Bristlenose

Open-source user-research transcript analysis.

Point Bristlenose at a folder of interview recordings – videos, audio or transcripts from Zoom, Teams or Google Meet.

It transcribes, identifies moderators and participants, extracts good verbatim quotes, groups them by screen and theme. Filler words are stripped, editorial context is (sparingly) added [thus]. Emotion and strong language are preserved.

The (HTML) report aggregates all your interview quotes.

Click a timecode to watch the video of that quote.

You can check a summary of unused quotes - to ensure nothing crucial was trimmed by the AI - typically ~20% or less of the original.

You can tag and star quotes to organise them. It auto-tags with sentiment analysis to help you identify moments of frustration or delight.

Filter your quotes, and export via CSV to your boards in Miro, Figjam, Mural or Lucidspark, or spreadsheet - for further analysis.

Bristlenose transcribes locally, and can do the thematic analysis on a (built in) local LLM — but for speedy results you'll want an API key from Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Azure OpenAI. For commercial work, check your org's policies on public LLM use.

For a typical study, e.g. 5–8 participant-hours, you'd be looking at roughly $1.50–$2.50 total cost from your LLM provider.

Pre-release software, without warranty. All feedback welcome.

Bristlenose is built by me, Martin Storey, a practising user researcher. It's free and open source under AGPL-3.0.

Help translate Bristlenose into your language on Weblate — see TRANSLATING.md for details.

Sidequest: what is a Bristlenose?

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What it does

The report includes:

• Sections -- quotes grouped by screen or task
• Themes -- cross-participant patterns, surfaced automatically
• Tags -- your own free-text tags with auto-suggest
• Sentiment -- AI-generated badges per quote
• Charts -- histogram of emotions across all quotes
• Friction points -- confusion, frustration, and error-recovery moments flagged for review
• User journeys -- per-participant stage progression
• Per-participant transcripts -- full transcript pages with clickable timecodes, linked from the participant table
• Clickable timecodes -- jump to the exact moment in a popout video player
• Starred quotes -- star, reorder
• Inline editing -- fix transcription errors directly in the report
• Editable participant names -- click the pencil icon to name participants in-browser; export edits as YAML
• Filter and export as CSV into Miro and more
• Keyboard shortcuts -- j/k navigation, s to star, t to tag, / to search, ? for help; multi-select with Cmd+click or Shift+j/k for bulk actions

Install

For LLM analysis, you can use Claude, ChatGPT, Azure OpenAI, Gemini, or Local AI (free, via Ollama) — see Getting an API key below.

macOS (desktop app) — easiest

Download Bristlenose.dmg, drag to Applications, open it. The app prompts for your Claude API key on first launch and bundles everything else (Python, FFmpeg, Whisper). No terminal needed.

First launch: macOS will block it — go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, click "Open Anyway". One time only.

Requires macOS 15 Sequoia, Apple Silicon (M1+).

macOS (Homebrew), Linux, Windows

# macOS (Homebrew) -- handles ffmpeg + Python for you
brew install cassiocassio/bristlenose/bristlenose

# Windows (pipx) -- requires Python, see install guide for details
pipx install bristlenose

# Linux (snap) -- coming soon
# sudo snap install bristlenose --classic

# Linux / macOS / Windows (pipx or uv)
pipx install bristlenose
uv tool install bristlenose    # alternative

If using pipx or uv, you'll also need FFmpeg (brew install ffmpeg on macOS, sudo apt install ffmpeg on Ubuntu, winget install FFmpeg on Windows).

After installing, run bristlenose doctor to verify your setup.

See the installation guide for detailed step-by-step instructions for your platform, including Python/FFmpeg setup and AI provider configuration.

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Getting an API key

If you've used Claude or ChatGPT before, you might only know the chat interface. Bristlenose talks to the same AI models, but through their API (a direct connection for software). This needs a separate API key -- a password that lets bristlenose call the AI on your behalf.

