A better first run: Learn in Settings, release history, and a real sample repo

CodeSplash AI 2.4.19 is a patch release, but it changes a part of the app every team notices: the first few minutes.

The biggest user-facing shift is Settings → Learn. Getting started content and release-related content now live in one place inside the app, and that content is indexed in Settings search. If you want to hand CodeSplash to a teammate, or evaluate it yourself without hunting through one-time prompts, this release makes that path more direct.

That matters because onboarding is not just a welcome screen. In a desktop app with Git, agents, Database, Notes, and other modes in one workspace, the hard part is helping someone find the right surface at the right time. Version 2.4.19 adds more of that structure in the product itself.

Settings → Learn is now a real in-app entry point

The new Learn area in Settings adds dedicated entries for:

  • Getting started
  • Releases

Those entries also show up in Settings search, so you can search for Learn content instead of remembering where it lives.

This is a small UI change with practical payoff. A lot of onboarding material used to depend on whether you were on first run or whether a modal happened to be visible. Now there is a stable place to return to later.

What's New now extends past the one-time modal

This release also expands What's New so release content is not limited to the pending update modal.

In 2.4.19, the app adds support for What's New history and richer release entries. The release notes describe this as groundwork for release walkthroughs and related Learn flows, and that is the right way to read it. This is not a broad redesign of the whole onboarding experience. It is the plumbing and UI support that lets release-related content stay accessible after the first dismissal.

If you update, close the modal, and want to revisit what changed later, that path is getting built into the app instead of disappearing after one view.

The Getting Started project now feels like a repository, not a placeholder

The other big improvement is the bundled Getting Started project.

New users now start with a fuller sample repository that includes:

  • Git history
  • tests
  • docs
  • Python scripts
  • SQLite data
  • working-copy states for hands-on exploration

The sample project's own README is very explicit about what to try. It points you to Git → Working copy, suggests launching AI Agents with prompts from AGENTS.md, and calls out opening db/tidepool.sqlite, docs/notes, and docs/architecture.mmd inside CodeSplash.

That is a better onboarding asset than an empty repo or a toy file tree. You can inspect commit history, look at staged and unstaged changes, run into a failing test on purpose, open the bundled SQLite database, and move between docs and code without manufacturing a demo case yourself.

For teams showing CodeSplash to new hires or internal users, this also gives you a better default environment for product walkthroughs.

Guided tours now run on shared infrastructure

A lot of the work in 2.4.19 is under the surface, but it affects reliability.

Guided tours now run on a shared system that covers:

  • first-run onboarding
  • Learn tutorials
  • release walkthroughs

More importantly, guided flows now advance on real app events instead of timers. The shared tour type system in the app explicitly calls this out: steps advance on clicks or on actual app events, never on timers.

That change is concrete. If a tutorial needs the user to open Settings, switch modes, or start an agent session, the flow can wait for that event instead of guessing based on elapsed time. For interactive desktop UI, that is a better foundation than timer-driven sequencing.

Onboarding state tracking is more complete

2.4.19 also improves how the app records onboarding and tutorial progress.

The app now tracks more of the actual path a user takes, including:

  • starts
  • viewed steps
  • completions
  • skips
  • tour starts
  • tour completions
  • abandoned tours
  • sample-project opens

This should make first-run flows more consistent, especially as Learn tutorials and release walkthroughs share the same infrastructure.

There is also deeper QA coverage behind this work. The team added tutorial checks against the real packaged desktop app, including flows that open the bundled Getting Started project and interact with actual highlighted controls. That is internal work, but it supports the same goal: onboarding that behaves like the shipped app because it is being tested as the shipped app.

Smaller fixes in this patch

This release also includes UI stability updates to the admin marketing page header. That is a limited polish fix, not a broad product change, but it shipped in the same patch.

What to try after updating

If you install 2.4.19, these are the best places to start:

  1. Open Settings → Learn and look for Getting started and Releases.
  2. Revisit What's New and check the new release-history support.
  3. Create or open a fresh Getting Started project.
  4. Explore the repo through Git, AI Agents, Database, and Notes.

If you are onboarding someone else, use the bundled sample repo as the starting point. It has enough structure to show real workflows without needing a prepared demo project.

You can download the latest build at https://codesplash.ai/downloads.

Try 2.4.19 and reply with feedback on the Learn flow or the new Getting Started project.