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03 December 2025: Version 5.3-2

• Bug fix: Error in conversation history file creation

  An error in conversation history file version management led to inability to create a new conversation history files.
  This occurred on fresh installations and when using the -c parameter. This has been fixed now.
Important note for upgrading existing installations

When you already have corrupt conversation history file, please delete the file $HOME/.admin-companion/conversation_history.pickle

28 November 2025: Version 5.2-4

• Added support for FreeBSD

• Improved Command Output Handling

  • Enhanced stdout/stderr interleaving
    Previous Admin Companion versions displayed all stderr output only after command execution had finished.
    Since some system commands output important prompts (e.g., password or passphrase requests) via stderr,
    these prompts could appear after user input was already expected.
    A redesigned output-shuffling algorithm now surfaces such messages earlier, ensuring user prompts appear at the correct time.
  • Commands writing directly to /dev/tty
    Output from commands executed by Admin Companion and written directly to /dev/tty is now also displayed in the terminal - even though it never goes through Admin Companion.
    This is a deliberate trade-off in our security model: Admin Companion must not have access to user keystrokes (see below).
    Capturing /dev/tty output would require attaching to it, which would also expose user keystrokes - something Admin Companion continues to avoid.
    This improvement also helps ensure correct shuffling of prompts and user input for commands executed via Admin Companion (e.g., commands that send prompts, such as password requests, directly to /dev/tty).
  • Smarter handling of long command oputput
    When command output becomes too long, it is no longer truncated at the end.
    Instead, the middle portion is collapsed, preserving the typically more relevant beginning and ending sections.
  • Continued Focus on Security and Confidentiality
    As from the beginning, your keystrokes never pass through the Admin Companion process when a command requests terminal input.
    stdin is routed directly from the system to the executed command. This ensures Admin Companion never processes your keystrokes, and no traces of typed passwords or passphrases end up in its memory - provided the command itself does not echo input to the console.

• Improved Ctrl-C Handling (Cosmetic Update)

  Pressing Ctrl+C no longer causes the client to exit with an exception. Instead, it now terminates gracefully.

19 November 2025: Version 5.1-3

• Provide gpt-5.1 model

  This version enables OpenAI's newest version gpt-5.1 model. At the same time we retire the gpt-4.1 models and o3-mini
  So this is the list of available models with Admin Companion client version 5.1: gpt-5.1, gpt-5, gpt-5-mini, gpt-5-nano, gpt-4o, o4-mini

• Optimized handling of long command outputs

  Improved processing reduces the risk of losing dialogue history when commands produce very long outputs.
  

• Fix in OS type and release detection

  Resolved an issue where OS type detection failed on some system versions

09 October 2025: Version 5.0-34

Version 5.0 introduces several key improvements, including major backend updates for even better answers.

• Multi-line request editor

  When invoking ai without parameters, you can now enter requests interactively in a new multi-line editor. It supports inserting and deleting text, line operations, cursor navigation, and submitting at any time with Alt+Enter.

• Expanded Linux expertise (RAG and semantic search)

  Beyond the LLMs' general knowledge, we've added well-curated Linux expert content. Admin Companion now uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and semantic search to leaverage this corupus. When specific information is needed, it performs a semantic search across the curated documents (the internal knowledge base). Semantic search understands intent and meaning using vector embeddings and natural-language understanding, so it finds the most relevant documentation—even when the wording differs from the query. The best-matching passages are provided to the LLM as context for precise answers.
  When expert content is used, answers include citations to the sources.
  In the Admin Companion Web Console you can view details about the retrieved information.

• Enable/disable usage of expert knowledge

  New options -ek, and -dk let you enable and disable expert knowledge.
  

• Enable/disable knowledge citation

  New options -ec, and -dc let you enable and disable the expert knowledge citations in the conclusion output.
  

• Numbered dialogue history

  Using the -l option, dialogue history now displays numbered messages for easier reading in long conversations.

• Live reasoning progress

  For reasoning models such as GPT-5, the Admin Companion client now shows live reasoning progress during the “Thinking...” phase.

• Streaming system command generation

  System commands are now streamed as they are generated, so you can see commands or scripts in real time as they are produced, reducing wait time.

• Lower cost via reasoning token efficiency

  Backend communication now with reduced reasoning-token usage in many scenarios.

• Reasoning tokens logged

  The admin-companion.bill now lists reasoning token usage (a subset of completion tokens), alongside total completion token usage.

• Persistent background information

  New options -b, -sb, and -rb let you set, show, and remove persistent system context
  This helps Admin Companion better understand system details (e.g., installed services, non-standard log directories, etc.).
  The information is automatically included with every request, eliminating the need for repeated investigations.

• Updated command-line parameters

  Some parameters have been renamed to better reflect their purpose.
  Since the tool is always executed manually, this should not cause disruptions.
  Topic handling:
  • -t: Set new topic (unchanged)
  • -st: Show current topic (new)
  • -rt: Remove current topic (was -r)
  Sending OS release information:
  • -er: Enable (was -a for allow)
  • -dr: Disable (was -d)
Important note for upgrading existing installations

The dialogue histories between pre-5.0 and 5.0+ client versions are not compatible.
Your current dialogue history will be deleted with this upgrade.

