Changelog

Changed

• License validation failures now fall back to the free tier instead of blocking usage — the app keeps working even if licensing can’t be verified.

Added

• Cache entries can now be invalidated on demand via HTTP DELETE requests to the server.

Changed

• When capturing multiple pages (e.g. from a sitemap), the most specific page limit now takes priority when applying capture budgets.

Changed

• Improved the readability and interpretability of capture status output.

Added

• WACZ output format for capturing web archives in a portable, shareable package.
• CDX index generation for WARC/WACZ captures, making archives easier to index and replay.
• Markdown output can now reference contextually appropriate image URLs or embed image content directly.

Changed

• Enterprise captures now default to using all available CPU cores for parallelism instead of a single worker.
• Server mode is now limited to a concurrency of 1 in Pro mode.
• Output format options are now validated for compatibility, giving clearer errors when incompatible options are combined.
• Licensing restrictions are now enforced more consistently across capture types.
• DNS resolution now always uses the system resolver.

Fixed

• File URL access is now correctly limited to within the specified subdirectory, and temporary files are scoped to their own subdirectories rather than appearing alongside sibling files.

Added

• Server mode can now cache requests and act as a browser CDN, serving repeat captures faster.
• New Prometheus metrics with per-output-type render histograms for easier operational monitoring.

Changed

• Sitemap crawls now expand automatically with a Pro license; without Pro, only the given URL is captured.
• Server endpoints are now controlled by explicit enable flags instead of disable flags.
• WARC captures and crawls now wait for in-flight assets to finish loading before completing, so archives better match what you’d expect to see.
• Device memory now reports values that match the target device (including undefined where appropriate).
• Logging is initialized earlier so warnings during startup are no longer lost.
• Server-only and other context-specific flags now error clearly when used in a mode where they have no effect.
• Markdown output now ensures image URLs are absolute, and images can now have their ocntent embedded into the result Markdown
• Update CEF.

Fixed

• WARC archives now correctly mark truncated response bodies as truncated.
• Diagnostics output now reflects your actual input.
• Fixed a potential crash from invalid string slicing in argument handling.
• Removed a stray error message printed during certain string conversions.

Added

• New Galaxy and iOS device presets for device emulation.

Added

• Crawl mode can now download linked files (e.g. documents) and capture media resources encountered during a crawl, saving them into your WARC archive.
• New option to cap the maximum number of links fetched during a crawl.
• You can now stop a crawl mid-capture and keep the output already collected.

Changed

• Crawl-related flags are now grouped under a consistent crawl namespace instead of being tied to specific output formats. You may need to update existing command lines that used the old flag names.
• WARC and HAR archives are now written as a stream, greatly improving scalability and memory use when capturing large sites.
• Connection strings now infer model configuration automatically, reducing the amount you need to specify by hand.

Added

• The AI navigator can now interact with form controls — select boxes/dropdowns, radio buttons, and checkboxes — when filling out and navigating pages.

Fixed

• Improved handling of cross-domain requests during crawls so custom headers stay within the intended domain boundaries.

Added

• LLM output formatter can now be specified per request, in addition to globally.
• Exposed more capture and navigation options to the JSON/HTTP API.

Changed

• PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and BMP are now available as free formats.
• Additional emulation options are now available in the standard tier.
• Updated CEF.

Fixed

• Navigator video now reliably follows the intended instructions.

Added

• New navigator actions to fill form fields and submit forms.

Changed

• Screenshot capture now uses CDP for more reliable results.
• Updated CEF.

Added

• Docker server image now includes a healthcheck and additional setup conveniences for the entrypoint.

Removed

• Removed the local LLM provider, including bundled model download/management and on-device inference. LLM features now require a remote provider.

Added

• New Docker server container image for running zshot as a long-running service, including a built-in health check.

Added

• Capture entire sites to WARC by following a sitemap, with automatic link discovery for multi-page crawls.
• WARC output is now more compatible with tooling, including revisit records to deduplicate repeated resources across pages.
• New accessibility-tree (axtree) output alongside your captures.
• More lenient handling of JSON request bodies when posting to the HTTP server.

Changed

• Update CEF.
• Improved WARC page records for better parity with other crawling tools.

Fixed

• Resolved a content-encoding mismatch that could break WARC replay verification.

Added

• zshot can now be installed and updated via an official APT repository (Debian/Ubuntu .deb packages).

Added

• New command-line options for diagnosing and tuning captures.
• URL preflighting that checks a page before capture, reducing wasted work on unreachable URLs.

Changed

• Improved PNG render performance via tuned encoding settings.
• Skip favicon fetches when they aren’t needed, speeding up captures.

Fixed

• More reliable scheduling of capture work, improving responsiveness and stability.
• Avoid a spurious failure when the navigation step limit is reached.

