Ota

Cowork UI Updates

Cowork's renderer UI can be updated independently from the Electron app itself. When code under src/renderer/** is pushed to main, a CI workflow automatically builds the renderer and publishes it as a downloadable bundle. Users' apps pick up new bundles on launch.

This skill helps you answer: "Are users seeing what's in our code?" and manage how your local app loads the renderer.

Key locations

Actions

When the user invokes /ota, determine which action they want. If unclear, default to Status.

1. Status

Default action. Answers: "Is the published UI in sync with what's in main?"

Steps:

1. Read ~/.anton/.env and report the current DEV_MODE value. Explain what it means using the friendly names from the dev mode table below.
2. Fetch https://mindsdb.github.io/antontron-releases/latest.json — extract the published version (which includes a git short SHA, e.g. 2.0.4-e94e713).
3. Run git log --oneline -1 origin/main -- src/renderer/ src/shared/ package.json to get the latest commit on main that would trigger a publish.
4. Compare the SHA in the published version against the SHA from step 3. Report whether they match.
5. If they don't match, check if a publish workflow is currently running: gh run list --workflow=publish-ui.yml --repo mindsdb/cowork --limit 3 and report its status.
6. Check for local uncommitted or unpushed renderer changes: git diff --stat HEAD -- src/renderer/ and git log --oneline origin/main..HEAD -- src/renderer/. If there are local changes, note that these won't be published until pushed to main.

Present the output as a markdown table with two columns. Use bold for the labels. Example:

## UI Update Status

| | |
|---|---|
| **Dev mode** | Bundled (default) -- app uses the renderer shipped in the .app |
| **Published version** | `2.0.4-e94e713` |
| **Latest on main** | `e94e713` -- "fix sidebar toggle" |
| **In sync?** | Yes |
| **Local changes** | 2 uncommitted files in `src/renderer/` *(won't reach users until pushed to main)* |

If there are CI failures, add a row:

| **Publish CI** | Last 3 runs failed -- run `/ota publish` to retry or investigate |

Rules for the status table:

• Always include Dev mode, Published version, Latest on main, and In sync rows.
• Only include Local changes row if there are actual local changes.
• Only include Publish CI row if runs have failed or are in progress.
• For "In sync?", use "Yes" or "No -- published version is N commits behind main".
• If out of sync, add a brief suggestion after the table: either wait for CI or run /ota publish.

2. Dev Mode

Switch how the local app loads the renderer. There are three modes:

Steps:

1. If the user didn't specify a mode, show the current mode (read ~/.anton/.env) and present the three options with their descriptions. Ask which they'd like.
2. Read ~/.anton/.env.
3. If a DEV_MODE=... line exists, replace it with the new value. If switching to Bundled and no DEV_MODE line exists, no change is needed (it's the default).
4. If no DEV_MODE line exists, append the new value.
5. Write the file back, preserving all other lines.
6. Confirm the change and remind the user to restart the app for it to take effect.
7. If setting to Live, remind them to run npm run dev first.
8. If setting to Production, also clear the OTA cache (rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Anton/ui-cache/) so the app downloads a fresh bundle on next launch.

3. Publish

Manually trigger a UI publish. This is rarely needed since publishing happens automatically on push to main, but useful when:

• CI didn't trigger for some reason
• You want to force a re-publish of the current version

Steps:

1. First, check if there's already a recent successful publish that matches main: run gh run list --workflow=publish-ui.yml --repo mindsdb/cowork --limit 3 and show the results.
2. If the latest run succeeded and matches the current main HEAD, tell the user it's already published -- no action needed.
3. Otherwise, trigger the workflow: gh workflow run publish-ui.yml --repo mindsdb/cowork
4. Confirm it was triggered and show how to monitor: gh run list --workflow=publish-ui.yml --repo mindsdb/cowork --limit 1
5. Note that it typically takes 1-2 minutes to complete, and users' apps will pick up the new version on their next launch.

Safety

• Never modify source files (src/main/ui-updater.ts, etc.) through this skill -- operational management only.
• Always read ~/.anton/.env before writing to avoid clobbering other settings.
• When modifying env vars, preserve all other lines including comments and blank lines.
• The OTA cache (ui-cache/) only contains downloaded bundles that will be re-fetched -- safe to delete.