Jan Hovancik

Introducing Pulsar ACP Agent

2026-07-01T08:00:00+00:00

Atom was my favorite editor until GitHub sunset it. Luckily, the project lives on as Pulsar. One thing it’s missing, though, is support for agentic workflows, so I figured I’d add it myself.

Agent Client Protocol

Because of my work at Microsoft, I’m using/trying different editors/IDEs. Zed is one I was looking at recently and thus found out about ACP - which standardizes communication between code editors/IDEs and coding agents.

Sidenote: the folks who created Atom are now working on Zed and ACP. Rather awesome.

For our purposes, ACP basically allows you to easily integrate agents (that support ACP) into ~~anywhere~~, I mean into Pulsar.

Pulsar ACP Agent

So, with the help of friendly agents, I’ve created a new Pulsar plugin, Pulsar ACP Agent, that does exactly that.

Pulsar ACP Agent running an ACP-compatible coding agent inside Pulsar.

Highlights:

Run ACP-compatible coding agents
such as GitHub Copilot CLI, Mistral Vibe, and Gemini CLI from a Pulsar dock panel.
Attach files, selections, and images to prompts.
Review permission prompts, tool output, diffs, plans, and session history inline.
Configure and switch between multiple agents.

I’ve been dogfooding it for a few weeks while creating it, so I hope you’ll give it a chance and let me know what you think.

Install it from within Pulsar (Settings → Install, search for pulsar-acp-agent) or from the package page. The code lives on GitHub.

Stretchly 1.21 is now available

2026-04-25T06:00:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.21 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

advanced option for Break Health Mode

Fixed

fix focus mode detection on macOS Tahoe
fix idle time detection on Wayland

Changed

increased font size of current time in break window
moved macOS Homebrew installation to custom tap
improved tray icon styling
updated many translations

Stretchly 1.20 is now available

2025-12-24T06:00:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.20 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

new icon styles preference for tray (showing time to break or visual progress to break)
Autostart functionality in Flatpaks
portable version for Windows
set autostart based on the config file value

Fixed

snap package not starting on Wayland
break windows not closing correctly on all platforms
show breaks as regular windows on Windows

Changed

updated many translations

Fixing Good First Issues: A simple way to support Open Source

2025-12-18T13:40:00+00:00

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft. The views in this article are my own and do not necessarily represent Microsoft.

It’s no secret that funding Open Source (OSS) projects is an issue that hasn’t been solved yet. (I’ll stop myself from linking memes illustrating the situation all too well.) Many individuals and companies try to help financially, but not everyone can donate, not everyone accepts donations (or can accept them), and there are a myriad of other things happening in between.

As December is the time of year when many Open Source projects update their yearly funding goals and ask for contributions, I find myself thinking about this topic as well. Not only because I have a few OSS projects and accept donations, but also because I am a proponent and user of the OSS model. For example, in one of my projects, I say: “Stretchly is free, but you can support it by contributing code, translations, or money.” And many people do.

So, as I keep finding more and more value in all these agentic tools and workflows now available, an idea started to crystallize: why not use the tools I get at work for free to help some OSS projects asking for help?

That’s what I started doing. If your employer allows it, this can be an easy way to support the ecosystem, and I encourage you to consider doing the same.

Here’s what I tried and how it went.

Good First Issues

One of the most common ways maintainers signal that an issue is good for taking is by using labels like good-first-issue or help-wanted. I started by focusing on good-first-issue, since I wanted to look at Rust projects and I’m not a Rust expert. And yes, I’m talking about GitHub (and Copilot), since that’s where my personal projects live and where I have an account and tools available.

I used this GitHub search to find good-first-issue labels on Rust projects, and I also asked VS Code Copilot to help me find some interesting good-first-issues in Rust projects that it could help me fix, even though I’m not a pro in Rust.

Here are the PRs I created with the help of agentic tooling, ranging from docs updates and code fixes to updating an older crate to a newer Rust edition: nushell/nushell#17178, serde-rs/json#1302, dsprenkels/sss-rs#15.

Since these are new, I haven’t heard back from the projects yet, but I already feel good about it. It reminds me the one of many reasons why I love OSS: it’s made of the thousands of tiny kindnesses.

Stretchly 1.19 is now available

2025-11-13T11:57:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.19 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

allow to show some HTML in breaks
advanced option for manual finish mode for breaks (breaks are only finished after user’s interaction)
advanced option to set preferred sound to be played at the beginning of breaks

Fixed

hide autostart option for Windows store
prevent memory issues where break windows were not closing correctly

Changed

hide update features in Windows Store, Snap, Flatpak versions by default
migrate long break sound preference from audio to longBreakAudio
updated many translations

Stretchly 1.18 is now available

2025-09-15T19:05:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.18 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

Yiddish and Tamil translations
advanced option to show custom message in Preferences
advanced option to hide location of Preferences file in Debug info
advanced option to disable app update features
advanced option to hide Strict Mode preferences section

Changed

remove flags in Welcome window
updated many translations
do not check for Quiet Hours on Windows (deprecated)

Fixed

prevent error with negative time to break in tray icon
hide close/minimize actions on Break window on macOS
issue when not all strings correctly translate after language change

Stretchly 1.17 is now available

2024-12-24T09:43:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.17 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

Bengali, Catalan, Greek and Serbian translations
it is not possible to close app during break that is in strict mode
logs command line option to show location of logs
advanced option to make break windows’ background blurred (macOS)

Fixed

error when end break shortcut is not set
time in tray shows the correct number (and matches the tooltip value)

Changed

improved break window loading
improve DND detection for Linux
updated many translations
better icons for “Show time in tray”
showBreakActionsInStrictMode migrated to showTrayMenuInStrictMode

Stretchly 1.16 is now available

2024-08-11T09:45:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.16 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

Estonia and Belarus translations
advanced option to show break options (Skip, Pause, Reset) in Strict mode
autostart option for Linux
keyboard shortcuts for pause breaks for specific durations

Changed

updated many translations
disable skipping to next break from tray when in strict mode

Fixed

transparency issues on Windows 10
Schedule and Menu options not being updated after change of language
multiple RTL UI issues
RPM installer conflicts with other Electron apps
improve break window loading to improve blank window issues

Stretchly 1.15 is now available

2023-11-11T11:22:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.15 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

new end-of-the-break sound
both left and right click on tray opens menu (Windows)
double click on tray opens Preferences (Windows)
adds Vietnamese translations
reset breaks shortcut (advanced option)
skip to the next break shortcut (advanced option)
respect Do Not Disturb on Linux distros (KDE, XFCE, GNOME)

Changed

updated many translations

Fixed

improve Do Not Disturb detection

Stretchly is now available in Microsoft Store

2023-06-12T13:05:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that Stretchly is now available in official Microsoft Store. I hope you will find this useful.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Stretchly 1.14.1 is now available

2023-06-04T12:54:00+00:00

Hi everyone,

I am really happy to announce, that version 1.14.1 of Stretchly is here! You can download it from downloads page.

Thanks to everyone for their support!

Added

advanced option to not show menubar (tray) icon

Fixed

break progress bar overflowing on tall screens
dock icon staying after break on macOS

Changed

updated many translations