Write Where You Work

Now Alter creates, edits, and saves files directly to your folders.

AuthorAuthor

Samuel ROY & Olivier Legris
January 16, 2026

Hey everyone,

We're thrilled to announce Alter Workspace with writing tools, a game-changing feature that transforms Alter from a powerful reader into a complete creative and productivity powerhouse.

Now you can create, edit, and manage files directly in your workspace, seamlessly integrated with your Mac ecosystem and third-party tools. No more context switching. No more manual updates. Pure productivity.

What's New: Workspace Writing Tools

With Workspace, you can now:

  1. Create files instantly – Generate documents, notes, and content directly in your workspace

  2. Edit with precision – Modify existing files with AI-powered suggestions

  3. Batch operations – Make multiple edits across files in one conversation

  4. Connect your ecosystem – Pull data from Gmail, YouTube, web pages, and more—then write it to your workspace

  5. Automate workflows – Create advanced automations that span your entire Mac ecosystem

Why Workspace Writing Tools Matters

Before, Alter could read and analyze your files. Now, you can:

  • Write newsletters and content in minutes with AI assistance

  • Organize your Obsidian vault automatically with AI-generated notes and templates

  • Extract and save information from emails, YouTube videos, and web pages directly to your workspace

  • Create task management systems on-the-fly (GTD, Kanban, or custom frameworks)

  • Build advanced workflows that connect Gmail, Obsidian, Apple Reminders, and more

  • Automate repetitive tasks like processing urgent emails or creating watch-later lists

Examples

Create: "Create a newsletter about this week's AI news. Use my existing newsletter format."

Edit: "Update my README.md with the new features we discussed."

Automate: "Search my Gmail for urgent emails and create Obsidian tasks for each one."

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

  • Workspace Tools: Added bash tool, edit and multi-edit tools for file manipulation, and improved sandboxing with PDF syncing

  • Workspace: Auto-name workspaces based on folder, and optimized prompt for small models use

  • Hub Improvements: Added shortcuts to open Settings, Tools Manager and the Action Editor. Improved search with partial reindexing for chat messages, and better window management with dock access

  • Conversations: Auto-scroll to bottom on initialization for better UX

  • Providers: Added Privatemode.ai as a custom provider for access to confidential AI cloud models

  • Routers: Deprecated cerebras oss-120b in favor of zai-glm-4.7

Bug Fixes & Stability

  • Workspace: Improved search with spaces and lowercase matching

  • Performance: Optimized keychain warmup, reduced JSON decoding overhead on message loading, fixed action editor and audio processor race conditions, and improved markdown rendering

  • Audio Recording: Better handling when WhisperKit is not available, improved audio file URL uniqueness and earlier creation, fixed buffer appending errors, and ensured init tasks complete when stopping recordings

  • Settings: Fixed model listing for custom providers

  • Hub: Fixed restoration behavior and key window handling on open, improved message selection

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