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What's New in SPECLAN

Product announcements, feature releases, and community highlights.

Last updated August 2, 2026

Release NotesAugust 2, 2026 · today

SPECLAN v0.9.13 — Your Specs Are Now an MCP Server

v0.9.13 ships two headline features. SPECLAN's built-in server is now a real MCP server — Claude Code, VS Code Copilot, Cursor and Claude Desktop connect to it directly and get 13 tools over your live spec tree, including read-only SQL and graph traversal. And SpecURI gives every spec a link that opens it in the editor, resolving by entity ID so it survives renames. Plus optional API-key auth, a read-only mode, and one breaking change: 43 tools became 13.

Release NotesJuly 11, 2026 · 3 weeks ago

SPECLAN v0.9.12 — A New Search Engine for Your Specs

v0.9.12 ships a brand-new search engine. Search now reads the full text of every spec — not just titles and IDs — ranks results by relevance, tolerates typos, and highlights matched terms. Type an entity ID to jump straight to it, and a new 'Referenced By' section shows what links to the spec you're viewing. The same engine powers the search panel, the AI tools, and the command line. Plus: shareable deep links to any spec, a preview of local HTML pages in the built-in browser, and a couple of fixes.

Release NotesJuly 4, 2026 · 4 weeks ago

SPECLAN v0.9.11 — Mermaid Diagrams, Right in Your Specs

v0.9.11 adds Mermaid diagrams to your specs. Write a diagram in a plain mermaid code block and it renders inline in the editor — flowcharts, sequence diagrams, ER diagrams, everything Mermaid does — and because it's just text, it versions in Git with the rest of your spec. Edit the source in a dialog with a live preview, click a diagram node to open the spec it links to, and hover any link to see where it points. Plus: broken-link detection with a one-click Quick-Fix, cut/copy/paste for diagrams, and a new Failed task state.

Release NotesJune 13, 2026 · 1 month ago

SPECLAN v0.9.10 — Resize, Recolor, and Relink Right in the Document

v0.9.10 is a hands-on pass over the editor. Drag a handle to resize an inline image where you see it — aspect locked, undo-able, SVGs included. Give an Excalidraw diagram a dark version and flip between light and dark with one toggle, even on a locked spec. Edit a markdown link's text inline without breaking the link, and click a link to open its target. Plus: the ChatGPT (Codex) model list is now live (default gpt-5.4), and two settings bugs are fixed — the model dropdown no longer shows another provider's models, and the first AI request after signing in with ChatGPT no longer fails on a retired model.

Release NotesMay 30, 2026 · 2 months ago

SPECLAN v0.9.9 — Draw the Diagram Right Inside the Spec

v0.9.9 lets you draw diagrams where they belong: inside the requirement they explain. Sketch an architecture, a flow, or a state machine with Excalidraw without leaving SPECLAN; it renders inline, edits in place, and is stored as an ordinary .excalidraw.png in your own Git repo — human-readable for your team, machine-readable for your AI agent. Viewing works out of the box; drawing needs the free Excalidraw extension by pomdtr installed alongside SPECLAN. Also in v0.9.9: the HLRD Import Assistant now lets you choose an umbrella feature or populate in place and keeps your source document as an artifact, and AI Chat gains @-mention entity links and text-selection focus.

CommunityMay 23, 2026 · 2 months ago

Which LLM Writes the Best Specifications? A Side-by-Side Across 13 Models

v0.9.6 let you point SPECLAN at any LLM you trust. The natural next question — which one should you actually use? — has no benchmark yet, because the literature stops at code. So we ran the same brief through 13 models on the same codebase (excalidraw), built a side-by-side viewer at speclan.net/compare, and let Claude Opus judge every other tree. The result is a 7-minute video and a gallery you can walk yourself: Anthropic's three sit at the top with Haiku 4.5 quietly out-counting Opus on requirements; Qwen 3.6 35B closes the cloud gap on a laptop; GPT-OSS 20B produces a coherent feature tree with zero goals; Gemma 4 26B leaves the literal string "Goal description goes here." in a Goal body; and Gemini Pro invents an account-billing system for a drawing tool. None of them are wrong — they're answering the same question with different products.

Release NotesMay 16, 2026 · 2 months ago

SPECLAN v0.9.8 — From an Idea to a Spec You'd Actually Implement

v0.9.8 turns SPECLAN from a place you store specifications into a place you write them. A new AI Assistant takes a one-line idea and forges a context-aware first draft for a Feature, Requirement, or Change Request — then two refinement tools sharpen it. Clarify finds the ambiguities and gaps in your draft and asks you targeted questions; your answers are worked back in. Brainstorm surfaces the angles you didn't think of and lets you pick which ones make it into the spec. The AI suggests; you decide what stays. Also in v0.9.8: a permanently visible Search Bar in the WYSIWYG editor for finding text fast within the open specification.

Release NotesMay 9, 2026 · 2 months ago

SPECLAN v0.9.7 — Specs Grow Attachments. Projects Grow a Reference Shelf.

v0.9.7 ships two artifact mechanisms — deliberately different — plus a one-click implementation-prompt button. Spec Artifacts attach evidence to a single feature, requirement, or change request with Change Request governance on locked specs. Project Artifacts give the whole project a shared reference shelf with no governance at all. Plus Quick Impl., the pill button that turns an approved spec into a paste-ready implementation prompt with a single click.

Release NotesApril 25, 2026 · 3 months ago

SPECLAN v0.9.6 — Use SPECLAN With Your ChatGPT Account

If you already pay for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, or Team, you can now use SPECLAN — no separate API key, no additional subscription on top. v0.9.6's headline is Codex OAuth: sign in with ChatGPT and your existing Codex budget powers every AI workflow in the extension. Also shipping: first-class Local LLM support via Ollama and LM Studio, and reliability improvements for weaker models.

Release NotesApril 12, 2026 · 3 months ago