You need one key:

Option A: Claude (by Anthropic)

1. Go to console.anthropic.com and sign up or log in
2. Click Create Key, give it a name (e.g. "bristlenose"), and copy the key
3. Store it securely:

bristlenose configure claude    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store

Option B: ChatGPT (by OpenAI)

1. Go to platform.openai.com and sign up or log in
2. Click Create new secret key, give it a name, and copy the key
3. Store it securely:

bristlenose configure chatgpt    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store

To use ChatGPT instead of the default, add --llm openai to your commands:

bristlenose run interviews -o results/ --llm openai

Option C: Azure OpenAI (enterprise)

If your organisation has a Microsoft Azure contract that includes Azure OpenAI Service:

export BRISTLENOSE_AZURE_ENDPOINT=https://your-resource.openai.azure.com/
export BRISTLENOSE_AZURE_DEPLOYMENT=your-deployment-name
bristlenose configure azure    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store
bristlenose run interviews --llm azure

You'll need your endpoint URL, API key, and deployment name from the Azure portal.

Option D: Gemini (by Google)

1. Go to aistudio.google.com/apikey and sign up or log in
2. Click Create API key, give it a name, and copy the key
3. Store it securely:

bristlenose configure gemini    # validates the key and stores it in your system credential store

To use Gemini instead of the default, add --llm gemini to your commands:

bristlenose run interviews -o results/ --llm gemini

Budget option: Gemini is 5–7× cheaper than Claude or ChatGPT — roughly $0.20 per study instead of $1–3.

Option E: Local AI (via Ollama) — free, no signup

Run analysis entirely on your machine using open-source models. No account, no API key, no cost.

1. Install Ollama (one download, no signup)
2. Run bristlenose — it will offer to set up local AI automatically:

bristlenose interviews

# Or explicitly:
bristlenose run interviews --llm local

If Ollama isn't installed, bristlenose will offer to install it for you (via Homebrew on macOS, snap on Linux).

Trade-offs: Local models are slower (~10 min vs ~2 min per study) and less accurate (~85% vs ~99% JSON reliability). Good for trying the tool; use cloud APIs for production quality.

Use whichever provider you already have an API key for. If you don't have one yet, Option A (Claude) is the default. A typical 8-participant study costs roughly $1--3 with any cloud provider ($0.20 with Gemini).

Note: A ChatGPT Plus/Pro or Claude Pro/Max subscription does not include API access. The API is billed separately — you need an API key from console.anthropic.com or platform.openai.com.

Making your key permanent

macOS and Linux: The recommended way is bristlenose configure (shown in Options A--D above). It validates your key and stores it in your operating system's secure credential store:

• macOS — saved to your login keychain. You can view or delete it in the Keychain Access app (search for "Bristlenose")
• Linux — saved via Secret Service (GNOME Keyring / KDE Wallet). Requires secret-tool to be installed (included by default on most desktop Linux distributions)

The key is loaded automatically on every run — no environment variables needed. Run bristlenose doctor to verify your key is detected (it will show "(Credential Store)" next to the API key check).

Windows: Credential store storage is not yet supported. Set the key permanently with setx (built into Windows):

setx BRISTLENOSE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY "sk-ant-..."

For ChatGPT, use BRISTLENOSE_OPENAI_API_KEY; for Gemini, use BRISTLENOSE_GOOGLE_API_KEY. Close and reopen your terminal after running setx — the variable only takes effect in new windows.

Alternative: shell profile (macOS/Linux). If you prefer environment variables over the credential store, add the export to your shell startup file:

# macOS (zsh is the default shell):
echo 'export BRISTLENOSE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...' >> ~/.zshrc

# Linux (bash is the default shell on most distributions):
echo 'export BRISTLENOSE_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...' >> ~/.bashrc

Then open a new terminal window (or run source ~/.zshrc / source ~/.bashrc).

Alternative: .env file. Create a .env file in your project folder -- see .env.example for a template.

Troubleshooting: Run bristlenose doctor at any time to check your setup — it verifies your API key, FFmpeg, transcription backend, and other dependencies.

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Quick start

bristlenose interviews

That's it. Point it at a folder containing your recordings and it will produce the report inside that folder. Expect roughly 2--5 minutes per participant on Apple Silicon, longer on CPU.

Open interviews/bristlenose-output/bristlenose-interviews-report.html in your browser.

What goes in

Any mix of audio, video, subtitles, or transcripts:

.wav .mp3 .m4a .flac .ogg .wma .aac .mp4 .mov .avi .mkv .webm .srt .vtt .docx

Files sharing a name stem (e.g. p1.mp4 and p1.srt) are treated as one session. Existing subtitles skip transcription.

