Release notes: Intent Architect version 4.6

Version 4.6.4

Improvements in 4.6.4

  • Improvement: Intent Architect will now show when a new version is available which can be installed side-by-side with the current version. For example, for major versions or when you're running a beta and a newer final release is available. In such cases automatic updates are not possible so the about dialog will direct you to the downloads page where you can manually download and install the newer version, you will also need to manually uninstall the old version should you no longer want it.

Version 4.6.3

Improvements in 4.6.3

  • Improvement: The Execute Script dialog in each Designer now allows users to create and save multiple scripts to the versioned file system for easy sharing across the team.

Multiple scripts

Fixes in 4.6.3

  • Fixed: The Visual Studio solution will now get named correctly when using the Copy Application functionality.
  • Fixed: Ignored file tracking (the output.config.xml file) is now copied when creating a sample application.
  • Fixed: Associations no longer show as dirty when adding a new child element to the same parent.

Version 4.6.2

Improvements in 4.6.2

  • Improvement: Updated LLM provider and model lists to include support for the latest industry models, ensuring compatibility with the newest releases.

  • Improvement: Significantly improved designer performance when working with a very large number of elements.

  • Improvement: It is now possible to filter items in either pane of the mappings screens to dramatically improve the experience of working with very large and complex mapping configurations.

    • Before applying any filtering: Adv Mapping Before Filtering

    • After applying Hide Mapped filter on both sides: Adv Mapping Hide Mapped

    • Filter fields by name: Adv Mapping Filter by Name

Fixes in 4.6.2

  • Fixed: Certain errors which occurred when loading stereotypes or their properties would sometimes provide opaque errors or would navigate to elements which weren't the one the stereotype applied to it.
  • Fixed: Save All button causing designers to attempt saving while packages are busy processing, which can be triggered by other designers saving. This can cause bugs (e.g. Mapping variable name removed when Save All used).
  • Fixed: Diff intermittently not showing the right-hand side file making the file look like a deletion.
  • Fixed: Performance issue when selecting many elements in large models causing delays in showing context-menus.
  • Fixed: Hints under settings in the Setting tab would wrap and overlap the subsequent field.
  • Fixed: (Linux) Intent Architect would fail to start when X11 was not present (i.e. only Wayland was available).
  • Fixed: (Linux) Under certain circumstances one or more Intent Architect processes would not exit themselves when the main window was closed.
  • Fixed: Issue where certain AI Providers (specifically Google Gemini and Ollama) would fail to initialize or process requests correctly.

Version 4.6.1

Improvements in 4.6.1

  • Improvement: Toggling the AI Assistant window (F8) will now move focus to the text input field.
  • Improvement: The Software Factory will now show a descriptive error when there is already another Software Factory process for the same application at the same path.

Fixes in 4.6.1

  • Fixed: When selecting the AI Assistant text input, it auto-selects all the text.
  • Fixed: The Software Factory would do an extra needless write of temporary staging files under certain circumstances sometimes resulting in phantom changes in Software Factory diffs.
  • Fixed: Mappings would not be deleted when the source / target element was deleted leading to errors that the user would then need to correct.
  • Fixed: The "Template" tab under "Manage Modules" would not respect filters such as compatible and pre-release versions.
  • Fixed: The "has possibly destructive changes" icon in the Software Factory change list was white instead of yellow.

Version 4.6.0

We're super excited to announce the release of Intent Architect v4.6.0, which focuses on integrating AI directly into the platform and a step closer to offering an "AI-native" experience to users. To enable this, we've introduced an Integrated AI Assistant as the flagship feature for 4.6.0, allowing seamless access to documentation and agentic control of the platform's designers.

Highlights in 4.6.0

Integrated AI Assistant

The new Integrated AI Assistant feature provides an in-product assistant to help developers understand and evolve their solution design. It has access to the entire Intent Architect documentation site, and several powerful tools to access and modify the existing design of the systems.

Developers can use it to answer questions about the current workspace, explain how existing elements fit together, and propose design changes to meet new requirements. The assistant can also inspect models and diagrams to summarize structure, highlight dependencies, and identify gaps or inconsistencies.

AI Assistant Example

Example use of the AI assistant to create a simple e-commerce domain. The agent was able to design the domain from a simple natural language prompt.

The Integrated AI Assistant has 3 different modes:

  • Ask - For analyzing and answering questions with read-only access to the designers.
  • Agent - For instructing the LLM to read and make simple modifications to the designers.
  • Plan - For larger tasks, Plan mode offers the user a way to design a step-by-step implementation plan with the LLM and then to convert this into a structured execution plan.
Multiple Provider Integration

The Integrated AI Assistant can also be connected to the most popular AI providers (e.g. OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc.). This can be done simply by specifying an API Key for the relevant provider in the User Settings.

Multiple Provider Integration

Example showing both OpenAI and Anthropic models available when both are configured.

Daily Budget

In an effort to make this new feature accessible to our entire community, and to show our appreciation to you all, we've made the feature accessible to all existing users and created a Daily Budget of 150 FREE credits for use with OpenAI models. Note that this is for a limited period of time and may change later.

