New:
- AI Assistant now runs on the Claude Agent SDK, with a two-way session window, activity badge, pinned and question chips, queued prompts, and a screenshot paired with each console line
- AI Assistant ships as an installer option which downloads the Claude Code binary at install time, with a Read/Write access switch and a default set of skills you can extend
- AI Assistant changes are grouped into a single undo step, and the desktop is told when a session finishes or needs an answer via a notification, sound and taskbar attention
- Groom Properties: an Auto button has the Assistant author the groom's parameters script
- MCP tools to read and update a groom's parameters script, list the app's Python bindings, and run Python against them
- Node Graph: vertical (top-down) layout, gradients, shadows and rounded ports, compatible-port highlighting, and cancelling a connection while dragging it
- Node Graph: dropping a dragged connection on empty canvas offers the compatible operators, and connections can be cut by dragging a stroke across them
- Node Graph: the current operator stack is highlighted and the rest of the graph faded, and the graph can be filtered to the current stack, to the focused node's tree, or by name
- Node Graph: the Add Node menu lists all registered node types, including texture maps and scene nodes
- Hair Card Atlas: hair cards are listed horizontally at a usable size with a larger checkerboarded hover preview, and each groom's presets are offered as variations
- Hair Card Atlas: a single click selects an island, one channel selection drives both viewport shading and texture export, and TGA was added as an export format
- Graft Groom: auto-fit a graft groom from a fit recorded in the Graft Groom tool, a Refresh button to rebuild the grooming and graft surface cache, and display of the mirrored graft surface
- Viewport: switch a view between perspective and orthographic projection, keeping its framing
- Viewport: per-view background type and gradient colors, camera and light gizmos with a selectable look-at target, and configurable hair hue variation
- Viewport: transform gizmo snapping
- Groom thumbnails: transparent background, raytraced sample hold, live checkerboard preview, and an optional viewport aspect ratio instead of a forced square
- The window layout can be saved with a groom
- Toolbar contents are defined by an external file, every button routes through an action, relevant tools are highlighted instead of incompatible ones dimmed, tabs can show icons, and the transform and selection mode buttons stay put whichever tab is selected
- Q selects the scene geometry tool, and the toolbar number keys follow the selected tab's buttons
- Multiple shortcuts per action, with undo and redo bound to the mouse back and forward buttons
- Colors settings tab with theme presets, contrast and hue adjusters, optional foreground-only re-tinting, and animated themes
- Settings dialog: filter settings by name
- Properties panels reflow into multiple columns when the panel is wide
- Preset controls gained a Default entry, presets are identified by their values, a groom's presets follow the groom, and applying a preset saved against different parameters offers to bring it up to date
- Groom parameter scripts support color, ramp, enum and array parameters, and right-click Set Default makes a parameter's current value its declared default
- Declarative UI rules for operator parameters - conditional visibility, dimming and collapsing - now used by all operators
- Operator geometry inputs can be wired from the Operator Properties view, with a viewport geometry picker
- Operator selection follows the scene geometry selection into that object's own operator stack
- Clump Editor: per-clump twist value and ramp, and a way to reset clump overrides
- Generate Strand Data: Mapping Coordinate Along Strand option for texture map generation
- Gradient texture: parameter to move the middle of the gradient towards its start or end
- Texture operator colors accept procedural sub-texture map overrides
- Pre-rendered texture previews are used as texture operator icons, and operator category icons appear in menus with localized category names
- A Discord button in the main menu bar
- The Human start groom replaces Human Scalp
- The Human head model is downloaded on first use instead of shipping with the installer
- Merge operator: a Concatenate Strand Groups option, which renumbers each merged object's strand groups so they cannot overlap
- Files written by Ornatrix now carry a signed provenance identifier
- The bundled EULA now forbids using Ornatrix or its output to train AI models

Fixed:
- Selecting an operator no longer regenerates the whole object's geometry and materials
- Hidden scene geometry is no longer rebuilt every frame, and building a mesh's Vulkan buffers no longer allocates per polygon
- The Node Graph no longer re-rasterizes and re-uploads every texture node each frame
- Operator and Preset Properties no longer rebuild the whole preset YAML every frame
- Selecting the base surface in a hair card groom no longer re-rasterizes the whole atlas every frame, and editing one card no longer refreshes them all
- Groom files are several times smaller: polygon index tables are no longer written as plain-text YAML, the Human and Mesh From Hair operators no longer serialize their generated meshes, and the graft surface is stored as a topology hash reference
- Fixed crashes: adding the Feather preset to a groom with no geometry, opening a groom carrying no viewport state, focusing a non-geometry operator while Edit Strands is active, running an Edit Strands action with no editable Edit Guides operator, putting a non-geometry node into the scene geometry selection, fitting a Graft Groom with no focused display node, and adjusting an exposed groom parameter after the graph was reloaded
- Fixed a crash on start in Realistic mode on 4K and 5K monitors, and heap corruption when a swapchain present error escaped the frame loop
- Deleting the Clump operator no longer asserts
- The Groom operator now produces hair when the groom's base object is a procedural Sphere
- Graft Groom: manual vertex edits are kept under the Wrap and Nearest fit methods, a mesh already carrying a graft groom can be given a second graft surface, the Groom picker shows the current selection, and a groom opened from the command line keeps its graft surface
- Hair cards: the Normal channel is no longer a flat constant so cards no longer shade as flat planes, crossing strands are resolved by depth, strands running across a card are no longer drawn too thick, cards are no longer baked rotated a quarter turn for short strands, the atlas preview is no longer upside down, and variation thumbnails refresh
- Hide Selected in Edit Guides survives the next re-evaluation
- An object no longer disappears when the top operator of its stack is turned off
- Focusing an operator shared by several scene geometries no longer hides the other objects
- Groom parameter script values are no longer lost on save and reload, and the Default entry restores enum, bool and string parameters
- Editing a value in Groom Properties, saving viewport state, pinning or moving a node, and changing the window layout now mark the groom as modified
- The window layout embedded in a groom is honored when the groom is opened on startup
- Save As now works when the open groom is read-only
- Viewport: the grid is visible in orthographic views not aligned to an axis, overlay controls no longer overlap in a narrow view, settings pop-up toggles work while another view is focused, the light settings drop-down closes when the mouse leaves it, and hair thickness no longer changes with viewport width
- Realistic (Cycles): framing now matches Shaded and Raytraced in tall viewports, and overlays are depth-tested against the ghosted final mesh
- Focus Selected now frames the correct box
- Typing in a string parameter box records one undo command instead of one per keystroke, and undo and redo text shows the parameter name
- Exiting shows a Closing screen instead of freezing the interface with no feedback
- Window content no longer freezes and fills with black during an interactive resize on Windows
- Property panels no longer flicker every frame at borderline sizes
- Most parameter types, including boolean arrays, can now be read and written from Python instead of failing silently
- Selected rows in the Scene and Operator Stack views, and the selected cell in thumbnail grids, are clearer and follow the theme
- The Braid groom's base mesh no longer spins on every groom parameter change
- The Human operator's Identity and Expression parameters now change the output
- The profiler no longer attributes every operator's Apply time to a single category
- Fixed the macOS and Linux builds, and spurious red errors reported when monitors power cycle or the display topology changes
- Presets now store and restore ramp curve parameters
- Selecting an operator no longer activates a tool which cannot act on it