617)
  • b7a97e6 - Restore changes reverted by accidental PR #566 merge (#564, #565, #568) (#608)
  • af652d9 - fix: RAG indexing guards, gaia init pip extras, and docs update (#605)
  • 95b304f - Fix Agent UI guardrails, rendering, LRU eviction, and Windows paths (#604)
  • 5dd71a2 - feat: guard Agent UI against unsupported devices (#593)
  • cc90935 - Fix Agent UI Round 5: hide post-tool thinking, FileListView, text spacing (#566)
  • 8a6452f - Fix LRU eviction silent failure allowing unbounded memory growth (#449) (#567)
  • 3df90ff - Add tool execution guardrails with confirmation popup (#438) (#565)
  • 8c2d24a - security: fix TOCTOU race condition in document upload endpoint (#448) (#564)
  • bae3a62 - docs(releases): add missing PRs to v0.16.1 release notes (#589)
  • 25c6d25 - Agent UI: terminal animations, pixelated cursor, and docs fixes (#568)
  • b2ace80 - Add GAIA Agent UI: privacy-first local agent with document Q&A (#428)
  • 4015bb2 - Fix Lemonade v10 system-info device key compatibility (#548)
Full Changelog: v0.16.1…v0.17.0