No API Key is required to access these free credits, however adding your own OpenAI API Key in the User Settings will remove the limit completely and no longer access OpenAI through the Intent Architect organization's account. We also understand that some organizations would want this option disabled, which can be done by emailing this request to support@intentarchitect.com.

AI Assistant Daily Budget

Integrated diff tool in the Software Factory

To make it even simpler to review pending Software Factory changes Intent Architect has now integrated file diffing capabilities directly into the Software Factory changes dialogue:

Screenshot of the Software Factory with a diff tool integrated

Typical diff viewing options as well as the ability to save changes are available above the right side of the diff:

Diff options

As part of the above changes, the list of files has been changed to be a tree view so as to require less screen real estate as well as making it more clear where files are being output to.

The toolbar buttons above the file list can be used to choose filtering options or toggle between "flat" and "tree" views of the change list:

Change list buttons

Synchronize code to design

A common request we've received is being able to take changes made to files in your IDE and have them imported back into Intent Architect, particularly for simple changes like the adding or changing of a property type.

The Software Factory will now offer this for templates which have had support added to them.

For example a Notes property has been added to an entity in your IDE and when running the Software Factory it wants to remove it, but it is also showing the "Synchronize code to design" button next to the change:

Code to design synchronization available

On clicking the icon the Software Factory minimizes, the relevant designer will be opened and focussed, and the changes applied. In the following screenshot notice the dirty indicator on the Notes attribute:

Designer with code synchronized into it

You can then save and the Software Factory will no longer want to remove those changes from the file.

Initially this functionality has been added to the Domain Entity classes and contract DTOs, but we will be progressively rolling it out to other templates over time.

To try out this functionality, install at least these versions of the following modules:

  • Intent.Application.Dtos 4.5.0-pre.2
  • Intent.Entities 5.2.0-pre.3

Application Overview Tab

The Application Overview tab aims to make the mechanisms of Intent Architect clear, particularly for new users, by highlighting the flow of Designer metadata, Architecture and Settings into the Software Factory executions to drive code changes in the Codebase. Each of the components can be clicked to navigate to its aspect of the system.

Application Overview Tab

Potentially breaking changes in 4.6.0

Important

.NET 10 SDK now required for running the Software Factory CLI on CI/CD servers

At least version 10 of the .NET SDK is now required to be installed on CI/CD servers making use of the Software Factory CLI.

For reasons of performance improvements and to allow module authors to leverage the latest .NET features, Intent Architect has been internally upgraded to run on .NET 10.

Our Software Factory CLI article has an example of installing additional .NET SDKs on Azure Pipelines while other CI/CD environments should be very similar, but please don't hesitate to reach out to our support should you like any assistance.

NOTE: This requirement is not applicable to the Intent Architect the desktop application as it ships with its own runtime.

Improvements in 4.6.0

  • Improvement: Icons added to tabs.

    Icons in tabs

  • Improvement: Focus is highlighted more clearly in the Solution Explorer.

  • Improvement: Software Factories now auto-start when opening up new solutions. This enhancement aims to make it more obvious when there are outstanding changes and to "warm up" the Software Factory ahead of the user's changes. Which applications have active Software Factories are now saved to the user's solution preferences so that they are started automatically when the solution is opened again in the future.

  • Improvement: The Software Factory close button now minimizes the dialog instead of shutting down the process. This aims to ensure that software factories remain "hot" and active by avoiding reflexive shutting down of the process. To shut down the Software Factory, the user can right-click the task in the taskbar and select the Shutdown option, or simply use the middle mouse click on the process.

  • Improvement: Restyled the login page to align with the new website design.

  • Improvement: Association End Properties now hide disabled Is Navigable, Is Nullable and Is Collection options if their value is also false.

  • Improvement: The Dynamic Form Tree-view control now features a display-function per node to provide a rich text display over the ordinary plain text.

  • Improvement: Upgraded Intent Architect to internally use .NET 10 which has performance improvements as well as allowing module authors to use any .NET features only available from .NET 10.

  • Improvement: Added ? icon documentation link to components in the Create New Application(s) wizard.

  • Improvement: Added Show installed only to the Modules Manager's Template, which defaults to true. This aims to reduce the noise of the other architectural components and to bring the application's current architectural stack into focus.

  • Improvement: Improved performance for indicating when module updates are available.

  • Improvement: Added confirmation to Unloading Packages if they are dirty since unsaved changes could be lost.

Issues fixed in 4.6.0

  • Fixed: Domain suggestions to create CRUD CQRS Services fail to find the new Entity if the designer has not already been saved.
  • Fixed: Stereotype Properties not listed in Search Everywhere when searching by their ID.
  • Fixed: Reopening of previous tabs sometimes changed their order.
  • Fixed: When renaming an Application not within an intent folder, an Index was outside the bounds of the array. error would occur.
  • Fixed: Module migrations and other module tasks would not work for modules with the "Enable Factory Extensions" module setting unchecked.
  • Fixed: Clearing out a tree view filter manually doesn't automatically scroll to the selected element. Now will scroll that selected element into the center of the panel.
  • Fixed: Markdown displayed in popovers in the designers would not correctly render certain markdown.
  • Fixed: Diagram popover width could become too large and overflow out of the visual diagram.
  • Fixed: Checkboxes in the Software Factory would use operating system colors which could make them visually clash with the rest of Intent Architect's colors.