Ritemark v1.6.1: Mermaid Overhaul, Terminal-Free Sign-In, and a New Engine
A patch release with one large engine upgrade underneath and three improvements you can actually feel while writing. Mermaid diagrams render the way they should now. Claude and Codex sign-in stops sending you into a terminal. The whole thing sits on top of VS Code 1.117, eight upstream releases newer than what we shipped two weeks ago.
Mermaid Diagrams That Behave
Mermaid in v1.6.0 rendered, technically. Diagrams were capped at 680 pixels wide, so anything with more than a few nodes either shrank into illegibility or sat awkwardly in a sea of whitespace. Anything that needed more horizontal room than that just got clipped. We heard this often enough that it moved up the list.
In v1.6.1 diagrams render at the full content-container width with reduced margins, so they sit inside the document instead of floating off to one side. If a diagram still overflows horizontally, the container scrolls instead of clipping. You see the whole thing.
The bigger change is the new toolbar. Three actions on every diagram. Copy image places the rendered SVG on the clipboard. Download opens a real OS Save As dialog so you can write the diagram to disk wherever you want it. Expand opens a full-screen overlay with cursor-anchored Cmd or Ctrl plus Scroll zoom, from 0.25x out to 4x in. Escape closes it.
The expand view is the part we use most internally. Architecture diagrams that look fine inline often have small labels you want to read up close, and the cursor-anchored zoom means you point at the part you care about and scroll in. The diagram stays where you left it.
Mermaid in Ritemark went from "renders, sort of" to something you can lean on for technical documentation.
Claude and Codex Without a Terminal
If you have ever stumbled through a claude /login flow in the wrong terminal window, you understand why this one matters.
The Claude sign-in flow now runs as a background subprocess and opens your system browser directly. No terminal involved. There is also a second path that accepts an Anthropic API key through an input box backed by VS Code's secret storage, for people who prefer keys over OAuth. While sign-in is in progress you get a Cancel button and a five-minute timeout, so a stuck OAuth window does not leave the UI hanging.
The Settings page also stopped lying about auth state. Previously it could report "Connected" based on a stale environment variable even after you ran claude logout outside Ritemark. Now Settings queries the Claude CLI directly, so what you see is what you have.
The Codex flow got the same treatment. Clicking "Sign in with ChatGPT" in the AI sidebar opens your system browser instead of dropping you into a terminal, matching the Settings flow. Sign in or out from either surface and the other stays in sync. The first-launch workspace trust prompt has also been removed entirely, so on a fresh install you can start editing immediately instead of dismissing a dialog first.
Underneath all this is a new bundled agent runtime. The Claude and Codex CLIs now ship inside the extension itself rather than relying on whatever happens to be installed globally on your machine. This is also the foundation for proper Windows onboarding, which arrives as a follow-up.
VS Code 1.117
The boring-but-important part. Ritemark's VS Code base went from 1.109.5 to 1.117.0 in a single step, which rolls up eight upstream releases of editor and platform improvements. All six Ritemark patches (branding, UI layout, menu cleanup, build system, Windows and OSS fixes, dev launch) were rebased clean onto the new base and validated end-to-end.
This was the largest single piece of work in the release and unblocks future improvements that depend on a more recent VS Code core. From your side as a writer, nothing about the day-to-day flow changes. The editor just sits on a fresher foundation now, with updated Electron, better performance in some areas, and improved platform support.
Also in This Release
The Phosphor icon weight got bumped from 100 (thin) to 400 (regular) across the titlebar, sidebar, toolbars, and activity bar. The change is most visible in the light theme, where the previous hairline-thin strokes washed out at small sizes. Icons read clearly now without straining.
The same weight change shows up in the editor slash command popup, so any contextual menus look properly weighted now too.
VS Code 1.117 introduced a Microsoft Copilot first-run wizard that crashed Ritemark in production. We patched the wizard out and removed the bundled GitHub Copilot Chat extension entirely. Ritemark uses Claude, Codex, and the Ritemark Agent. Copilot will not appear anywhere.
