January Changelog

February 1, 2025

Context kicked off 2024 with a major update that enhances every aspect of our AI-powered workspace. From smoother research capabilities and revamped presentation tools to powerful spreadsheet handling and refined UI elements, this release focuses on making complex workflows feel effortless. Whether you're conducting deep market research, crafting data-rich presentations, or collaborating with your team, you'll find significant improvements in both functionality and user experience. Let's dive into the key updates that make Context even more powerful and intuitive.

Core AI and Context Enhancements

Deep Research & Fast Research Improvements

Expanded Web Research Coverage: Context can now pull a broader range of data from external web sources, handling deeper crawling and multi-page ingestion. Improved Summaries & Sources: Context returns more detailed summaries while preserving citation links. The Citation interface across both Deep and Fast Research has been updated with circular citation indicators.

Multi-Step Tool Orchestration

Advanced Tool-Call Logic: Refactoring of how Context chains multiple tools (like spreadsheets, document editors, or presentation creators) in a single workflow. This ensures minimal context loss and better performance for end-to-end tasks (e.g., “Use data from the spreadsheet to generate a visually appealing report”). Improved planning: Context is more adept at “planning steps” for large tasks such as multistep

Enhanced Prompting & Model Integrations

Refined Prompt Architecture: We introduced more structured and scenario-specific prompts for tasks like “Deep Market Analysis” or “Management Presentation,” ensuring the AI’s output matches enterprise-level detail and language. Multiple Model Support: Expanded usage of models where appropriate, and experimented with usage of other models for smaller tasks like parsing data.

Document Creation & Editing

Rich Text Editor Transition to CKEditor

Upgraded Editing Experience: We replaced our legacy Tiptap solution with CKEditor 5. This provides a more powerful document editing environment

Drag and drop to rearrange elements within a document
Links and Autolinks
Image support
Advanced clipboard support for external sources including Word and Google Docs

Streamlined Export: Users can export polished documents in multiple formats (PDF, DOCX) without breaking embedded formatting (e.g., charts, images).
Collaborative Editing & Live Previews: Multiple team members can view and edit documents with fewer conflicts. Live previews of formatting changes are displayed in real time.

DOCX-to-HTML Conversion & Vice Versa

Built-In Conversion Endpoint: Context can handle DOCX file ingestion and automatically opens into a window for preview purposes.
Extended File Support: In addition to PDF imports and reading, the system can parse Word, Excel (CSV), and even PowerPoint files, making the conversion process more seamless.

Advanced Report Generation

Multi-Section Templates: We introduced new HTML templates (e.g., Key Questions, Executive Summaries, Qualitative & Quantitative Analysis, Financial Projections, etc.), letting Context generate well-structured business reports.
Streaming & Real-Time Previews: Reports now stream into the editor as they are generated.

Spreadsheet & Data Analysis Upgrades

Spreadsheet Wrappers & CSV Handling

Robust CSV Import & Export: Context can parse complex CSV files, auto-adjust column widths, and reformat the top rows for clearer data representation.
Performance improvements: Improved performance by caching calculations for large datasets, resulting in smoother scrolling and interactions.

Code Interpreter Enhancements

Integrated Data Visualization: More stable code-based generation of bar charts, line charts, or waterfall charts from raw data.
Improved Error Handling: Enhanced fallback if certain Python libraries or data transformations fail, reducing friction for large or custom datasets.

Presentation Pipeline & Slide Deck Improvements

Completely revamped Planning UI

Add and remove specific slides: Users can edit Context slide planning
Rearrange Slides Dynamically: Users can drag slides to reorder them after generation, eliminating the need to manage rigid numeric indexes.
Multiple Layout Templates: New “Gamma Style” decks, plus specialized slides (Key Points, Two-Column, Tables, Executive Summaries) for advanced design variety.

Context Planning & Generation

Consolidated Prompting: We refactored how Context prompts itself for slide content. This ensures more relevant and cohesive slides, particularly in multi-step presentations.
Improved Slide Streaming: Real-time progressive slide generation. Users see partial slides as they are produced, facilitating live input or cancellation if desired.

