Release Notes

Notes for each release in the Chrome Web Store and Edge Add-Ons Store

v1.2.5 - December 22, 2024

  • You can now include variables in the header or body of an API/Webhook
  • Added a help button to the Writing Helper
  • You can hide the Ask Steve tab with a Control-click as well as a right-click
  • Set a maximum width on the floating panel so you can't get into a state where it always covers the whole screen
  • A number of bug fixes

v1.2.4 - December 18, 2024

  • Added a Writing Helper icon to textareas and other contenteditable controls. Click on it to get writing or rewriting help in the control. Press ENTER to get the results in a floating panel, or COMMAND-ENTER (Mac) or CONTROL-ENTER (PC, ChromeOS) to write over the existing text.
  • Temporarily hide the Writing Helper icon by right-clicking on it.
  • Permanently hide the Writing Helper icon on the Settings page.
  • Added Shortcut buttons to the Tab that opens the Ask Steve sidepanel. Hover over the tab for a second and buttons to quickly trigger your top 2 pinned Skills will appear.
  • Fixed minor bugs

v1.2.3 - December 9, 2024

  • Added the ability to have multiple and single selection controls when requesting User Input.
  • Updated the User Input UI
  • Can now Command-ENTER (Mac) or Control-ENTER (Windows, ChromeOS) to submit the User Input form.
  • You can now return img tags in responses. The images are embedded and a link to open the image in a new window is automatically added.
  • You can now resize the floating panel and it remembers the last size.
  • Updated the Skill Library
  • Remove all extraneous control characters from content submitted to LLMs and APIs.
  • Fixed minor bugs

v1.2.2 - November 26, 2024

  • Fixed minor UI bugs

v1.2.1 - November 25, 2024

  • Changed the keyboard shortcuts to be more useful (video):
  • CMD/CTRL-SHIFT-1 runs the first pinned Skill on the current page or selection. Pinned Skills are in alphabetical order. It used to capture the page or selection into the first Notebook.
  • CMD/CTRL-SHIFT-2 runs the second pinned Skill on the current page or selection. Pinned Skills are in alphabetical order. It used to capture the page or selection into the second Notebook.
  • CMD/CTRL-SHIFT-X captures the current page or selection to the first Notebook. It used to open/close the Ask Steve sidepanel.
  • CMD/CTRL-SHIFT-K has no change - it opens the Writing Helper in an editable text field
  • You can change any of these shortcuts or add your own open/close shortcut by going to chrome://extensions/shortcuts and adding a shortcut for "Activate the extension".
  • Added support for Google Apps Script
  • Added support for PDFs without having to download the PDF first
  • Changed PDF Chat to File Chat which now supports pdf, docx, pptx, jpg, png, and gif, as well as pasting an image or text. (video)
  • Added support for YouTube videos
  • Better code formatting in Chat
  • Skill Buttons now use selected text (if there is any) instead of the whole page
  • If you start a Skill Button name with an emoji, the default ⚡ will be removed
  • Added "Open File Chat" to the context menu so you can get there quickly from anywhere
  • Created a Google Apps Script Skill Pack

v1.2.0 - November 16, 2024

  • Added support for Chatting with Google Docs. See demo video here
  • Added support for Chatting with Google Slides. See demo video here
  • You can Chat with a selection in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint online, but not a whole document.
  • Added a PDF Chat tool where you can pick a PDF or image file and have it turned into text so you can use it with Ask Steve. See demo video here
  • Chat now works on blank tabs.
  • Added the ability to add static body variables and specify the result and error paths for an API call. See updated docs here. Removed special-purpose code for Zapier, since now you can specify ["status"] as the result path.
  • Sidepanel no longer totally resets when you switch tabs.
  • Other minor updates

v1.1.9 - November 10, 2024

  • Added support for Zapier webhooks. Zapier webhooks return right away with a status of "success" and then process asynchronously. So you can trigger Zapier workflows from Ask Steve, but cannot return any data.
  • Ask Steve is now live on the Edge Add-Ons store
  • Updated all store copy and assets

v1.1.8 - Skipped

v1.1.7 - October 28, 2024

  • Added a new System Variable for API calls/webhooks: [_imageUrls] sends an array with the URLs of all the images on the page.
  • Made the z-index of Skill Buttons higher so they don't get hidden on pages
  • Changed the top menu item to "Do Something" instead of "Ask me what to do"
  • Changes in plan are now detected automatically and don't require logging out and back in
  • Added a link to the extension settings sidebar to manage your subscription
  • Notebooks now show linebreaks from the original page
  • Other minor updates

