Changelog
What's new on cask.news.
Smarter alternatives & site-wide search
- New Every cask now has a canonical functional type ("application launcher", "code editor", "vpn client") plus a set of structured tags - generated by Claude Haiku 4.5 (replacing the older DeepSeek path for tags and alternatives ranking). All 6,188 apps re-classified.
- New Alternatives pages now show every app of the same functional type. Looking for alternatives to Raycast returns the full launcher set (Alfred, LaunchBar, Quicksilver, Wox, …) instead of random productivity apps.
- New Header search bar with live autocomplete - type two letters to see top matches with their type label, jump straight to the cask page.
- Polish Similar apps on cask pages and the dedicated alternatives page now agree - same algorithm, same ranking, same source of truth.
- Polish Popular apps bubble higher in alternatives. Ranking blends textual similarity with yearly install counts so well-known launchers rank above obscure ones with similar copy.
- Design Cask cards line up cleanly in a row - equal height with category and install count pinned to the bottom edge.
- Design Changelog tags now sit in a fixed left column so the entry text starts at the same edge across rows.
- Reliability Tagging cascades through homepage → GitHub README → cask metadata, so every cask gets classified even when its homepage is unreachable.
- Reliability Fixed a bug where a too-wide vector query silently returned zero alternatives. Pages that briefly showed unrelated apps are correct now.
- Security Hardened the AI review pipeline against prompt-injection attempts in cask metadata. Untrusted text now travels through delimited blocks, and AI output is validated before being stored.
- Polish Email links across instant, daily, and weekly digests now have visible link styling and clearer call-to-action buttons.
- New Each cask page now has a "Compare with" inline button row and a richer Similar Apps grid linking to side-by-side compare pages.
- Reliability Embedding pipeline self-heals - newly enriched casks always pick up vector embeddings on the next cron, so similar/alternatives never silently empty out.
Reliability & performance overhaul
- Performance Email sends now use Resend's batch API - one HTTP call per 100 subscribers instead of one per recipient.
- Reliability Daily digest is now resumable: if a run is interrupted partway through, the next attempt picks up exactly the un-sent subscribers.
- Reliability Cask sync rewritten to use D1 batched writes - previously could time out partway through the catalog on busy days.
- Performance Sync only writes when data has actually changed; on quiet days zero writes happen.
- Reliability Renamed casks self-heal automatically - version history and enrichment data carry over to the new token.
- Reliability Atomic rename and version-change writes - both succeed or both roll back, no partial state.
- Security Eighteen fixes from a professional review: rate limiting, validation, idempotency, and several minor injection defenses.
- New Daily digest emails - fresh casks delivered every morning at 8am UTC.
- New Instant notifications - get an email the moment a new cask hits Homebrew.
- Fix Weekly editorial schedule now fires reliably on Sundays.
- Reliability Daily catch-up enrichment ensures any newly added casks always get reviews.
- New Public CLI tool with OAuth login (GitHub, Google, Discord, X) - search, browse, and sync your Homebrew casks from the terminal.
- Polish Browse defaults to newest first; sort and macOS filter persist across visits.
- New Category detail pages now show stats, sortable lists, and Rising Stars within each category.
- New Backfilled weekly editorials for every week of 2026.
- Polish Weekly digest is now a deterministic 6 picks + 5 trending each week.
Discovery features
- New Rising Stars section on the homepage - apps with unusual install velocity.
- New Similar Apps section on each cask detail page.
- New /alternatives/[cask] pages for finding apps similar to your favorites.
- New /compare/[a]-vs-[b] pages for side-by-side cask comparison.
- New Version history timeline on cask detail pages.
- New macOS version compatibility filter on browse, including Tahoe (26).
- New Version change tracking - see exactly when each app last updated.
- New Phase 3: weekly editorials, Mac Stacks, install-trend sparklines, and per-app trust scores.
- Design ProductHunt-style format for the weekly digest with rich app cards.
Trending engine
- New Velocity-based trending replaces simple install-count ranking.
- Polish Trending merged into Browse as a sortable tab with a weighted trend score.
- Reliability Auto-migrate renamed casks during sync.
- Reliability First-seen dates resolved from Homebrew git history for accurate "new cask" indicators.
Design overhaul
- Design Typography refresh and a warmer, less clinical palette.
- Accessibility Larger touch targets on mobile, focus indicators, skip-nav links, and ARIA landmarks throughout.
- Design Entrance animations with staggered reveals, friendlier empty states.
- Performance KV-based page caching for instant first paint, optimized font loading.
Production polish
- New OG meta tags for share previews on Twitter / Slack / Discord.
- New Full-text search via FTS5.
- New Production-grade AI enrichment pipeline with vector embeddings for similarity search.
- Polish Switched the AI review model to DeepSeek R1 for better quality reviews.
- New Brewfile cart - collect casks across the site, copy a one-line install command.
- New Screenshot detection on cask detail pages.
- Design Data-rich browse and trending pages.
Launch day
- New cask.news goes live: home, cask detail, browse, categories, trending, subscribe.
- New AI-enriched reviews using Workers AI plus GitHub stats and social signals.
- New Newsletter subscribe / verify / unsubscribe flow.
- New RSS feeds - all new casks, daily, weekly.
- Reliability Scheduled worker for cask sync and enrichment every 3 hours.
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