Building in public means some days you ship a feature. Today we shipped a release — Chervil 0.3.0 — and it's the one where Chervil starts to feel less like a clever companion and more like a browser you could actually live in.
Here's what landed.
One smart omnibox
The bar at the top of every page is now a real omnibox. Type a URL and it opens the live site. Type a question and Sprig composes a page. Type a command like /learn photosynthesis and it builds a lesson. One bar, three jobs — and Ctrl+L focuses it, just like the browser muscle memory you already have. This is the literal embodiment of the whole idea: the web works for you, from a single place.
The table stakes of a real browser
To replace your browser, Chervil has to do the unglamorous things your browser does. Now it does:
- Real site browsing — open a site and the omnibox tracks the live URL, the tab title follows along, and Back/Forward step through that site's own history before falling back to Chervil's page tree.
- Bookmarks — a ☆ in the toolbar saves the current page or site; a Bookmarks tab keeps them.
- Browsing history — a Sites tab logs the real websites you've visited, so you can find your way back.
- Downloads — files you download from embedded sites save straight to your Downloads folder, with a click-to-open "download complete" notification.
None of it flashy. All of it necessary. Together it means Chervil can be the only tab you keep open.
A Stop button
Every serious AI tool needs one, and now Chervil has it: while Sprig is composing, the send button becomes a Stop button (or just press Esc). It aborts the request and hands the tab straight back to you — per-tab, so your other tabs keep working.
Settings that don't scroll forever
Settings grew long, so it's now tabbed by topic — General, AI, Voice, Publishing & Sync, and You. The You tab also gained an account panel: it shows whether you're on Chervil Pro or Free, with links to your account and your public profile, and the app version is right there too.
The creator platform grows: blogs
Publishing used to mean lessons, quizzes, and pages. Now you can publish a composed page as a Page or a Blog post — just pick when you hit publish. Your public profile groups everything you've made by type — Lessons · Quizzes · Blog · Pages — and shows your profile picture. The creator side of Chervil is becoming a real home for the things you make.
And a look ahead: agentic actions
Alongside the shipping features, we wrote the design (RFC 0006) for the part that makes an agentic browser agentic: letting Sprig do things — complete multi-step tasks on real sites, and take specific, guarded actions on your computer. The whole RFC is about one principle we keep coming back to: the model proposes, a deterministic layer disposes. Authority lives in the runtime, never in the model's reasoning. We're building the control layer first, before any new powers.
Still free, still yours
As always: the app, composing, building, browsing, bookmarks, history, downloads — all free, all local, on your own AI keys. The hosted publishing (shareable links, your profile, analytics) is what Chervil Pro is for.
Download Chervil 0.3.0 and give the omnibox a spin — type a URL, ask a question, build a lesson, all from the same bar.
More tomorrow. We're just getting going.