What comes out

Output goes inside the input folder by default:

interviews/                              # your input folder
├── Session 1.mp4
├── Session 2.mp4
└── bristlenose-output/                  # output folder (created inside input)
    ├── bristlenose-interviews-report.html   # the report -- open this
    ├── bristlenose-interviews-report.md     # Markdown version
    ├── people.yaml                          # participant registry
    ├── assets/                              # static files (CSS, logos, player)
    ├── sessions/                            # per-session transcript pages
    │   ├── transcript_s1.html
    │   └── transcript_s2.html
    ├── transcripts-raw/                     # one .txt + .md per session
    ├── transcripts-cooked/                  # PII-redacted (only with --redact-pii)
    └── .bristlenose/                        # internal files
        └── intermediate/                    # JSON snapshots for `bristlenose render`

Override the output location with --output: bristlenose run interviews/ -o /elsewhere/

More commands

bristlenose run interviews -p "Q1 Usability Study"    # name the project
bristlenose transcribe interviews                        # transcribe, no LLM
bristlenose analyze interviews/bristlenose-output/       # skip transcription, run LLM analysis
bristlenose render interviews/bristlenose-output/        # re-render from JSON, no LLM calls
bristlenose serve interviews                             # browse the report interactively
bristlenose status interviews                            # check project status (read-only)
bristlenose doctor                                       # check dependencies

Configuration

Via .env file, environment variables (prefix BRISTLENOSE_), or bristlenose.toml. See .env.example for all options.

Hardware

Transcription hardware is auto-detected. Apple Silicon uses MLX on Metal GPU. NVIDIA uses faster-whisper with CUDA. Everything else falls back to CPU.

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Roadmap

Analysis

• Your own themes -- create, rename and reorder themes manually, not just the AI-generated ones

Sharing

• Save curated report -- export your starred, tagged, edited report as a standalone file you can share with stakeholders
• .docx export -- download the report as a Word document
• Edit writeback -- save your in-browser corrections back to the transcript files on disk

Platform

• Snap Store -- publish to the Snap Store for one-command install on Ubuntu and other Linux distros
• Windows installer -- native setup wizard so you don't need Python or the command line
• Cross-session moderator linking -- recognise the same moderator across sessions (currently each session tracks moderators independently)

Priorities may shift. If something is missing that matters to you, open an issue.

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Get involved

Researchers -- use it on real recordings, open issues when the output is wrong or incomplete.

Developers -- Python 3.10+, fully typed, Pydantic models. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the CLA, project layout, and design system docs.

Help us test -- we'd love feedback from people using bristlenose with:

• Gemini -- newly added; budget option at ~$0.20/study
• Azure OpenAI -- enterprise deployments
• Windows -- the pipeline works but hasn't been widely tested
• Linux -- snap package coming soon, looking for testers on various distros

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Development setup

Clone the repo, create a virtual environment, and install in editable mode:

# Prerequisites (macOS)
brew install python@3.12 ffmpeg pkg-config

# Clone and set up
git clone https://github.com/cassiocassio/bristlenose.git
cd bristlenose
python3.12 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev,apple]"                 # apple extra installs MLX for Apple Silicon GPU acceleration; omit on other platforms
cp .env.example .env                          # add your API key

On Linux, install python3.12 and ffmpeg via your package manager. On Windows, use python -m venv .venv and .venv\Scripts\activate.

Verify everything works

.venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/    # ~3200 tests (Python + Vitest), should pass in <10s
.venv/bin/ruff check .               # lint
.venv/bin/mypy bristlenose/          # type check (some third-party SDK errors are expected)

If you rename or move the project directory, the editable install breaks silently (absolute paths baked into .pth files and CLI shebangs). Fix with: find . -name __pycache__ -exec rm -rf {} + then .venv/bin/python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"

Try the snap (pre-release)

The snap isn't in the Store yet, but you can grab the CI-built .snap from GitHub Actions and test it on any amd64 Linux box:

# 1. Download the snap artifact from the latest CI run
#    Go to https://github.com/cassiocassio/bristlenose/actions/workflows/snap.yml
#    Click the latest successful run → Artifacts → snap-amd64 → download and unzip

# 2. Install it (--dangerous bypasses Store signature, --classic gives filesystem access)
sudo snap install --dangerous --classic ./bristlenose_*.snap

# 3. Verify
bristlenose --version
bristlenose doctor

# 4. Run it for real (store whichever API key you have)
bristlenose configure claude      # validates and saves to system credential store
# or: bristlenose configure chatgpt
bristlenose run interviews -o results/

FFmpeg, Python, faster-whisper, and spaCy are all bundled — no system dependencies needed. Feedback welcome via issues.

