Changelog

5.1 Tesseract

October 16, 2026 · updated October 18

• Gargantua 2 is the main AI, and Cooper is discontinued (October 18): ProjectOpenTARS/Gargantua-2 is a Qwen3.5 2B trained by us, 1.6 GB (the first Gargantua was 2.5 GB), and it sees the screen itself. In our test of 84 everyday tasks it did 72 right and ran no dangerous command. The installer and the first-run window download it, Settings offers it to anyone who has the old Gargantua (nothing is removed), and it is preferred when both are installed. Cooper, the separate vision model, is discontinued: it is no longer downloaded, trained or supported, and opentars --cooper only says so. openTARS asks Gargantua 2 the same screen questions, with the model that is already in memory, so there is no extra download and no model swap. An old Cooper still installed is used only when there is no Gargantua 2. Older openTARS versions keep working with the old Gargantua.
• Gargantua reads web searches (October 18): with web search on (SearXNG, Settings → Cloud), a search only asks SearXNG and Gargantua answers from the first results instead of from memory. Nothing opens on your computer unless you ask for it (“open it in the browser”) or search a site with its own search, like YouTube. If SearXNG is down, it says so instead of opening Google. Gargantua does this through the search tool it was trained with, so nothing changes in its training.
• Probes in your own words work with Gargantua 2 (October 18): the models were never trained to turn a mission into a plan (the Lite got 2 of 16 plans right). openTARS now builds the plan itself when the mission is clear (a folder, a page, a feed, the battery, the temperature, a program closing or using too much memory, a git project) and only asks the model otherwise, forcing a valid format and fixing targets that do not exist. In our tests on 16 missions it got 15 of 16 for Gargantua 2 and 14 of 16 for the Lite; missions that ask to delete, move, send or install are refused by the code.
• Answers in your language, and honest about the browser (October 18): Gargantua answered in Portuguese to about 4 in 10 requests written in English; openTARS now tells it to answer in English when you write in English (0 in 32 in our test, and the English tasks of our proof did not get worse). When a web search only asked SearXNG and the answer still says it “opened the results in the browser”, openTARS adds a note that nothing was opened.
• Better tool use (October 18): a short follow-up like “use the tool”, “do it for real” or “try again” now carries the previous request, so the AI does that request instead of guessing; a site name asked as an app (“open google”) opens the site instead of a browser that only has the word in its name; after a web search the AI is told it has not read the results, and if it still answers from memory, openTARS says so under the answer. Murph also learned more: in our evaluation it went from 163 to 170 of 175 phrases in five languages.
• Murph and Probes (October 18): Murph now recognizes short chat messages that only continue a conversation, so they are not taken for commands; a Probe mission that asks to delete, install or change anything is refused by the code itself, and every Probe gets a name taken from its mission.
• New Gargantua Lite (October 17): 0.6 GB with vision, down from 1.1 GB without it, and 70 of 84 everyday tasks in our test, up from 63. It runs on the processor alone. Computers without a graphics card and with little memory download ProjectOpenTARS/Gargantua-2:lite. (October 18) The Lite was retrained with screens: it now finds the right button in 29 of 40 tries when openTARS asks the way it does to click, up from 12, and does 68 of 84 everyday tasks (the previous one did 69 in the same run). Gargantua 2 still does it better (34 of 40) and Settings offers it to Lite users. If you downloaded the Lite on October 17 or 18, run ollama pull ProjectOpenTARS/Gargantua-2:lite to get the new one.
• Fixes (October 17): openTARS no longer pushes the AI to act when it only guessed that a chat message was a request; a model that needs a newer Ollama now says how to update it.
• Three modes: Lite (chat, microphone, attachments), Base (adds history, memory, routines, Probes and the cloud) and Pro (adds advanced settings and diagnostics). Chosen on first run, switchable in Settings; updating from 5.0 keeps you in Pro.
• Probes: small watchers for a folder, a web page, news and releases (RSS, a YouTube channel, GitHub releases), this computer (battery, temperature, CPU, internet, system updates), a program or a git project. Creating one is a three-step guide with a fixed rule and no AI; "in my own words" still turns a mission into a plan you check. They only read; pages and feeds only from public addresses, at most every 15 minutes. Off by default; keys, passwords and browser data are off limits. Optional actions you choose: move what it finds to a folder, or send it to the trash after you approve each time.
• Cooper 1.2: the installer and the first-run window now download ProjectOpenTARS/cooper:1.2 (SmolVLM2 500M, about 636 MB) instead of the older 2.7 GB model. An older Cooper that is already installed keeps working; when both are installed, 1.2 is used.
• Fixes: the window no longer crashes on computers with a damaged font cache (openTARS keeps its own); full-screen terminal programs such as htop or vim open in a terminal window instead of failing; with both ~/Documents and ~/Documentos, a file is found in either one.
• Alerts: a bell next to the clock shows how many alerts you have and opens a panel on click, even with the window closed; inside the app, the same bell at the top and a bar for new alerts.
• Gargantua Lite on computers without a graphics card and with little memory, from the first run and the installer.
• Terminal: opentars -p for scripts (with JSON output), resume, compact, context, plan and auto modes, file edits with a diff and your approval, undo, AGENTS.md, /init and !command.
• Cloud with your Ollama account, no key to copy. The footer now also warns when the chosen model is an Ollama cloud model.
• Web search through SearXNG, off by default.
• When a model fails mid-request, the automatic switch never drops to a much smaller model.