A handful of bugs went with this release as well. Text selection background in code blocks and table cells is now clearly distinguishable from the row hover highlight, which was previously almost identical and made selection invisible. Gitignored entries in the file Explorer (such as docs-internal/ and node_modules/) are readable again in both light and dark themes after the previous foreground colour was washing out against the sidebar background. AI Flow file writes route through vscode.workspace.fs instead of raw Node fs, fixing reliability issues with workspace file creation. The explorer tree now auto-refreshes when Claude Code or another agent writes files into the workspace, with a manual refresh button added to the explorer toolbar as a backup.
GitHub issue #39 (a stray spdlog x86_64 native module that broke startup on Apple Silicon when the submodule was bumped) is fixed. So is GitHub issue #41 (JSON LSP startFailed after the upstream ESM flip), which was caused by stale CJS-compiled out/ directories in the html, css, and json language-features extensions.
The activity bar got six pixels of vertical breathing room between icons, polishing the layout work from v1.6.0. Sprint 54 Agent Library panel adjustments that were dropped during a rebase have been put back.
Download
v1.6.1 is available now:
| Platform | File |
|---|---|
| macOS Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) | Ritemark-arm64.dmg |
| macOS Intel | Ritemark-x64.dmg |
| Windows | Ritemark-Setup.exe |
Windows users: SmartScreen may show a warning on first run. Click More info then Run anyway. See detailed instructions
Both macOS DMGs are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized plus stapled by Apple. If you are already running Ritemark, the Update Center will pick up v1.6.1 automatically. New here? Download and install, open a workspace, and start writing.
FAQ
What's new in Ritemark v1.6.1?
Three headline changes plus a stack of fixes. Mermaid diagrams now render at full content width with a Copy / Download / Expand toolbar and a cursor-anchored zoom view. Claude and Codex sign-in works without opening a terminal, and Settings now reports auth state truthfully by querying the CLI directly. The VS Code base was upgraded from 1.109.5 to 1.117.0.
What changed about Mermaid diagrams?
The 680-pixel width cap is gone. Diagrams now render at the full content-container width with reduced margins, and oversized diagrams scroll horizontally instead of being clipped. A new toolbar adds Copy image (places the SVG on the clipboard), Download (opens a real OS Save As dialog), and Expand (full-screen overlay with Cmd or Ctrl plus Scroll zoom from 0.25x to 4x).
How does Claude sign-in work now?
Click sign-in and your system browser opens directly. The flow runs as a background subprocess instead of a terminal command. There is also an alternative path that accepts an Anthropic API key through an input box backed by VS Code's secret storage. A Cancel button is available during in-progress sign-in, and the flow times out after five minutes if the browser gets stuck.
Does Codex sign-in still need the command line?
No. Clicking "Sign in with ChatGPT" in the AI sidebar opens your system browser, matching the Settings flow. Sign in or out from one surface and the other stays in sync. The first-launch workspace trust prompt has been removed.
What is the bundled agent runtime?
The Claude and Codex CLIs now ship inside the Ritemark extension instead of relying on whatever is installed globally on your machine. This makes onboarding more reliable across machines and is the foundation for the upcoming Windows installer experience.
Why was GitHub Copilot removed?
VS Code 1.117 added a Microsoft Copilot first-run wizard that crashed Ritemark in production. We patched the wizard out and removed the bundled GitHub Copilot Chat extension. Ritemark uses Claude, Codex, and the Ritemark Agent.
What is the VS Code engine upgrade?
The VS Code base under Ritemark went from 1.109.5 to 1.117.0, eight upstream releases in a single step. All six Ritemark patches were rebased clean and validated. Day-to-day workflow does not change. The foundation is fresher, with updated Electron, better performance in some areas, and improved platform support.
Is Ritemark free?
Yes. Using AI agents requires an Anthropic API key or Claude.ai subscription for Claude, or a paid ChatGPT subscription for Codex.