{"slug": "changelog-august-6-2026", "title": "Changelog – August 6, 2026", "summary": "Val Town released its August 6, 2026 changelog, introducing a new docs site, Discover page, and updated Townie models, with DeepSeek V4 Flash now the default model, being ~100x cheaper and roughly as intelligent as Opus. The company also added ChatGPT/Codex plugins, AGENTS.md support, tags, monograms, environment variable API access, and new MCP tools, among other updates.", "body_md": "Many changes [since early July](/changelog-2026-07-02): new docs site, new Discover page, new Townie models, new app layout, and more.\n\n## Docfooding\n\nThe Val Town [docs](https://docs.val.town/) are now written and hosted\n[on Val Town](https://www.val.town/x/valdottown/docs). You can read about that\n[docfooding](/docfooding) effort on the blog.\n\n## Discover\n\nTo dislodge your codewriter's block, we have a new\n[Discover](https://val.town/discover) page on val.town with templates, staff\npicks, and integrations.\n\n## Whack-a-model\n\nDeepSeek V4 Flash is now Townie's default model. It's ~100x cheaper and roughly\nas intelligent as Opus. We also added Fable 5 and Opus 5 to Townie, because to\neach her own. The game of\n[whack-a-model](https://blog.val.town/glm5.2-and-sonnet5) persists, though, with\n[Qwen 3.8 atop the charts today](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200652).\n\n## ChatGPT Plugin + AGENTS.md\n\nAfter adding our plugin to Claude's official marketplace last month, we did the\nsame for\n[Codex](https://docs.val.town/guides/prompting/openai-codex)/[ChatGPT](https://docs.val.town/guides/prompting/chatgpt).\n\nOne more piece of news in agentland: we now\n[support](https://blog.val.town/agents-dot-md) the `AGENTS.md`\n\n[convention](https://agents.md) via a special `.config`\n\nval. Those agent\ninstructions are injected into Townie chats and MCP sessions.\n\n## Layout\n\nJackson redesigned and implemented new val.town global navigation app chrome. There's now an org switcher, left sidebar, searchable val dashboard, and an updated footer.\n\n## Tags!\n\nYou can now add tags to vals in val settings.\n\n## Monograms\n\nVals now have little placeholder monograms instead of defaulting to your profile picture as the val's image.\n\n## Environment variables\n\nEnvironment variable groups are now accessible through our API — create, update,\nand attach environment variables for your org. Thanks to our friends at\n[Herd](https://herd.eco/home) for the feature request.\n\nYou can also now show and hide secrets while editing environment variables in the UI.\n\n## Sprig Sans\n\nWe've been sprinkling [Sprig Sans](https://www.fairetype.com/fonts/sprig-sans),\nthe typeface on our new homepage, across other pages. Gosh, type foundries\nalways have the coolest websites.\n\n## std/openai\n\nWe updated the [std/openai](https://www.val.town/x/std/openai) val to use\nOpenAI's latest models.\n\n## MCP branching tools\n\nNew MCP tools: `merge_branch`\n\nand `delete_branch`\n\n. That's 54 tools now, so Steve\nmade some [docs](https://mcp-docs.val.run/) (in a val, ofc).\n\n## HTTP analytics\n\nHTTP analytics in a val now have more useful x-axis time labels.\n\n## Lightning round\n\n- PRs for vals now show the author's handle instead of their org's name\n- We fixed a bug where some Pro users were seeing the wrong Townie limits in settings\n- You can now link to a val's Connections page (and its other pages, like env\nvars) in its README by writing markdown, like\n`[Connect to Slack](/connections)`\n\n- The first HTTP file in a val is now auto-pinned so that a preview will appear on the val's home page. You can change a val's pinned HTTP file in settings\n- When creating a val, we now present an inline warning when a val description is\ntoo long. Thanks\n[Nico](https://nicobaier.com/)for the suggestion - We fixed a tiny text overflow problem in Townie, e.g. when rendering long URLs\n- The MCP server can now directly upload blobs up to 1 MB, or 10 MB if the blob is hosted at a URL\n- We fixed the CLI command to rename an org\n- The Townie/MCP system prompt now documents val transfers between orgs\n- Code search is now available on public vals (thanks,\n[Nico](https://nicobaier.com/), for reporting)\n\n**We're hiring!**\n\nAre you an infra engineer who cares about the joy of programming?", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/changelog-august-6-2026", "canonical_source": "https://blog.val.town/changelog-2026-08-06", "published_at": "2026-08-06 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-13 15:35:54.590022+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-products", "large-language-models", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["Val Town", "DeepSeek V4 Flash", "Opus", "Fable 5", "Qwen 3.8", "ChatGPT", "Codex", "Herd"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/changelog-august-6-2026", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/changelog-august-6-2026.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/changelog-august-6-2026.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/changelog-august-6-2026.jsonld"}}