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Update and auto-recovery

Speedwave includes built-in update verification and automated container recovery mechanisms to maintain workspace availability and image consistency across system reboots and sleep states.

Speedwave checks for signed software releases on launch and every 24 hours in the background across both Desktop and CLI interfaces. Signature verification ensures binaries match official releases, and downgrades are rejected. Updates require explicit user authorization:

  1. Navigate to Settings → Updates or right-click the Desktop tray icon and select Check for Updates.
  2. When a release is available, select Install & Restart or choose Install Update v<version> from the tray menu.

During the update process, Speedwave stops active containers, applies the verified binary release, and restarts the environment. If an update fails, previously running workspaces are restored to their prior operational state.

On every startup, Speedwave compares a cryptographic hash of current application binaries and container templates against previously compiled images. Any configuration drift triggers automatic reconciliation: a diagnostic overlay displays Rebuilding container images… while modified layers are recompiled and active workspaces recreated.

Executing speedwave update from the CLI while another project is active avoids interrupting active workspace mounts by deferring global resource synchronization.

Containers can encounter broken state following operating system sleep cycles, containerd daemon restarts, or storage eviction. Speedwave evaluates container health on demand before establishing interactive sessions:

Trigger conditionAutomated recovery procedure
Stale mount or terminated containerAutomatically regenerates the container topology and verifies socket reachability.
Missing MCP plugin container imageRecompiles the plugin image from local signed manifests.
Disk exhaustion during image buildsAutomatically purges obsolete container layers and BuildKit caches, retrying compilation once.

For persistent connection issues, consult the Troubleshooting guide.

If runtime state becomes unrecoverable, the Desktop application provides a factory reset option in Settings → Danger Zone. This terminates all active containers, removes the Lima virtual machine on macOS, unlinks CLI binaries, and deletes ~/.speedwave/ (including all local token directories and installed plugins). Speedwave restarts into the initial Setup Wizard. Treat factory reset as an action of last resort.

Releases containing [CRITICAL] or [SECURITY] in release manifests are highlighted with high-priority visual badges in update prompts.

For details on container lifecycle orchestration, consult Container topology and Updates and recovery internals.