Changed

• Adjusted process exit codes

Added

• New --formats argument to list all supported output formats from the CLI.
• Runtime detection of available codecs, so the formats list reflects what your installation can actually produce.

Changed

• FFmpeg libraries are now verified with cosign signatures for added security.

Changed

• Cleaned up and reorganized deployment configuration files

Added

• Linux tarball release artifact for installing zshot on non-Debian/Ubuntu distributions, including an INSTALL.txt guide and a list of required runtime dependencies

Changed

• Docker runtime image switched to a slimmer base, reducing image size
• Release artifacts are now accompanied by an SBOM and scanned for known CVEs before publishing

Added

• LLM-powered navigation now supports web search tools when the model requests them (Anthropic and OpenAI providers)
• New READ action available to the AI navigator, allowing it to read page content during a session
• AI navigator can now specify custom wait conditions between steps rather than using a fixed delay
• Screenshots sent to vision models can now be annotated with element overlays to improve navigation accuracy

Changed

• Model connection strings are easier to specify — shorter, more ergonomic syntax for pointing at local or remote LLM providers

Fixed

• Corrected protocol scheme strings used in LLM output parsing

Added

• stdio navigator: a new --navigator mode that lets an external agent drive browser navigation by reading/writing over standard I/O, enabling fully scriptable or AI-controlled capture workflows
• Navigator session state can now be passed through to the formatter, allowing context gathered during navigation to influence output formatting
• New AGENT_HELP.md and skill reference documentation for agent-based navigation

Changed

• Update CEF

Changed

• Increased timeouts for LLM output types to better accommodate slower model response times

Added

• Built-in ad/tracker blocking: pass one or more filter-list files (in standard Adblock Plus / uBlock Origin syntax) to block network requests while capturing

Changed

• Clarified help text for the ad-blocking filter-list option

Added

• IP blocklist support: pass a blocklist file to prevent the browser from making requests to specific IP addresses or CIDR ranges during capture. Useful for restricting outbound connections in sensitive or sandboxed environments.

Fixed

• Docker images now always include up-to-date CA root certificates.

Fixed

• Docker images now include essential administrative utilities
• Artifact signing now correctly handles nested directory structures

Added

• New --chromium-arg flag to pass arbitrary Chromium arguments directly to the browser
• New container mode for running in containerized environments
• arm64 (Linux aarch64) builds are now available

Fixed

• Resolved a conflict with Homebrew-installed FFmpeg that could cause incorrect library detection

Added

• Improved accessibility tree (axtree) representation used by the AI navigator, aligned with modern agent browser conventions for more accurate element identification and interaction
• Support for iframes in axtree snapshots

Changed

• Navigator action parsing and element selection logic updated to work with the revised axtree format, improving reliability when the AI agent interacts with page elements

Added

• Invalid flag combinations are now caught early and reported as clear errors, rather than producing unexpected output or crashing

Changed

• Update CEF

Added

• Full-page capture now explicitly rejects animated formats (GIF, WebM, MP4) and video output, preventing silent failures or unexpected results

Changed

• Full-page capture errors are now reported as clear messages rather than unexpected crashes

Fixed

• Various edge-case panics replaced with proper error handling across capture and rendering

Added

• Direct integration with OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, replacing the previous library-based approach — improves reliability and avoids deprecated behaviour

Changed

• Updated AI/LLM provider internals to communicate directly with OpenAI and Anthropic; connection strings and provider configuration remain compatible
• Expanded skill documentation covering accessibility and performance capabilities

Changed

• Improved reliability of LLM output parsing, with better handling of edge-case JSON responses and more appropriate default token limits for Anthropic models

Changed

• Support contact updated to link to zshot support page

Added

• --eula flag to view the end-user license agreement

Changed

• Update CEF to latest version

Fixed

• Improved full-page capture to correctly handle pages with inner scrollable elements and fixed sidebars

Fixed

• Fixed typos in startup/initialization messages and added pointers to the canary build for pre-release testing

Added

• Performance tracing output — capture a Chrome-style JSON trace file alongside your screenshots/videos using the new --output-type trace option, useful for diagnosing page load performance
• pprof profiling output — capture CPU profiling data in pprof format (--output-type pprof) for deeper performance analysis
• Dark mode emulation — force pages into dark color scheme via prefers-color-scheme: dark using the new --dark-mode flag
• Accept-Language header emulation — send a custom Accept-Language header with requests to control locale-aware content
• Timezone emulation — pair timezone settings with geolocation for accurate locale emulation
• GPU rendering control — GPU hardware acceleration is now the default; a --software-rendering flag is available to fall back to software rendering
• Autoplay support — media on captured pages will autoplay where possible; audio is always muted to the host OS
• WARC payload digest — WARC output now includes a correct payload digest field
• GFM strikethrough portability — Markdown output now renders strikethrough in a more portable way across GFM renderers
• HTML output base URL — HTML output now includes a <base href> tag for improved portability of captured pages
• --wait-for timer mode — timer-based waits now reflect true elapsed time rather than waiting for the page load event