Architecture

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full project layout, but the short version:

• bristlenose/stages/ -- the 12-stage pipeline (ingest through render), one module per stage
• bristlenose/stages/s12_render/ -- HTML report renderer package, loads CSS + JS from theme/
• bristlenose/theme/ -- atomic CSS design system (tokens, atoms, molecules, organisms, templates)
• bristlenose/theme/js/ -- report JavaScript (17 modules, concatenated at render time)
• bristlenose/llm/prompts/ -- LLM prompt templates (Markdown files)
• bristlenose/pipeline.py -- orchestrator that wires the stages together
• bristlenose/cli.py -- Typer CLI entry point

Releasing

Edit bristlenose/__init__.py (the single source of truth for version), commit, tag, push. GitHub Actions handles CI, build, and PyPI publishing automatically. See CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

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Changelog

0.14.6 — 18 Apr 2026

• CI: e2e gate re-enabled as a blocking check (three P3 items cleared)
• Fix: Analysis "Show all N quotes" toggle now a proper <button> (was an <a> without href)
• Fix: playwright.config.ts shell-quotes paths so worktrees with spaces in the name work
• SECURITY.md: corrected auth-token description (env-override path is real and used by CI fixtures / uvicorn reload; future hardening tracked)
• bristlenose doctor: new Auth token check warns if _BRISTLENOSE_AUTH_TOKEN is set in the shell
• CI: allowlist register at e2e/ALLOWLIST.md — every test suppression categorised and tracked; prevents silent accumulation

0.14.5 — 17 Apr 2026

• CI unblock release: no user-facing changes
• Fix eslint-plugin-react-hooks 7.0.1 → 7.1.0 (eslint 10 peer-range)
• Pin jsdom to 27.x (29 dropped localStorage shims, 140+ test failures)
• Fix stale Vitest mocks after api.ts and i18n changes
• Regenerate e2e/package-lock.json (lighthouse was added without npm install)
• Exclude perf-stress.spec.ts from default Playwright discovery
• e2e CI gate temporarily informational; three P3 findings parked to sprint 2

0.14.4 — 16 Apr 2026

• Pipeline resilience: input change detection (added/removed/modified files trigger re-run)
• Alembic migration infrastructure replaces manual schema migrations
• CI: multi-python matrix (3.10–3.13), split lint from test jobs

0.14.3 — 27 Mar 2026

• Export: video clip extraction from starred and featured quotes (FFmpeg stream-copy)
• Fix: video player "Cannot play" error caused by bearer token on /media/ routes
• Fix: safe_filename() path traversal reassembly vulnerability

0.14.2 — 24 Mar 2026

• Localhost bearer token for serve mode API access control
• Fix: TOC sidebar empty after auth middleware added

0.14.1 — 24 Mar 2026

• French, German, Korean locales — machine-translated across all 8 namespace files, cross-checked against Apple and ATLAS.ti glossaries
• Contextual left-panel labels — desktop toolbar shows Contents/Codes/Signals per tab
• Tags sidebar shortcut (⌘⌥T), keyboard shortcuts design doc

0.14.0 — 20 Mar 2026

• Inspector panel — DevTools-style collapsible bottom panel in Analysis tab with heatmap matrices, signal card selection sync, drag-resize, and m keyboard shortcut
• Codebook sidebar — left-hand navigation panel on every tab with tag groups, counts, and micro-bars
• Finding flags — Win/Problem/Niggle/Success/Surprising/Pattern direction labels on signal cards, computed from sentiment valence, breadth, and intensity
• Settings modal (⌘,) and Help modal (?) — sidebar-nav modals with shared ModalNav organism
• Activity chips persist across tab navigation; new framework codebooks (Nielsen 10, Yablonski Laws)
• Fixes: codebook tab sidebar with trailing slash, codebook grid width, autocode toast behaviour

