v0.8.6

rowboatlabs/rowboatv0.8.6Aug 12, 2026by ramnique

AI Summary

This release introduces full Microsoft 365 support and reimagines the Home interface as a shared to-do list, while adding the ability to edit PowerPoint files and control model reasoning effort.

Key Highlights

  • Full support for Outlook and Microsoft 365 email accounts.
  • Home becomes a rolling to-do list shared between user and @rowboat.
  • In-app editing of PowerPoint files with real theme colors and presentation mode.
  • Assistant can point to the screen and control model reasoning effort.
  • Quick-ask bar functionality expanded to Windows.

New Features

  • Outlook support
  • To-do list
  • PPTX editing
  • Screen pointer
  • Reasoning effort
  • Windows quick-ask

Full Release Notes

## What's new

**📧 Outlook & Microsoft 365 support.** Connect a Microsoft account and get the full Rowboat email experience — inbox with AI triage, thread view, compose and reply, drafts, whole-mailbox search, attachments, and calendar-fed meetings — exactly as it works with Gmail. Sign-in happens right in the app; no extra setup needed.

**✅ Home is now your to-do list.** Home becomes a rolling to-do list shared between you and @rowboat: mention @rowboat on an item to delegate it, steer the work with inline comments, and get one-line receipts back on the list. Recent conversations live on the same surface, with one composer at the bottom serving both. An opt-in morning planner can suggest up to three high-signal items a day — nothing runs without your explicit accept. The old Home is one click away as Overview.

**📽️ Edit PowerPoint decks without leaving Rowboat.** Open a `.pptx` from your workspace and it renders with real theme colors, fills, images, and bullets. Double-click to edit text, move and resize shapes, add, duplicate, reorder, and delete slides, change fonts and formatting, then hit Play for a full-screen presentation. Saves touch only what you edited — charts, SmartArt, and animations pass through untouched, and files don't bloat across saves.
**🖱️ The assistant can point at your screen.** During a screen share, the assistant can drop an animated pointer on the thing it's talking about — right on your real screen. The voice companion is now one coherent surface: the mascot with a foldable text panel, a live status line showing what the agent is doing ("Searching the web…", "Reasoning…"), and speech that matches how you asked — spoken questions get spoken replies, typed ones stay silent.

**🧠 See the model think, and pick how hard it thinks.** The chat now renders the model's reasoning as it streams, and every model picker carries a reasoning-effort setting (low / medium / high) that follows your choice all the way through — including mid-chat model switches, which no longer error.

**🪟 Quick-ask bar on Windows.** The ⌥⇧Space quick-ask bar from v0.8.3 now works on Windows too, and got a proper light-mode redesign on all platforms.

### Also in this release

- New Settings → Permissions panel: every OS permission grouped by the feature it serves, with honest statuses and one-click grant buttons or System Settings deep links
- Old chats and task transcripts are now cleaned up automatically (storage retention), and deleting a chat removes all of its files — including sub-agent transcripts
- Email replies quote the conversation trail like a normal mail client, you no longer get notified about your own sent mail, and the Important section gained date dividers
- The side-pane chat now renders identically to the full-screen chat, with quiet one-line tool rows keeping transcripts readable
- Background tasks gained a row menu with a details popup and delete confirmation
- Connecting accounts is more reliable — an OAuth bug that could silently swallow the sign-in callback is fixed
- Remote MCP servers now receive your configured headers — thanks to first-time contributor [@serhiizghama](https://github.com/serhiizghama) for the fix!
- The in-app update card shows release notes in full instead of truncating them