Changed

• Default background is now white — pages with a transparent or unset background now render with a white background instead of black
• GPU rendering enabled by default on Linux — broader GPU feature set is now unlocked for improved rendering fidelity
• --full-page validated against output type — passing --full-page for output types where it is not applicable (e.g. video, PDF) now produces a clear error instead of being silently ignored
• Unknown request fields rejected — the HTTP server now returns an error for unrecognised JSON fields in capture requests, preventing silent misconfiguration
• LLM JSON prompting improved — prompt templates now include additional guidance to help smaller models produce well-formed JSON output reliably
• JPEG EXIF metadata — the software metadata field is now written to the correct EXIF tag for JPEG output
• Touch point limit enforced — device emulation now caps touch points to the maximum supported by the browser engine, with a clear error if the requested device exceeds it
• robots.txt fetches now subject to IP filtering — the same SSRF/IP-filter rules applied to page requests are now also enforced when fetching robots.txt
• Improved --help output — help text reorganised and expanded, including guidance for agent/automation use

Removed

• Animated WebP output temporarily removed — animated WebP captures are not available in this release pending a fix; static WebP output is unaffected

Changed

• Update stale licenses

Added

• Updated FFmpeg instructions for binary relinking

Changed

• Updated JSON schema with additional fields

Changed

• Binary downloads now use public URLs instead of direct storage URLs

Added

• Skills can now be installed directly into a zip file

Added

• Output can now be written to stdout by passing - as the output path, enabling piping to other tools
• New skill install subcommand to wire zshot into an AI agent as a tool

Changed

• PNG and PDF output formats now require a Standard license or higher; HTML and MHTML are available on the free tier

Fixed

• Restored missing signing key for v0.1.1 release verification

Added

• New --request-schema flag for consuming the request schema in other apps

Added

• --image-selector and --video-selector: capture only the contents of a specific element on the page (for image and video output respectively)
• --wait-for-css: wait for a specific CSS selector to appear in the DOM before capturing

Fixed

• Fix Google model names being prefixed w/ models/

Added

• Support for Groq as an LLM provider
• Support for listing available models when using the Google LLM provider
• Ollama connections can now use HTTPS (e.g. for remote/proxied Ollama instances)

Added

• llm-info command now validates your LLM configuration and reports any issues with your setup

Added

• New --llm-info flag to print details about available LLM models and their capabilities
• New --llm-info-schema flag to print the JSON schema for LLM info output
• When using AI-powered navigation or formatting from the CLI, the local model is now automatically selected as the default — no need to specify it explicitly
• Improved config file lookup: zshot now searches a broader hierarchy of locations to find your configuration file

Changed

• Video capture now more reliably meets the requested frame rate, reducing dropped frames during recording
• Update CEF

Changed

• Removed stale references to Apple/macOS-specific options in CLI help text — argument descriptions are now platform-neutral

Added

• Device listings now include the device ID, making it easier to reference specific devices in other commands

Fixed

• Improved handling of symlinked installations so the CLI resolves paths correctly when run via a symlink

Fixed

• Fixed a path handling bug on Windows where forward slashes in CEF download paths were not converted correctly.
• Improved error messages when file operations fail during CEF setup (errors now include the affected file path).

Added

• MCP server now fetches and exposes only the LLM resources available to the connected client’s tooling, rather than a static full list

Added

• The MCP server now advertises screenshot resources, making them discoverable by MCP clients

Changed

• The MCP server now always uses the zshot:// URI scheme for resources, replacing the previous context-dependent scheme selection

Changed

• MCP tool responses now always return structured content wrapped in a consistent envelope, regardless of output type

Added

• MCP clients now receive proper error responses when a page fails to load or a timeout occurs, instead of hanging or receiving a generic failure

Fixed

• Load errors and timeout errors are now correctly propagated to MCP tool calls

Added

• MCP: resource link handoff — when a captured file is too large to embed directly in the MCP response, the server now returns a resource link instead, so callers can retrieve the file separately rather than hitting framing limits.

Changed

• MCP: HAR capture no longer records request/response bodies by default, reducing output size for typical capture workflows. Body capture can still be enabled explicitly.
• MCP: tool and resource descriptions updated for clarity.

Changed

• Improved MCP server tool descriptions for clearer configuration guidance

Added

• License keys are now forward-compatible: older license key blobs can be used on newer versions of zshot without needing to regenerate keys on every update.

Added

• (placeholder — pending changes go here; bump-version.sh will rename this on release)