createGuide() opened the new guide with plain openGuide(), so no capture
session was armed — the "Start recording" bar never bound to the new guide,
and clicking it did nothing (or resumed a stale prior session). Every other
open path (guide cards, search results, New Capture) arms a paused session;
this aligns createGuide() with them via openGuideAndArmCapture().
- ci.yml: runs the unit test suite (npm test → node --test tests/unit) on
push and PR to main, across ubuntu/windows/macos with Node 20. Electron is
installed normally because the capture unit tests require app/capture.js,
which require()s the electron module at load.
- release.yml: manual workflow_dispatch. Enter a version tag (e.g. v0.1.1);
it builds the Windows portable .exe (npm run package:windows) and the Linux
tarball + .deb (scripts/package-linux.sh), stamps the requested version onto
each artifact, then publishes a GitHub Release at the current commit with
the artifacts attached and auto-generated notes. Supports a prerelease flag.
Follow-up polish after the EcoQoS fix landed and recordings improved:
- Re-apply the EcoQoS opt-out when the stream backend reports it is active.
Chromium spawns/upgrades its GPU and screen-capture utility processes only
once the desktop stream actually starts — after the session-start sweep —
so they could still be born throttled. Hooking the capture:state transition
to 'stream' catches them the moment they appear.
- Raise the warmup cap from 1500ms to 3000ms. The recorder window stays
visible during warmup (the user hasn't started their workflow yet) and the
common path still proceeds the instant the stream is ready, so the extra
headroom only matters when stream startup is slow on battery — where it
buys a real pre-click frame for the very first click instead of a
post-click fresh shot.
Confirmed cause: on battery in a power-saving plan, Windows applies Power
Throttling (EcoQoS) to background work. StepForge records with its window
hidden, so the frame-capture worker renderer (plus the GPU and screen-capture
utility processes feeding it) get CPU-throttled. The throttled worker can't
sample the screen fast enough, so every click finds no fresh pre-click frame
and falls back to a slow post-click fresh shot — producing out-of-order,
dropped steps. It only reproduced on battery; plugged in (where EcoQoS stays
off even in eco mode) it worked. The capture log showed every click detected
but every one reporting "no frame qualified", with a ~4.6s stream startup.
Fixes:
- Chromium switches (disable-background-timer-throttling,
disable-renderer-backgrounding, disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows) so
Chromium stops de-prioritising and timer-throttling the hidden worker.
- New app/win-power.js opts the OS processes out of EcoQoS via
SetProcessInformation(ProcessPowerThrottling, EXECUTION_SPEED off) and
raises them to high priority. Applied to all live Electron processes when a
session starts/resumes, and to the worker renderer the moment it is created
(before it begins streaming). Best-effort, no-op off Windows.
The earlier mouse-hook EcoQoS opt-out already fixed click *detection*; this
fixes the frame-capture side that the same throttling was breaking.
The real cause of "only the first couple of clicks were captured while on
power saving mode": Windows Power Throttling (EcoQoS) CPU-starves background
processes under a power-saving plan. The low-level WH_MOUSE_LL hook lives in
the spawned PowerShell watcher; when its callback is starved past the system
LowLevelHooksTimeout, Windows silently stops delivering mouse events to it —
the process keeps running (so no exit/crash, no fallback to interval capture
fires), it just misses clicks, and those clicks never become steps.
The previous powerSaveBlocker('prevent-app-suspension') only maps to
SetThreadExecutionState, which blocks system sleep but does NOT opt a process
out of EcoQoS, so it couldn't fix this.
Have the watcher process opt itself out of execution-speed throttling via
SetProcessInformation(ProcessPowerThrottling, ...) and raise itself to
HIGH_PRIORITY_CLASS at startup, so the hook callback always runs at full
speed and every click is delivered regardless of the laptop's power mode.
Two changes:
- Hold powerSaveBlocker.start('prevent-app-suspension') for the duration of
each recording session. Windows Power Throttling (EcoQoS) can CPU-starve
the capture-worker renderer mid-session, causing stream frame requests to
time out and degrade to the slower in-process legacy loop. The blocker
signals to the OS that this is an active workload and keeps the stream
worker and main-process event loop running at full speed. Released on
pause and finish.
- Remove maxFrameRate: 30 from the getUserMedia constraint in the capture
worker. The actual sampling rate is driven entirely by the setInterval
timer, so the stream's native frame rate is irrelevant to capture
correctness. Capping at 30 could silently reduce stream delivery on some
drivers when the display itself runs at ≤30 Hz (common in power-saving
mode), leaving the ring buffer with fewer fresh frames at click time.
The placeholders:globals:set IPC handler destructured { values } from
its args, but the renderer sends the placeholders object directly,
so values was always undefined and JSON.stringify(undefined) threw.
Replace the raw accelerator-string text inputs in Settings > Capture
with a polished "click and press a key combination" control that
renders the shortcut as keycap chips with a clear button.
The "Type to search, arrows to move, Enter to open." hint had no
margin, so it sat flush against the search input above while the
results list below it had a 10px margin + 8px padding before its
divider - lopsided spacing. Make .quick-actions a flex column with a
uniform 8px gap so the hint sits evenly between the input and the
results divider.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Previously the "Contents" page just emitted a TOC field whose cached
result was the literal text "Update contents in Word" - so unless a
user manually ran Update Field in Word, the TOC showed nothing useful
(and many viewers never run that update at all).
