What’s Coming in v0.9.2 — 10 Features, Zero Breaking Changes

⚠️ Experimental — Squad is alpha software. APIs, commands, and behavior may change between releases.

The next Squad release ships 10 new features, 4 bug fixes, and 60+ tests — all backward-compatible. Here’s what to expect.

The Noise Problem

If you’ve been running squad watch in production with output forwarded to Teams or Slack, you’ve probably noticed this:

Squad Monitor Round 158
Squad Monitor Round 159
Squad Monitor Round 160
Squad Monitor Round 161

Hundreds of messages. No useful information. No way to tell which machine or repo they came from.

This release fixes that — and ships 9 other features while we’re at it.

New Features

1. Quiet Notifications (--notify-level)

The biggest quality-of-life improvement: watch rounds are now silent by default when the board is empty. Only rounds with actual work produce output.

squad watch --notify-level important    # default — only meaningful rounds
squad watch --notify-level all          # old behavior (every round)
squad watch --notify-level none         # fully silent

Round headers now include machine name and repo for attribution:

🔄 Ralph — Round 5 (DEVBOX-01 · my-project)

Persistent config: { "watch": { "notifyLevel": "important" } } in .squad/config.json.

2. Fleet Hybrid Dispatch (--dispatch-mode)

Parallel issue processing via Copilot CLI /fleet. Benchmarked at 2.9x faster for read-heavy workloads.

squad watch --execute --dispatch-mode hybrid

Issues are auto-classified as read (research, reviews → fleet) or write (implementations, fixes → local). Fleet batches reads in parallel while writes execute sequentially.

3. Verbose Debugging (--verbose)

When watch seems stuck on “Board is clear” but you know there’s work, --verbose shows you exactly what’s happening:

squad watch --verbose

Prints: issue counts, label matches, auth status, PR review states, round timing, capability execution paths.

4. Fact-Checker Agent Role (🔍)

New built-in role for output verification. Validates claims, detects hallucinations, runs counter-hypotheses.

squad new agent fact-checker

Confidence ratings: ✅ Verified, ⚠️ Unverified, ❌ Contradicted. Routes automatically on “fact-check”, “verify”, “audit” keywords.

5. 8 Built-in Skills

squad init and squad upgrade now ship 8 curated skills:

6. Scratch Directory (.squad/.scratch/)

Agents no longer dump temp files in the repo root. The new scratchDir() and scratchFile() SDK APIs route all ephemeral files to .squad/.scratch/ — gitignored and auto-cleaned.

7. Cleanup Watch Capability

Automated housekeeping during squad watch:

• Clears .squad/.scratch/ every 10 rounds
• Archives orchestration-log and session-log entries older than 30 days
• Warns about stale decision inbox files (>7 days)

8. External State Storage

Move .squad/ state outside the working tree so it survives branch switches:

squad externalize              # state moves to ~/.squad/projects/{repo}/
squad internalize              # move it back

9. Self-Upgrade (squad upgrade --self)

Update the CLI itself from within squad:

squad upgrade --self              # latest stable
squad upgrade --self --insider    # latest prerelease

Auto-detects npm/pnpm/yarn. After CLI upgrade, automatically runs repo upgrade to apply new templates.

10. Triage Label Slug Fix

Multi-word agent names (like “Steve Rogers”) now correctly generate squad:steve-rogers labels instead of squad:steve rogers (which GitHub rejects). Labels are pre-created at watch startup.

Bug Fixes

• PR contamination — Scribe now stages only .squad/ files, not broad staging commands (#783)
• Outdated review threads — PR readiness check ignores threads where code changed (#780)
• Filename uniqueness — scratchFile() uses monotonic counter, not just Date.now()
• Cross-platform paths — deriveProjectKey() handles Windows paths on Linux CI

By the Numbers

• 10 features across SDK, CLI, and watch capabilities
• 4 bug fixes (1 critical — PR contamination)
• 60+ new tests (scratch: 8, cleanup: 12, fact-checker: 8, skills: 5, external: 12, self-upgrade: 4, notify: 5, triage: 12)
• 4 new feature docs + 2 updated + README command table (15→17)
• 0 breaking changes — all opt-in, all backward-compatible
• 1 behavioral change — notify default flipped from all to important (use --notify-level all to restore)

Upgrade

squad upgrade --self              # get the latest CLI
squad upgrade                     # apply new templates to your repo

Or if you’re on insider:

squad upgrade --self --insider