2026-11-09

In the seven days since our last note, we shipped to production 43 times.

📝 Knowledge Base: a home for your software specifications

The Knowledge Base has grown well beyond help articles. It's now a full home for the software specifications you write with your customers, and it keeps each spec tied to the work that delivers it.

• Three tabs: Internal Articles, External Articles and Specifications now each have their own tab on Browse and Manage, and New Article starts as the type of the tab you're on.
• Write specs with your clients: open a category to them, and signed-in customers can draft specs on their portal's Specs page and discuss them with your team. A change to a published spec can wait for approval from a publisher or from the client.
• Move specs through your own stages, shown as badges to your team and your clients. Watch a spec or a whole category to hear when it changes stage, gets a new version or has a change proposed.
• From spec to work: create work items straight from a spec, be offered them when it reaches a stage, or let an automation create them. Every spec shows its work items, and every item its specs.
• Specs stay true to what shipped: when the build differs, click Record as-built change on the item. DevStride updates the description, keeps the old one in history, and writes the same change into every linked spec. The new Spec sync column finds every item whose spec has fallen behind.
• Regulated teams can import requirements from OpenRegulatory Formwork as specs, and send evidence and test results back.

📚 Client spec drafts · Spec stages · Specs and work items

🎧 Service Desk: open tickets for clients and copy more people

• Open a ticket for a client with New ticket in the inbox, or by emailing your desk and copying the client. The client becomes the requester and can get one branded email saying their request is open. You need the Manage requesters and Create items and workstreams permissions.
• Copy people on a ticket from its drawer. They get your public replies, and their answers join the same conversation. People a customer copies on their own email are added too, and everyone copied shows on the portal.
• Share files with customers: turn on Share with customer for a file in a ticket's Assets tab and it appears on their portal ticket. Files a customer attached to a request form now show there too.
• Every attached file is kept when a customer emails you, including HTML and SVG files, which are saved as safe downloads.
• Forward the same customer email twice and it now lands on one ticket instead of opening a duplicate.
• Portal pages open in light mode, and request forms fill in your name and email when you're signed in.

📚 Working a ticket · Customer Support Portal

🔄 Azure DevOps two-way sync

An admin can switch on two-way sync for an Azure DevOps project. Your edits, moves between parents, sprints and teams, and new, archived, deleted and restored items then reach Azure DevOps, and comments flow both ways. If Azure DevOps refuses a change, DevStride shows you why and puts the item back. Sync health lists anything that couldn't be copied. It stays off until an admin turns it on.

📚 Azure DevOps

🗂 Tables, exports and boards

• Exports match your view: the same columns, order and sort, plus an Export details section recording how the file was made.
• Pull Requests column shows each item's linked GitHub pull requests, coloured by state. Hover for the title, or click to open it.
• Sort by Parent, and titles now sort naturally, so "Story 2" comes before "Story 10".
• New items go to the bottom of their list, and Gantt charts can Sort by Start Date.
• Unarchive a board from its menu with Show Archived on. Large boards also open and scroll faster.

📚 Manage Items table

🤖 Agentic Development

Agent Fleet moved to Settings → AI Assistants, redesigned, for anyone with the Manage agent claims permission.

The DevStride Claude Code plugin shipped 32 releases this week, from 3.18.1 to 3.45.0. The highlights:

• Agents work together across machines: each story is claimed before it's built, so two agents never build the same one. Every session reports what it's doing, so a stuck session's work is freed within minutes.
• Releases run themselves: finished work can start the next release, and a fully reviewed release can merge on your written standing yes. If finished work has waited too long, a release backstop starts the release itself. A Release hold keeps work back until a date, or until another item is live.
• One release train, reviewed before it lands: larger changes get a full local review first, a settled review leaves proof on GitHub, and the loop merges only when every required check is green on the exact reviewed commit.
• Specs stay true: when a story ships differently from its description, the loop records the as-built change in DevStride, which updates every linked spec.
• Consequence notices: before merging a change that could cost money, remove something callers use or cut off access, the loop @-mentions the item's creator.
• Easier to run: a published config schema that /devstride:doctor checks, a two-line status line, a prompt when a newer plugin is out, and release steps you can rerun on their own.

A few releases need git 2.38 or a config change, so read the notes before you update.

📚 Plugin updates · The delivery loop

🏦 Bank autopay for invoices

Invoice customers can now pay automatically from a US bank account. Contact us to learn more.

📚 Subscription and billing

✋ Worth checking

Weekly automations now run on the day you picked. Before, they ran a day late, and Saturday-only ones never ran.

Service Desk reply emails now name the staff member who replied, for example "Jane Doe (Acme Support)". To use your desk name only, turn off Show the replying staff member's name in emails in Service Desk settings.

API users: old Lane and Folder names are now refused with a message naming the new one.

📚 API keys · Enabling Service Desk

✨ And plenty more

• Descriptions save however you leave an item, even when you click away or press Back, and if a teammate changed it meanwhile, you're asked which to keep.
• Saved views tell you when the page no longer matches the view, and the × beside a view no longer deletes it.
• Microsoft Teams notifications now arrive reliably.
• Fixes: right-click dialogs such as Apply Template… stay open, and the Custom Lead Time report loads.