Now each step heading is wrapped in a bookmark, and the TOC is built
as real TOC1/2/3-styled paragraphs with hyperlinks to those bookmarks
and PAGEREF fields for page numbers, matching the entry list other
exporters already produce via tocEntries(). The whole thing stays
wrapped in the original `TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u` field so Word can still
refresh page numbers, but the document is correct on first open even
without that step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
The export dialog's Export and Preview buttons now disable and show a
spinner with status text while the corresponding async operation is
in flight, so the user knows the (sometimes slow) export is running
and the app isn't stuck.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Adds PdfBuilder.linkRect() for /Subtype /Link annotations with a
/Dest pointing at another page's destination. TOC entries record a
target placeholder that the per-step loop fills in once it knows
which page the step landed on, so clicking a Contents line jumps the
reader straight to that step.
Reuses the guide's existing descriptionHtml/descriptionText, which
already renders on the PDF cover and at the top of every other export
format, so it surfaces alongside author/co-authors/organization with
no exporter changes needed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Lets users record author/co-authors/organization for a guide via a new
"Guide information…" dialog; this metadata renders below the title on
the PDF cover (title now sits above the accent rule). PDF export also
paginates so each step fits its own page where possible, keeps a
step's title/image/lead-in together, and forces the next step onto a
fresh page after an oversized step overflows. Exports now run in a
forked helper process so large guides no longer freeze the UI.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Pushes to main (direct commits and merged PRs) and manual
workflow_dispatch now trigger the test job; feature-branch pushes and
PR open/sync no longer do.
- The canvas Undo/Redo buttons now also undo/redo step deletion
(single or multi-select), restoring the step's data, images, and
position in the order. Backed by a new step:restore IPC call and
GuideStore.restoreStep().
- Remove "Finish capture session" from the capture menu. The
top-right recording bar in the guide editor is now the only place
to start/stop recording, with its toggle relabeled
"Start recording" / "Stop recording".
The per-annotation list cards and the "Copy this style to every other
... annotation" text/tooltips were still showing raw type ids (rect,
arrow, etc). Use ANNOTATION_TYPE_LABELS for these too.
The annotation editor's "Type" select used the raw lowercase type id
(e.g. "rect") as its label. Add an ANNOTATION_TYPE_LABELS map so it
shows "Rectangle", "Tooltip", "Number", etc. instead.
Exporters now interleave text/code/table blocks in the same order they
appear in the editor's Blocks panel (via a shared stepContentGroups
helper) instead of grouping by kind, so exported docs match the guide
editor's ordering.
selectStep() now also refreshes the Focused View controls and Blocks
panel (previously only done by renderAll), so switching steps no longer
leaves the previous step's blocks/focused-view sliders on screen. It
also flushes any pending edits on the outgoing step before switching, so
a later guide-wide reload (e.g. applying an annotation style to the
whole guide) can't discard unsaved text-block edits on other steps.
Markdown export now emits > [!NOTE]/[!TIP]/[!WARNING]/[!IMPORTANT] for
text-block callouts, giving them the same colored/icon-labeled treatment
as the PDF/HTML/DOCX exports on renderers that support GFM alerts
(GitHub, Azure DevOps wikis, etc.), while degrading gracefully to a
plain blockquote elsewhere.
- Description editor: blockquotes get a left accent line and muted color so
it's clear when typing in "quote mode" (matches the existing active Quote
toolbar button highlight).
- Editor block cards: each text block's left border is colored by its level
(info/success/warn/error) so Note/Tip/Warning/Important are distinguishable
at a glance.
- PDF/HTML/DOCX exports: callouts now get a level-specific accent color and
tinted background/shading (blue/green/amber/red), instead of all looking
identical except for the label text.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
writeDescription/emitBlocks rendered each word as a separately positioned
Tj, advancing by our approximate average-glyph-width estimate — which is
much wider than real space/character widths, producing "This is bold"
style gaps. Render each line as one continuous text object instead
(PdfBuilder.textRun), so consecutive Tj operators advance using the
viewer's real font metrics.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
PDF exports now preserve bold/italic/links/lists/blockquotes from the
description editor (via a new HTML block/run parser) instead of flattening
to plain text. Literal "[text](url)" links inserted by the editor's Link
button are converted to real <a> tags before rendering. Tabs and common
"smart typography" characters (smart quotes, dashes, ellipsis, bullet) are
mapped to their WinAnsiEncoding glyphs instead of rendering as "?".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <[email protected]>
Clicking Link no longer pops up "Link text"/"Link URL" dialogs; it
inserts [Text](Link) (or [selectedText](Link)) directly so the
placeholders can be edited in place.
- Enter now starts a new <p> (defaultParagraphSeparator) so line breaks
in the description box show up as line breaks in HTML/Markdown/Confluence
exports; htmlToMarkdown also handles <div>-separated paragraphs.
- Clicking Quote while already in a blockquote toggles back to a paragraph.
- Toolbar buttons (Bold, Italic, Bullet, Number, Quote) turn blue to
reflect the formatting state at the current cursor/selection.
Previously this wrapped the selection in a real <a> tag via
createLink. Now it inserts literal [text](url) markdown syntax,
using the selection as the link text or prompting for it if nothing
is selected.
Tyler