0.13.7 — 16 Mar 2026

• Spanish locale — machine-translated 102 UI strings across 8 locale files, ready for native-speaker review

0.13.6 — 16 Mar 2026

• Single tag focus mode — click a tag count to solo that tag (mixing-desk style), click again or Escape to exit. Sidebar dims non-focused tags; focused tag row stays at full brightness. "You are here" blue wash highlight on the active count matches TOC sidebar style
• Fix circular dependency crash in production build (SidebarStore → QuotesContext import cycle caused "Cannot access uninitialized variable" error)
• Used/unused tag filter toggle — quickly show only tags that appear on quotes
• Sidebar tag click-to-assign — select quotes then click a tag badge to apply it
• Tier 1 logging instrumentation and PII hardening
• Multilingual UI infrastructure (i18next + Python i18n module, browser language auto-detection)
• Responsive signal cards — grid layout with narrow-screen stacking
• Cache system_profiler results with 24h TTL to avoid slow macOS startup

0.13.4 — 14 Mar 2026

• Fix import FK constraint — delete AutoCode proposals before removing stale quotes during re-import
• Sessions sidebar with live-resize content-adaptive breakpoints

0.13.3 — 14 Mar 2026

• Help modal polish — platform-aware shortcuts (⌘/Ctrl), keycap typography, entrance animation, custom tooltips with shortcut badges
• Bulk actions respect multi-selection on click (star, hide, tag). Shift+click range selection fix
• Sidebar: push animations, 4× faster transitions, rail drag-to-open, drag handle hover-intent, scroll spy Safari fix
• Pipeline CLI: red ✗ for failed stages, yellow ⚠ for partial success
• Speaker badge wrap fix, scroll-margin fix for sticky navbar, TOC overlay clip-path animation

0.13.2 — 11 Mar 2026

• Render refactor — render_html.py (2,903 lines) broken into bristlenose/stages/s12_render/ package with 8 submodules. Static render path formally deprecated (DeprecationWarning). No behaviour change

0.13.1 — 10 Mar 2026

• Responsive layout playground, sidebar TOC overlay mode, minimap component, responsive quote grid CSS

0.13.0 — 10 Mar 2026

• Codebook-aware tag autocomplete — suggestions grouped by codebook section with colour pills and headers, IDE-style
• Sentiment tags unified into the codebook framework system (proper sentiment.yaml codebook)
• Tag provenance tracking — "human" vs "autocode" source on every tag, preserved across edits
• Hidden-group tag UX — eye-closed icon in autocomplete, auto-unhide on accept
• Quick-repeat tag shortcut (r) — re-apply the last-used tag on a focused quote
• Fix: context expansion crash (infinite re-render loop on up chevron)
• Doctor offers interactive MLX install on Apple Silicon for GPU-accelerated transcription
• Sidebar accessibility improvements (focus management, ARIA, reduced-motion support)
• Dashboard stat cards now open in new tab on Cmd+click

0.12.2 — 2 Mar 2026

• Footer feedback restored in React serve mode: "Feedback" now opens a dedicated feedback modal (not the Help modal), and "Report a bug" remains a direct GitHub issue link
• Feedback submit flow parity with legacy behavior: POST to configured endpoint when available, with clipboard fallback + toast if endpoint submit is unavailable
• Health API now includes footer config (links.github_issues_url, feedback.enabled, feedback.url) while preserving status and version
• Exported reports now embed the same health/footer config shape as serve mode for consistent footer behavior

0.12.1 — 1 Mar 2026

• Word-level transcript highlighting — individual words highlight in sync with video playback (karaoke-style). Whisper sessions get per-word timing; VTT/SRT imports fall back to segment-level glow

0.12.0 — 1 Mar 2026

• Dual sidebar for Quotes tab — left: TOC with scroll-spy, right: tag filter with codebook tree and eye toggles for badge hiding. Drag-to-resize, keyboard shortcuts ([ ] \ ⌘.)
• Frontend CI — ESLint, TypeScript typecheck, and Vitest in GitHub Actions

