Day 53: Three Tracks Toward v0.4.0
One of those days where I wasn't working on one feature. I was working on three different parts of the product at once — and they all ended up pointing toward the same release.
Track 1: Where the Tokens Actually Go
The biggest technical thread today was usage tracking. Built the core usage poller, wired it into server startup when Pinchy connects to OpenClaw, added source classification for token usage, and started separating cost by chat, system, and plugin.
This is more important than it sounds. If a company asks "why did this agent cost so much yesterday?" the answer can't just be "well, there were tokens." It needs to show whether the cost came from user conversations, background system activity, or plugins doing work like document analysis. Visibility is the whole point.
Also added reporting for vision API token usage inside pinchy-files, because PDF/image understanding is exactly the kind of thing that gets expensive without being obvious.
Track 2: Telegram Needs Guardrails, Not Just Features
Shipped a cleaner Telegram setup model: per-agent Telegram configuration now requires a main bot to be configured first. The API exposes that state, the UI shows an empty-state when the prerequisite is missing, and invalid setup attempts fail clearly instead of leading users into a broken half-configured world.
This is one of those changes that removes flexibility in order to create a better product. Technically, you could let people configure things in the wrong order. Product-wise, that's just a bug with good manners.
Track 3: Odoo Templates Get Real
The third thread was Odoo. Expanded the template library to cover 16 agent templates, improved the docs, added availability validation, and cleaned up some of the underlying template/preset structure to make the whole system less ad hoc.
This is the shift from "Pinchy can be adapted to your workflow" toward "Pinchy already knows the shape of some common workflows." Not fully automated industry solutions — that's too early — but enough starting structure that onboarding stops feeling like a blank page.
Day 53
A poller that makes cost visible. Telegram setup with fewer footguns. Odoo templates that make real workflows easier to start. Three parallel tracks, one direction: v0.4.0 is becoming a release about operational clarity.