v0.1.4 — Sync, Clean & Global Config

Author

🗓️ July 2026

The big one: /sync is live, config moved to a global directory, and a new /clean command gives you full control over stored data.

✨ Features

/sync — incremental doc updates. After a /genesis baseline exists, /sync diffs the project against the last snapshot, asks the AI which docs are affected, and patches only those — existing sections are updated in place, nothing is deleted, and new docs are added when the changes warrant them. No more /genesis --force after every code change
/clean — manage global data. Lists all configured projects with their provider, model, and cache size. Subcommands to clear caches (all or per-project), remove config, or nuke everything:
- /clean — show status
- /clean cache / /clean cache <n> — clear caches
- /clean <n> — remove a project entirely
- /clean config — delete API keys
- /clean all — remove ~/.aether/ completely
Global config directory (~/.aether/) — API keys and provider config now live in your home directory, never in the repo. One machine, many projects, each can use a different provider/model without touching version control. The first /config also sets a shared default that new projects inherit automatically
Per-project cache — distill cache (condensed source notes for large projects) lives in ~/.aether/cache/<project>/, not in the repo
Concurrent doc generation — both /genesis and /sync now generate multiple docs in parallel (default: 4, configurable via AETHER_GEN_CONCURRENCY)
Shared project context — instead of building context per-doc, Aether now builds ONE complete context shared across all docs. If the project fits the budget, it's real code; if not, it's distilled once (not per-doc), so the expensive pass runs a single time

🏗️ Under the hood

Snapshot moved from .aether/context.json to .aether/settings/context.json — keeps the project root clean (backwards-compatible: old location still found)
Project identity uses a stable hash (<folder>-<sha1-of-path>) so same-named projects in different paths never collide
Section-level patching: when /sync updates an existing doc, it rewrites only the affected sections instead of regenerating the whole file
File fingerprinting with content hashes for precise change detection
Git log integration: /sync includes recent commit messages in the AI's context so it understands why things changed, not just what
Retry with exponential backoff on provider errors (429, 5xx, timeouts)
Smart rate-limit handling: 429 errors now get up to 6 retries with 15s+ backoff (respects provider's suggested retry-after delay), so free-tier limits are survived automatically instead of failing

🐛 Fixes

Config provider field no longer drifts when baseUrl is changed to a recognized host
Large projects that exceeded the context budget no longer lose files silently — they're distilled into factual notes instead