Seamless Research Integration

Research-to-Presentation Flow: Context can conduct web research independently on each slide if required, gather insights, and place them directly into slides—complete with citations

Team Collaboration & Workspace Features

Team-Based Project Management

Workspace Overhaul: We redesigned the workspace layout, allowing users see all recent projects on the sidebar, switch teams, and move throughout the app.

File Upload & Deletion Improvements

Drag-and-Drop Uploader: Unified, more intuitive drag-and-drop file management in chat input, team pages, and the context engine.
Optimistic UI & Progress Feedback: Users see immediate placeholders for uploading files with progress bars and status notifications.
File Deletion & Error Handling: If any part of the file ingestion fails, partial data is cleaned up automatically, preventing “zombie” references or broken links.

Invitation, Collaboration, & Permissions

Team Invites & Email Templates: Simplified onboarding of external collaborators with new email-based invites and secured tokens.
Open/Decline Flows: Recipients are sent an email with a direct link to accept or decline team invitations with robust error and expiry checks.

Chat, Autoscroll, and UX Refinements

Chat Window Enhancements

Autoscroll Logic Rework: Chat messages now auto-scroll more intelligently, stopping only when a user explicitly overrides the scroll position.
Retry & Error Handling: If an AI reply fails, the user can gracefully retry without losing prior progress in the conversation.
Revamped thinking/reasoning block UI: We’ve updated how the thinking block looks in order

Tooltips & Toasts

Contextual Help: We introduced tooltips guiding new users on advanced features like “Add to scratchpad” or “Attach file.”
Themed Toast Notifications: A reworked black-style toast across the app for success or error states, ensuring messages stand out. Similarly, user-initiated tasks (e.g., “Minimize chat window?”)

Scratchpad

Live Updates: Resolves prior bugs where Context was “stuck writing to scratchpad.” Now it reliably merges new changes.
Diff-Based Editing: Context can produce incremental edits for complex tasks—particularly helpful in brainstorming or drafting a plan before finalizing a document.

Performance, Reliability, and Observability

Langfuse & Telemetry

LLM Cost Tracking: We integrated Langfuse observability, allowing us to track real-time LLM usage costs by user and scenario, ensuring better cost management and usage insights.
OpenTelemetry Instrumentation: The suite logs and traces each AI request, guaranteeing deep visibility into performance bottlenecks or potential user friction.

Database & API Optimizations

Reduced Query Overhead: Team and project retrieval routes were refactored for improved speed (e.g., fewer joins, better indexes). Large teams see near-instant data loads.
Faster Node.js & Build Pipeline: We introduced a “Turbo” dev mode and removed blocking console logs, resulting in lower overhead for real-time collaboration updates.

Resilient Error Handling & Retries

Exponential Backoff: For calls to external AI services or file storage, we added robust backoff strategies to prevent cascading failures if a service is down or overloaded.
Fallback Mechanisms: The app gracefully falls back to local or simplified modes of certain advanced features (e.g., deep crawls in “Firecrawl Beta”) are at capacity.

UI & Branding Improvements

Landing Page & Empty States

Consistent Branding: We refined the user interface for empty states: new color palettes, placeholders, and simplified instructions.
Transparent Favicon & OG Images: Updated branding includes better theming in dark/light modes, plus a more comprehensive open-graph image for sharing links.

Cross-Component Styling

Tailwind & Theming: Introduced new breakpoints for multi-window scaling (1:1:1 or 2:1 column layouts) to handle advanced workflows.
Refined Animations: Smoother transitions and fade-ins for chat messages, loading spinners, tooltips, and slide generation.

Improved Accessibility

Better Screen Reader Support: Key form elements, chat windows, and tooltips now have robust ARIA labels.
Responsive Onboarding: The sign-up flow and onboarding animations adapt to ultrawide monitors, iPads, and mobile devices more gracefully.

Conclusion

We’re focused on delivering a world-class AI office suite that accelerates productivity and collaboration for businesses of all sizes. Context has never been more powerful — now incorporating advanced web research, flexible document editing, robust spreadsheet and data manipulation, and frictionless team collaboration. The result is a highly integrated, intelligent workspace where knowledge workers, project managers, and decision-makers can create, refine, and finalize complex deliverables in seconds.

Join Us in Building the Future

We're assembling a team of world-class engineers, researchers, and product builders to shape the future of the workspace. If you're passionate about pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, we'd love to hear from you.

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