5.0 Tesseract

October 6 to 15, 2026

October 15 update: two small Gargantuas are now available as optional downloads, Gargantua Code and Gargantua Lite (see the models section on the home page).

October 15 update: Gargantua now uses its tools much more reliably. openTARS was asking Ollama to turn reasoning off in a way that made Gargantua think it should answer right away, so sometimes it replied without doing the task. In our tests Gargantua used its tools in 18 of 18 tries, up from 15.

October 13 update: closing openTARS now unloads only the models it loaded itself (and Cooper), instead of every model in Ollama, so other programs that share Ollama keep theirs. The “unload all models” command still unloads everything. Also removed a voice help line that mentioned options that do not exist.

October 11 update: the mascot is now called KIPP, after the third robot of Interstellar, and its tips were rewritten. The Update button now really installs the new package (before, it could say it had updated without changing anything), checks the result, and looks for updates every 6 hours while the window is open.

A new window built in Qt, on top of the lean 4.6 core: Ollama underneath, Cooper looking at the screen and Gargantua as the official AI.

• First run in five steps: language, Ollama, optional cloud, downloading Gargantua with a progress bar you can pause, and a quick test.
• History by day with search, a model picker, a Stop button and the steps of each task with their timings.
• Risky commands turn into a card with Allow and Deny.
• Voice is back, fully local: hold to talk, continuous, or the wake word “TARS”.
• Attachments, a visible memory you can edit, and scheduled routines that never decide alone.
• An optional cloud with your own account, off by default and never used by the automatic model choice.
• Updates noticed by the app itself, verified against GitHub and installed after you confirm.
• A quick bar on Ctrl+Alt+Space.
• A code audit with about 50 fixes: atomic settings files, more commands that ask first (rm with wildcards, find -exec rm, curl | sh, ssh), and the cloud key never passed to commands.

Updated on October 10

• A mascot that walks along the chat, shows what the AI is doing and naps after a few quiet minutes.
• A terminal styled like today's AI command-line tools: welcome panel, steps you can follow, a spinner and a clearer /help.
• Fixes: opentars --voz, turning the update check fully off, commands ending in &, and more mv commands that ask first.

4.6 Endurance

October 4 and 5, 2026

The lighter release: it only removed what was heavy or unused.

• Ollama only: external servers and importing .gguf files from other programs were removed.
• Only Cooper looks at the screen: OCR, the zoom grid and the fallback vision model were removed.
• Less dead code and fewer duplicated command-line options.
• Voice, attachments and routines were removed here and came back in 5.0.

Still available for download at the end of the install section.

4.5 Endurance

October 3 and 4, 2026

• Cooper, a vision model fine-tuned to find buttons, read fields and list windows on a screenshot.
• WSL 1 and 2, with the Ollama running on Windows found automatically.
• A terminal mode for servers and SSH sessions without a screen.
• From 28 to 19 tools, and more than 40 fixes, including Stop while a model loads and a real right click.

4.0 Endurance

September 30 to October 2, 2026

• Gargantua, the official AI: a Qwen3 4B trained to use openTARS, downloaded by the installer.
• Murph, a tiny classifier that decides the type of each request in about 0.2 ms.
• Longer tasks, the real names of your personal folders, and a notice when a new version comes out.