v1.1.6 - October 14, 2024

  • Added several more optional System Variables to API calls/webhooks to enable more use cases. "_url" used to be automatically included but now needs to be explicitly added.
  • Added new Notebooks functionality.
  • Added new Preferences functionality.
  • Removed old Memories functionality.
  • Added more Keyboard Shortcuts
  • Updated the context-menu. Changed the "ONE-TIME REQUEST" menu item to "Ask me what to do", added separators, etc.
  • Other minor updates.

v1.1.5 - September 24, 2024

  • Implemented the Plans described on the Plans and Pricing page. You now need a paid Premium plan to use any model aside from the free Gemini or Mistral. You also need a Premium plan to use APIs and Webhooks.
  • The UI has been changed to reflect this.
  • Updated the model templates for Anthropic and Mistral.
  • Added an "Add Skills" button to the top of the Ask Steve sidepanel to make it easy to access the Skill Library.
  • Removed the error messages that were showing when you tried to chat on Google Docs, Slides or Sheets
  • Other minor updates.

v1.1.4 - Skipped

v1.1.3 - September 16, 2024

  • Right click on the FAB/TAB (the purple tab with the lightning bolt icon) to temporarily remove it from a page, in case you need to print or take a screenshot.
  • Removed scrollbars on Windows on the Import/Export page.
  • Updated the confirmation dialogs for adding Skill Packs.
  • Other minor updates.

v1.1.2 - August 27, 2024

  • The Ask Steve lightning bolt tab/FAB no longer appears when you print pages.
  • Fixed issues with the format of text generated by the Writing Helper in Outlook 365.

v1.1.1 - August 16, 2024

  • Many minor bug fixes
  • Added better error messages if you try to use Ask Steve with Google Docs, Slides, Sheets or Figma, since it can't read content from any of those.

v1.1.0 - July 30, 2024

  • Fixed bugs.
  • Changed how calls to APIs/Webhooks are made to make it easier - see the updated documentation.
  • As a result, removed the "Show Model Override" setting on the Settings page and the "This is Not an LLM" setting on the Models page since they're no longer needed.
  • Removed omnibox support

v1.0.9 - July 24, 2024

  • Automatically hide the FAB when a browser window is in fullscreen mode (so it doesn’t get in the way of your YouTube videos)
  • Chat and the Floating panel now hyperlink all URLs
  • Added a new “Show Model Override” setting on the Settings page that adds the ability to assign a specific model to a specific Skill. This is useful for when certain models are better at certain tasks, but also for when you want to call non-model APIs. See the video in the next bullet for an example.
  • Added a “This is Not an LLM” setting on the Models page that indicates that you’re calling a non-LLM API. All the usual instruction text and Memories that Steve would send with your request are removed. See this video for an example.

v1.0.8 - July 18, 2024

  • OpenAI made a change to how they send down streaming responses that broke our parsing. This has been fixed.
  • The sidepanel code has been changed so that there is one universal sidepanel for all the tabs in a window vs. a unique sidepanel per tab.
  • This change was made because unique sidepanels per tab is not supported in Edge and Vivaldi, and we weren’t really doing anything with that capability anyway.
  • So now when you open the sidepanel, it is open on all the tabs in a window, and when you close it, it’s closed for all tabs.
  • As a result, Chat and Skill configuration should now work properly in Edge and (mostly) in Vivaldi.
  • The lightning bolt tab that enables you to quickly open the sidepanel (aka the FAB) still doesn’t work properly in Vivaldi - you can disable it in the Settings.
  • If you encounter other issues, let me know here!
  • You can now open the Skill Picker in Chat with either “k “ or just SPACE in the chat field.
  • When you go to the Models page, it is now more clear that you can’t enter model details until you login. Once you login, you can enter model details immediately without having to press “Add New Model”.
  • Added Cohere Command R+ and Open AI GPT4o Mini as model templates. Removed OpenAI GPT 3.5
  • Chat can use just the selected text on a page, but previously could not read selected text in iframes served from different domains as the main window. This has been fixed.
  • For Skill Buttons - the output option “Popup” has been renamed “Floating panel” since some users thought it meant browser popup.
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