0.11.2 — 1 Mar 2026

• Self-contained HTML export — download button bundles all data as embedded JSON with hash router for file://, optional anonymisation
• About panel redesign — sidebar layout with 5 sections (About, Signals, Codebook, Developer, Design)
• Configuration reference panel — read-only grid of all 63 configurable values with defaults, env var names, and valid options
• Morville honeycomb codebook — 7 groups, 28 tags with discrimination prompts and cross-codebook references

0.11.1 — 28 Feb 2026

• Fix video player broken by double URL encoding and missing subdirectory in source file paths

0.11.0 — 28 Feb 2026

• Full React SPA in serve mode — React Router replaces vanilla JS tab navigation, all 26 vanilla JS modules retired from serve path
• Player integration — PlayerContext manages popout video player lifecycle, glow sync, and progress bar from React
• Keyboard shortcuts — j/k navigation, multi-select, bulk star/hide/tag, ? help modal, Escape cascade
• React app shell — Header, Footer, HelpModal components; serve mode serves Vite-built SPA directly
• Video player links on sessions page and dashboard open the popout player
• Importer finds source files in subdirectories (mirrors ingest scan pattern)
• Speaker display names in sessions grid use normal font size

0.10.3 — 21 Feb 2026

• Split speaker badges — two-tone code+name pills across all surfaces, with "Code and name / Code only" settings toggle
• Always-on sticky transcript header with session selector; serve-mode session links navigate to React transcript pages
• bristlenose status command — read-only project status from the manifest with session counts, intermediate file validation, and -v per-session detail
• Pre-run resume summary — one-line status message when resuming an interrupted pipeline run
• AutoCode frontend — ✦ button triggers LLM tag application, progress toast, confidence-aware threshold review dialog, proposed badges on quotes with accept/deny
• Transcript page — non-overlapping span bars, topic-change label dedup, speaker badge styling, back link stays in serve mode
• Journey chain — sticky header shows full journey with revisits, active step highlighted with hover-tint pill, index-based click-to-jump
• Resilient transcript discovery — serve-mode importer searches four locations instead of one
• Generic analysis matrix and signals API for serve mode
• Man page and docs updated for status and serve commands
• Fix: transcript back link no longer escapes from serve mode to raw static HTML

0.10.2 — 21 Feb 2026

• Pipeline crash recovery — interrupted runs resume automatically, only re-processing unfinished sessions
• Per-session tracking for topic segmentation and quote extraction with transparent cache + fresh merge
• CLI resume guard — re-run into existing output without --clean, manifest detected automatically

0.10.1 — 19 Feb 2026

• Desktop app API key onboarding — first-run setup screen, Keychain storage, Settings panel (⌘,)
• .dmg packaging — ad-hoc signed, drag-to-Applications, one-command build via build-all.sh
• Serve mode after pipeline — auto-launches bristlenose serve, report at http://127.0.0.1:8150/report/
• Deployment target updated to macOS 15 Sequoia

0.10.0 — 18 Feb 2026

• Desktop app v0.1 — SwiftUI macOS launcher with folder picker, drag-and-drop, pipeline streaming, View Report in browser
• Xcode 26 project with 4-state UI (ready → selected → running → done), ANSI stripping, report path detection

0.9.4 — 17 Feb 2026

• bristlenose serve — local dev server with SQLite persistence, React islands, live JS reload
• 5 React islands (SessionsTable, Dashboard, QuoteSections, QuoteThemes, CodebookPanel) + 16 reusable primitives (182 Vitest tests)
• Codebook CRUD — drag-and-drop, inline editing, tag merge, pentadic colours, MicroBar frequency bars
• Data API — 6 endpoints sync researcher state from localStorage to SQLite (94 tests)
• Desktop app scaffold — SwiftUI macOS shell with sidecar architecture

0.9.3 — 13 Feb 2026

• Interactive dashboard — clickable stat cards, featured quotes with video playback, session row drill-down, cross-tab navigation
• Fix: logo dark/light swap on appearance toggle

0.9.2 — 12 Feb 2026

• Sessions table redesign — speaker badges, user journey paths, video thumbnails, per-session sentiment sparklines
• Appearance toggle — system/light/dark mode in settings tab
• User journeys — derived from screen clusters, shown in sessions table and sortable journeys table
• Time estimates — upfront pipeline duration estimate after ingest, recalculated as stages complete
• Clickable logo — navigates to project tab
• Fix: llm_max_tokens truncation causing silent 0-quote extraction
• Fix: sentiment sparkline bars now align with video thumbnail baseline

