0.9.0 was about the spotlight. 0.10.0 is about making the quiet corner of Chervil — plain chat — actually smart, and giving Chervil something it's been missing: real documentation.
Chat mode grew up
Chervil has always had a chat mode: flip on 💬 and Sprig replies in plain conversation instead of composing a whole page. It was handy for quick questions and thinking out loud — but it had a blind spot. It couldn't see the web. Ask about today's news, a current price, last night's score, or tomorrow's weather, and the best it could do was shrug and suggest you turn chat mode off.
Not anymore. Chat mode now searches the live web on its own. Sprig decides when a question needs current information and goes and gets it — then lists the sources it used right under the reply, so you can check its work. Ask "what's the weather tomorrow?" or "who won last night?" and you get a grounded answer without ever leaving the conversation.
Evergreen questions still get an instant, direct answer — Sprig doesn't waste a search on "explain recursion" — so chat stays fast for the everyday stuff and reaches for the web only when it actually helps.
It works on Claude, Grok, Gemini, and OpenAI. On providers without built-in web search (Azure and local Ollama), chat stays knowledge-only and tells you so, just like before.
And it still does everything 0.9.0 added: if you've composed a page, chat can talk about that page too — summarize it, explain a section, quiz you — right alongside its new web smarts.
Chervil has docs now
Up to now, learning what Chervil can do meant poking around or reading release posts like this one. That's not good enough for a tool this deep. So there's now a proper documentation site at getchervil.com/docs.
It covers the real ground:
- Getting started — install, and connecting a provider (with a table of which ones can search the web).
- Using Chervil — compose vs. chat, Deep Dive & Verify, real-world actions, Spaces, agents, and "Hey Sprig."
- Share & extend — publishing your work and the community store.
And it's linked from inside the app, so help is one click away: there's a "Read the docs →" link on the welcome screen, and a Documentation link in Settings → You, right next to the version.
The docs live on the web on purpose — that way they can grow and get corrected the moment something changes, instead of waiting for the next app build.
Get it
Chervil is free, open source, and bring-your-own-AI. Download for Windows, read the new docs, browse the Agent store and Share gallery, star it on GitHub, or come say hi on Discord. Hosting & sharing live in Chervil Pro — the app stays free.