Happy New Year! 🥳
We're excited to kick off 2026 with Nanocoder 1.20.0, a release packed with powerful features, comprehensive testing, and significant quality improvements. Whether you're using Nanocoder for rapid development, code exploration, or complex multi-file refactoring, this release brings meaningful enhancements across every layer of the platform.
It was a labour of love over the holidays from our contributors!
Before we go into the update though, we all want to thank you for an incredible 2025 - Nanocoder was launched just 5-months ago and its quality, community and vision has only grown.
Heading into 2026 we've crossed 1K stars and get over 4,000 downloads a month. We have an incredible core team now and so many amazing contributors putting in work to make Nanocoder great.
Our mission has alway been to build community-led solutions that focus on privacy and local-first AI. We're only going to continue on that mission this year. Thanks to everyone!
What's New in 1.20.0
Visual Enhancements
We've introduced Catpuccin themes with full gradient color support, giving you four beautiful options: Latte, Frappe, Macchiato, and Mocha. Whether you prefer light or dark aesthetics, these carefully curated themes make extended coding sessions more personalised to you. Plus, we've added stylized title boxes with powerline-style shapes and real-time preview support in custom commands, giving your terminal output a polished, professional appearance. We believe your CLI experience should be yours and made to be beautiful.
VS Code Plugin Improvements
Right-clicking code in VS Code? Now you can directly ask Nanocoder about it through the context menu integration. This tighter editor integration means fewer context switches and faster feedback loops during development.
Expanded Language Support
Language Server Protocol (LSP) support has been significantly expanded with automatic project detection for Deno, GraphQL, Docker, and Markdown language servers. The setup wizard now features auto-fetch models, allowing providers to automatically discover available models during configuration. This means less manual setup and better out-of-the-box experiences.
Git Workflow Tools
We've added comprehensive git workflow integration, including:
- Smart commit message generation
- PR template creation
- Branch naming suggestions
- Enhanced status reporting
These tools leverage AI to streamline your git workflows, reducing friction in your development process.
Performance & Reliability
- 90%+ code coverage across components, hooks, tools, and utilities with comprehensive unit and integration tests
- File content caching reduces tool confirmation delays and improves responsiveness
- Real-time bash output progress with live updates during command execution
- Inline word-level highlighting in string_replace diff display for clearer visualization of changes
Security Improvements
- Path boundary validation prevents directory traversal attacks
- Granular debug logging with structured Pino logger for better error tracking
- Enhanced error handling with AI SDK error types
- Switched to crypto.randomUUID and crypto.randomBytes for secure ID generation
Infrastructure
- Devcontainer support for streamlined development environments
- Automated PR checks workflow with format, type, lint, and test validation
- Improved tool caller prompts and descriptions for better model interaction
- Refactored core components for maintainability
Under the Hood
This release includes significant architectural improvements: the App component has been refactored into focused modules (useAppState, useAppInitialization, useChatHandler, useToolHandler), file operations have been switched to async operations for better performance, and multiple files have been renamed to kebab-case for consistency.
Code exploration tools are now smarter with better prompts and a new list_directories tool. Ignored file patterns are now centralized for consistency, and tool formatters provide improved indentation for readability.
Get Started Today
Nanocoder 1.20.0 is available now and ready for use. Whether you're upgrading for the new themes, git integration, or the comprehensive testing improvements, you'll notice immediate benefits in your workflow.
Download the latest version and explore what makes Nanocoder the developer's choice for AI-assisted coding.
Thank you to our incredible community of contributors who made this release possible. Your feedback, bug reports, and pull requests drive our continuous improvement. If you have thoughts or run into any issues, reach out via our GitHub issues or join us on Discord.
Want to join the discussion? Head over to GitHub to share your thoughts!
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