Agent Zero v2.8: Faster WebUI, Chat Controls, & Extensible Bundles

v2.8 adds live stop controls, faster cached WebUI loading, extension manifests, chat naming and pinning plugins, lazy message rendering, and stronger native Responses handling.

#releases

Agent Zero v2.8 changelog banner

⏹️ Control & Chat Organization

  • Stop running agents cleanly — The chat bar now exposes a stop button while an agent is working, backed by a new /stop API that cancels the active context without deleting it.
  • Chat naming becomes a plugin — Renaming moves into the dedicated _chat_naming plugin with its own API, prompt, modal, Utility Model integration, and /rename command.
  • Important chats stay visible — The new _pin_to_top plugin keeps selected conversations at the top of the sidebar.

⚡ Faster, Extensible WebUI

  • Versioned assets load from cache — A build-time bundler discovers same-origin HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while a service worker pre-populates a per-version cache for faster page loads.
  • Extensions join the bundle automatically — A WebUI extension manifest lets enabled extensions inject their entry files into the generated bundle and rendered index.
  • Long chats render progressively — Lazy message rendering and pagination reduce the work required to display large conversations.
  • Files move by drag and drop — The Files surface can move one or more files and folders into directories or the parent path with clear drop feedback.
  • Icons share one component — The new x-icon element replaces scattered icon markup across the WebUI and bundled plugins while retaining legacy Material icon compatibility.

⌨️ Commands & Provider Defaults

  • Skills can inspect slash commands — Scoped command discovery now lives in the Commands plugin, and the skills tool can list or read effective slash-command definitions without invoking them.
  • The command picker ignores path slashes — Trailing slash tokens such as filesystem paths no longer open the composer command menu.
  • Codex response controls are visible — OAuth settings expose reasoning effort, reasoning summary, and answer verbosity, with reasoning effort defaulting to high.
  • Chat-only providers skip unsupported probes — Nebius, Z.AI, Z.AI Coding, and Gemini API OAuth now route directly through Chat Completions.

🔧 Responses & Rendering Reliability

  • Malformed native tool output is repaired — Wrapper examples no longer leak into native function descriptions, and concatenated tool envelopes are repaired before they can appear as final text.
  • Native tool metadata stays accurate — Grouped memory tools, conditional vision support, rendered prompt variables, and compact descriptions now reach native Responses correctly.
  • Required tool calls remain explicit — Responses turns using Agent Zero function tools default to one required native call while preserving caller overrides and routing parallel work through Agent Zero's parallel tool.
  • Replayed and collapsed messages stay consistent — Cached process metadata preserves warning placement, short user messages no longer show an incorrect “Show More” control, and grouped-message pagination styling is aligned.

🧭 Setup & Interface Refinements

  • Readiness follows the effective model — The Welcome banner no longer warns about missing credentials in unrelated global presets.
  • Setup asks for the real URL — CLI setup conversations stay brief and require the user's exact Agent Zero address instead of suggesting a default port.
  • Recovery gets more room — The default consecutive unusable-response threshold increases to five, with matching settings copy and documentation.
  • Small surfaces are cleaner — The login page uses a larger logo with less text, and Launcher links now point to the published v1.5 assets and notes.