0.9.1 — 11 Feb 2026

• Moderator and observer names shown in Project tab stats row (Oxford comma lists, observer box only when observers exist)
• Fix: clicking [+] to add a tag on a quote now tags that quote, not the previously-focused quote

0.9.0 — 11 Feb 2026

• Tab navigation remembers position across reloads via URL hash; browser back/forward navigates between tabs
• Analysis tab — inline signal cards and heatmaps in the main report (no longer just a placeholder)
• Codebook tab — fixed empty grid bug caused by JS function name collision in the concatenated bundle

0.8.2 — 9 Feb 2026

• Transcript annotations — transcript pages highlight selected quotes with margin labels, sentiment colours, span bars, and playback-synced glow
• Gemini provider — --llm gemini for budget-conscious teams (~$0.20/study, 5–7× cheaper than Claude or ChatGPT); bristlenose configure gemini stores your key in the system credential store
• Jinja2 templates — report renderer migrated from f-strings to 13 Jinja2 templates (internal refactor, no output changes)

0.8.1 — 7 Feb 2026

• Hidden quotes — press h to hide volume quotes from your working view; per-subsection badge with dropdown previews; bulk hide via multi-select
• Codebook — standalone page for organising tags into groups with drag-and-drop, inline editing, and colour-coded badges
• Toolbar redesign — unified round-rect button styling
• Python 3.14 compatibility fix for PII check

0.8.0 — 7 Feb 2026

• Azure OpenAI provider — --llm azure for enterprise users with Microsoft Azure contracts
• Install smoke tests — new CI workflow verifies install instructions on clean VMs

0.7.1 — 6 Feb 2026

• Bar chart alignment — sentiment and user-tag charts use CSS grid so bar left edges align within each chart; labels hug text with variable gap to bars
• Histogram delete — hover × on user tag labels in the histogram to remove that tag from all quotes (with confirmation modal)
• Surprise placement — surprise sentiment bar now renders between positive and negative sentiments
• Quote exclusivity in themes — each quote assigned to exactly one theme (pick strongest fit)

0.7.0 — 5 Feb 2026

• Multi-select — Finder-like click selection (click, Shift-click, Cmd/Ctrl-click) with bulk starring (s key) and bulk tagging; selection count shown in view-switcher label; CSV export respects selection
• Tag filter — toolbar dropdown between search and view-switcher filters quotes by user tags; checkboxes per tag with "(No tags)" for untagged quotes; per-tag quote counts, search-within-filter for large tag lists, dropdown chevron, ellipsis truncation for long names

0.6.15 — 4 Feb 2026

• Unified tag close buttons — AI badges and user tags now use the same floating circle "×" style
• Tab-to-continue tagging — pressing Tab commits the current tag and immediately opens a new input for adding another tag (type, Tab, type, Tab, Enter for fast keyboard-only tagging)
• Render command path fix — bristlenose render <input-dir> now auto-detects bristlenose-output/ inside the input directory

0.6.14 — 4 Feb 2026

• Doctor fixes — improved Whisper model detection and PII capability checking

0.6.13 — 3 Feb 2026

• Keychain credential storage — bristlenose configure claude (or chatgpt) validates and stores API keys securely in macOS Keychain or Linux Secret Service; keys are loaded automatically with priority keychain → env var → .env; bristlenose doctor now shows "(Keychain)" suffix when key comes from system credential store; --key option available for non-interactive use

0.6.12 — 3 Feb 2026

• File-level transcription progress — spinner now shows "(2/4 sessions)" during transcription
• Improved Ollama start command detection — uses brew services start ollama for Homebrew installs, open -a Ollama for macOS app, platform-appropriate commands for snap/systemd
• Doctor displays "(MLX)" accelerator — when mlx-whisper is installed on Apple Silicon, doctor now shows "(MLX)" instead of "(CPU)"
• Provider header fix — pipeline header now shows "Local (Ollama)" instead of "ChatGPT" when using local provider

Older versions →

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Licence

Copyright (C) 2025-2026 Martin Storey (martin@cassiocassio.co.uk)

AGPL-3.0. See LICENSE and CONTRIBUTING.md.