Shipping the first beta

July was about turning the terminal into something that could actually be shipped, updated and supported, rather than something that ran well on one machine. Most of the month went into the release pipeline. A version is now built, packaged, published and verified in a single pass, with the checks that catch a broken release before it reaches anyone. The terminal also updates itself in place, so a tester moves onto a new version without reinstalling or being asked to do anything. Builds exist for both macOS and Windows. The first beta went live on 2 August.

The valuation frame changed the most. We went through it in detail with our first user and with our advisor, both of whom do this work professionally, and reworked several parts around how a valuation is actually built and reviewed rather than how it was convenient to lay out. The changes are mostly in sequence and defaults: what you are asked for first, what carries through from one step to the next, and what the frame assumes when you have not told it otherwise. It is a better reflection of the way an analyst arrives at a number, and it came directly from watching the frame be used rather than from our own assumptions.

A large share of the month went to testing. We ran the application through error conditions deliberately, checking what happens when a request fails, when data is missing or malformed, and when something goes wrong midway through a task. The work was less about finding faults than about deciding how each one should behave: what the user is told, what is recoverable, and what should never take the rest of the session down with it. Almost none of it is visible when everything works, which is exactly what it is for.

Security was the other significant piece, and it took real time. We reviewed how the server is reached, how data is stored and moved, and how accounts and access are handled, then tightened each of them. As with the model work earlier this year, we are not detailing the specifics here. It is also not something we consider finished: it stays a standing part of the work rather than a task that was completed in July.

Access to the beta is invite-only for now, with requests reviewed one at a time, so the early group stays small and the feedback comes from people doing real research. That feedback is what decides what gets built next.