Kai Weekly Update — Week 2

[jschatz1]

What shipped

Performance overhaul (v0.9.23)

Capture and push were re-reading, re-hashing, and re-parsing every file on every run — O(all files) regardless of what changed. This release closes the gap with git-speed operations:

• Stat cache (.kai/statcache.json) — stores mtime + size + BLAKE3 digest per file. Same heuristic as git's .git/index. If nothing changed, skip the read.
• Parallel file I/O — worker pool sized to NumCPU() for concurrent reads during directory walk.
• filepath.WalkDir — replaces filepath.Walk, avoids an extra Stat syscall per entry.
• Tree-sitter caching — skip re-analysis when a file's content hash already has symbols in the DB. Eliminated double-parse in call graph analysis (reuse the symbol pass result).
• SQLite tuning — synchronous=NORMAL, 64MB page cache, 256MB mmap.
• Batched push queries — 2 queries per ref instead of 12+. GetAllEdgesFrom and GetAllEdgesByContext replace the per-edge-type loop.

AI code attribution (v0.9.17–v0.9.21)

• kai ci authorship — generates PR comments showing who (or what) wrote which parts of a changeset. Tracks AI-generated vs human-written code at the symbol level.
• Git hooks on kai init — post-commit hook runs kai capture, pre-push hook runs kai push. Zero-config semantic tracking from first commit.
• Background update checker — cached version notice, no blocking on startup.

Semantic graph improvements

• JS/TS workspace package resolution — non-relative imports like @scope/pkg now resolve to actual files via package.json scanning. Creates proper IMPORTS edges across monorepo packages.
• SQL tree-sitter support (v0.9.20) — SQL files now get symbol extraction and semantic diffing.
• Incremental CI log polling — GetCILogsSince for kai ci trace, avoids re-fetching the full log on each poll.
• Skip duplicate push — when snap.latest matches remote/origin/snap.latest, bail early.
• Auth refresh fix — dangling ref push and token refresh edge cases resolved.

MCP server

• Rebrand to kaicontext — MCP package name, default server URL, and telemetry endpoint all updated.
• Eager background init — MCP server starts kai init immediately on creation instead of waiting for first tool call.
• Suppress context-canceled noise — clean shutdown without error spam.
• CLAUDE.md enforcement — stronger instructions to always use Kai MCP tools for code exploration.
• AI context file injection — kai init and MCP server start now inject context files for AI assistants.

Homepage & landing page

• Full redesign: interactive terminal demo with play button, animated graph visualization, Kai Impact comparison panel.
• Light/dark theme support, shrinking header (full-width → centered pill on scroll).
• Demo moved above the fold, login and "Get Started" in header nav.
• Dynamic copyright year, inline Kai logo as data URI.

CI system

• ci-plan: skip unaffected tests and builds — uses the semantic graph to determine which tests and builds are actually affected by a changeset.
• Runner registration — heartbeat, label tracking, runs-on validation.
• Stale job reaper — automatic cleanup when runners go silent.
• Cancel queued jobs when dependencies fail.
• Archive checkout + Go module cache + image pre-pull — faster CI runs.
• Batch packfile extraction for archive endpoint.
• ANSI color rendering in CI logs.
• Admin runners page, CI access gating per user, in-app access request flow.
• Fix false-negative CI runs, duplicate run prevention, workflow sync improvements.

Infrastructure

• Rebrand from kailayer.com → kaicontext.com — DNS, Kustomize deploys, GitHub org.
• Open-source prep for kai-server — scrubbed secrets, added gitignore for local settings, contributing section in README.
• Docker Hub pull-through cache to avoid rate limits.
• Kaniko build fixes — proper auth, capabilities for in-cluster image builds.
• Deploy hardening — exec timeouts, rollout timeout increase, field ownership conflicts resolved.
• Telemetry endpoint — receives anonymous CLI usage events, fixed JSON array parsing.

Test fixes

• TestRunCompletion/bash — pipe deadlock caused 10-minute timeout. Completion output exceeded OS pipe buffer; moved reader into goroutine.
• TestDeleteEdgeAt — was asserting against old edge PK schema.

Metrics

• Versions shipped: 0.9.14 → 0.9.23 (10 releases)
• kai repo: 30 commits
• kai-server repo: 70+ commits

Next

• Measure capture/push times on large repos (10k+ files) to quantify the improvement
• Make stat cache skip file reads entirely (pass digest to snapshot creator instead of content)
• Incremental symbol analysis and delta-only push packs
• First community contributions

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