This client requires Admin Companion dialogue backend service v5.00 and a new color code,
therefore the installation process will update /etc/admin-companion/admin-companion.cfg.
If you customized this file, the installer will prompt you to choose which version to keep.
Ensure you either apply the new version or manually merge the new file contents into yours after installation.

The delivered /etc/admin-companion/api-key file has also been updated to remove a deprecation comment about key location. If you entered your API key in that file from a previous installation, you can safely keep your existing file.

19/August/2025: Version 4.0-32

• Streaming output

  Client now supports streaming output, which allows to see the response as it is generated by the AI model.
  To do so, the client was updated to use v3.0 backend server interface, which supports streaming output.

• Optimization in edge case handling

  We optimized the handling in cases, when commands output binary data.
  

• Added Support for Debian 13 (Trixie) and Ubuntu 25.04

  With this version, we add support for Debian 13 (Trixie) and Ubuntu up to 25.04.
  

• End of support for Debian 10 (Buster) and Ubuntu up to 19.10

  Debian 10 (Buster) and Ubuntu before 20.4 are no longer supported by Admin Companion.
  

• New API key handling

  Due to security considerations, the API key is now removed from the system wide configuration file (/etc/admin-companion/admin-companion.cfg) and from the configuration database.
  There are three other options to store the API key now:
  • Using an environment variable ADMIN_COMPANION_KEY (user specific).
  • Using a local user file in $HOME/.admin-companion/api-key (user specific)
  • Using a dedicated, system wide credentials file /etc/admin-companion/api-key (system wide).
  
  See the documentation for more details about the API key handling.
  
  
  Important note for upgrading existing installations
  
  If you upgrade from an old Admin Companion version, the active API key will be automatically migrated from the configuration file
  /etc/admin-companion/admin-companion.cfg
  to the new, dedicated system wide API key file
  /etc/admin-companion/api-key
  The active API key will be removed from the configuration file then. If you have additional API keys commented out in your configuration file, we recommend to move the commented ones manually to the api-key file.
  If you have a fresh installation, please make sure to set the API key in one of the three ways mentioned above, otherwise the client will not work. See the documentation for more details.
  
  

17/June/2025: Version 3.2-156

• Fix to flush client console output early.

11/June/2025: Version 3.1-149

• Added support for OpenAI's o4-mini model.
• Changed the default model from o3-mini to o4-mini.
• The -m parameter now supports selecting o3-mini, o4-mini, or gpt-4o.
• The model used to answer each request is now always displayed.
• Switched to new signing key: admin-companion-2025.pub

20/March/2025: Version 3.0-137

• Now supporting OpenAI's model o3-mini
• Added parameter -m to choose the model to be used. Default is o3-mini. gpt-4o can be chosen if needed.
• Internal optimizations and update to the latest API structure

07/February/2025: Version 2.3-113 released

• Including admin companion client version number into API call as a preparation for better future backward compatibility of the API
• Including the option to send the machine's OS release number to the API for better tailoring the resonses to the specific machine's release
• Implemented command line option "-a" to allow sending OS release number to the API.
• Implemented command line option "-d" to des-allow sending OS release number to the API.

28/November/2024: Version 2.2-97 released

• Major optimization in dialogue history handling.
• Due to increased context window, now also remembering executed commands and its output and not only the conclusion.
  This leads to enhanced reasoning and better overall results in problem solution.
• Output of conversation history now also shows executed commands and its outputs.
• Enhanced handling of incompliant content.

24/September/2024: Version 2.1-87 released

• Added support for    Raspberry PI OS
• Added support for AARCH64 (ARM64) architecture.
• Added backward compatibility with RedHat 8.
• Separated backports for Debian 10 and Debian 11 into distinct packages to enhance security measures on Debian 11.
• Used darker color for conclusion output to be better visible on white background screens.

04/September/2024: Version 2.0-80 released

• Added backward compatibility to Debian 11 (Bullseye) and Debian 10 (Buster)

07/June/2024: Version 2.0 released

• Admin Companion client now uses port 443 for backend server connections to increase compatibility with standard firewall rules.
• Admin Companion client now uses domain api.admin-companion.ai.
• Now allows to define the maximum request token size (context window) on client side
  • Added default "max request token size" as a parameter to the configuration file.
  • "max request token size" can be temporarily changed with command line parameter -s
• Increased the maxium context windonw size from 4'000 to 120'000. This allows to work in much bigger context and with bigger files. Default is 8'000
• Now using GPT-4o, the latest and most powerful language model of OpenAI.
• Optimized handling of command line parameters.
• Bugfixes

10/May/2024: Version 1.1 released

• Improved error handling: Issues with the subscription or API key are directly displayed in the output now. So there is no need to dive into the client log file for these issues anymore.

21/December/2023: Version 1.0 released

• First publicly available release of Admin Companion client.