Changelog 0.16

0.16 includes schema type inference from JSON, schema description and hint editing, nice formatting of date and URL fields, and a new home for our IDE, among other niceities and fixes.

Create fields from JSON

Thomas has been busy adding features to the schema editor. When you have lots of types that would be cumbersome to add manually, you can now automate that type creation based on some sample data. In the schema editor, select "Create Fields From JSON" to infer types from a JSON string.

You can also edit the description of a type from the same context menu and update hints, like to format a string as a URL or date.

Navigator formatting

For a while we've supported nice formatting of program statuses in the Navigator home. This week Romet added formatting for fields throughout the Navigator as you explore a program's graph.

Based on field hints from a program's schema, the Navigator will format markdown strings, URLs, and dates. Date fields include readable, relative time formatting for both past and future dates.

Gref picker

Romet implemented a gref picker in the Navigator, which is useful when a node in a program's graph expects a gref as a parameter. For example, you might pass a GitHub user to an action that fetches their pull requests from a repository.

Revealing file

Romet also shipped improvements to the Navigator for revealing the file tree when you'd intuitively expect it. For example, when you create a program or rename a program, you'll notice the Navigator scroll to its index.ts file.

Docs tweaks

We're continuing to refine our docs. Juan improved the relevance and presentation of search results. Look out for added coverage of Membrane concepts soon, like pagination patterns for drivers.

ide.membrane.io

We're in the process of moving the Membrane IDE to its new home at ide.membrane.io. That (experimental) site is live now—with a new loading animation in pure CSS—so feel free to move there and report any feedback.

We're keeping an eye on performance—specifically the initial load of the IDE—as we move. Based on our testing, API request round trips should be materially faster soon by routing requests to our API server from our Fastly IDE server (rather than making cross origin requests to api.membrane.io directly from the client, which triggers preflight OPTIONS requests).

Fix codelens color

A styling regression previously created a low contrast color for codelens elements (e.g. Invoke ► above an action). Isolating the IDE at ide.membrane.io will prevent conflicts with the main site going forward.

Remove email verification for GitHub signups

Thomas fixed a bug with GitHub auth erroneously requiring email verification. Thanks to user pomdtr for raising the issue!

Fix package install count

A bug had been returning an incorrect package installation count in the package search view, which Jhonny fixed.

Next week we'll be together as a team for a Membrane onsite! We'll hack on some ideas and recalibrate the most important things to work on in 2025.

Your feedback—via email, discord, or live—would be really helpful for that roadmapping. Special thanks this week to pomdtr for lots of good feedback in our discord server.

- Pete Millspaugh (pete@membrane.io)