Release BlogPost 2.30

[dimitrieh]

Description

Write the release announcement blog post for FlowFuse 2.30, releasing on May 7.

Epic/Story

Will be linked to parent tracking issue

Have you provided an initial effort estimate for this issue?

I have provided an initial effort estimate

[dimitrieh]

PR coming up shortly.

@Yndira-E I assume you do the final merge on that together with the release of the social post tomorrow?

PS: Let's align on what time is ideal The timing in the day might be different as the release event is later in the day. @allthedoll can you give your view here?

[dimitrieh]

Content Consideration

Three user-facing themes for 2.30:

1. Agentic Flow Building in FlowFuse Expert. Soft launch, Cloud-only, behind feature flag, request access. Knolleary confirmed in the Sprint Demo this is the lead story, with explicit beta framing.
2. Immersive editor sidebar drawer plus ~12 follow-up fixes. Stephen flagged this as a big improvement on the UI side.
3. Snapshot comparison viewer polish. Button pills, computed-property ignore, config-node highlighting fix, plus a flow-renderer 0.5.1 bump.

Caveats up front:

• No PR or issue carries an actual headline label in any FlowFuse repo for the 2.30 milestone.
• Closest parents are product#39 (Initiative) and product#63 / product#64 (Deliverables). product#47 is closed and superseded.
• ~80 PRs merged across 13 repos in the 2026-04-09 to 2026-05-07 window. ~30 are dependency bumps that compress to one row.
• Status column shows merge state as of 2026-05-06.
  • Merged = all delivery PRs merged.
  • Mostly merged = main work merged, follow-ups still open (called out inline).
  • Open = no PRs merged yet for that row; included because they could land before release.
  • All open PRs flagged here are READY (not draft) and updated within the last week.

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User-facing features (include in blog post)

#	Feature	Repo(s)	headline?	Status	User outcome
1	Agentic Flow Building in FlowFuse Expert (Beta)	flowfuse#7008, #7004, #7009, #7046, #7132, #7136, #7138, #7169 nr-assistant#235..#244, #263..#302 helm#865 CloudProject#1266, #1276, #1317	— parents: product#39, #63, #64	Mostly merged. Open: nr-assistant#272 (protobufjs deps bump), #283 (release 0.13.0 chore, lands on release day)	Describe a flow in chat and Expert builds it in the Node-RED canvas (add tabs, add and wire nodes, configure properties). MQTT-based two-way communication enables real-time tool-call status. Cloud-only, gated by feature flag. Available on Starter, Team and Enterprise on request, contact us to get switched on.
2	Immersive Editor: Instance Drawer Without Overlap	flowfuse#7098, #7171, #7172, #7173, #7174, #7183 follow-ups #7151..#7166 candidate: #7180 changelog: website#4916	— parent: flowfuse#6267	Mostly merged. Open: flowfuse#7180 (styled placeholder + Restart Required state when editor disabled in immersive mode, changes-requested)	Instance settings, snapshots, environment variables, performance, palette, and group/application assignment all work inside the immersive editor drawer. No more overlap with FlowFuse Expert, no more breaking out of the editor mid-task. Save buttons disable correctly after save. Console errors gone, Performance tab restored. Remote-instance assign/unassign reflects without manual reload. If #7180 lands: a styled placeholder replaces the raw "Cannot GET /" iframe when the editor is disabled.
3	Snapshot Comparison Viewer Polish	flowfuse#7081, #7186 candidate: #7202 issues #7073..#7077	—	Mostly merged. Open: flowfuse#7202 (one badge per node on wire changes, full-width line backgrounds, closes #7201, changes-requested)	Diffs no longer flag computed properties (group node w/h) as changes. Config-node highlighting clears between selections. Change panel shows node-type badges (config / tab / normal). JSON prettify and wrap toggles available. Position-only changes hidden. Powered by a flow-renderer 0.5.1 update with persistentHighlight. If #7202 lands: one badge per node on wire changes (instead of comma-joined pill), and diff line backgrounds extend full scroll width.
4	Markdown Code Block Line Breaks in Expert	flowfuse#7058	—	Merged	Code blocks in Expert responses preserve line breaks again (regression fix from 2.29 highlighting work).
5	Device Editor Auto-Recovery	flowfuse#7129 issue: #6797	—	Merged	When opening the editor on a remote instance fails on first load, the page now auto-refreshes after 3 seconds instead of leaving you on a 502 error.
6	Force All Users to Always Use SSO (candidate)	flowfuse#7119 fixes flowfuse#6319	—	Open (review pending). Author: hardillb. This is the "one-stop SSO for self-hosted" Ben demoed in the Sprint Demo (Bosch use case)	Configure a single SSO provider that all users are redirected to on login. Removes the email/password fallback for self-hosted teams who want to enforce SSO across the org. Confirm with Ben before listing in the blog: depends on review landing in time.

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Bug fixes & small updates

#	Feature	Repo(s)	Status	User outcome
1	Google Social Login token reuse prevention	flowfuse#7150	Merged	Closes a security gap (FlowFuse/security#114) by caching used Google login tokens until they expire.
2	SSO password reset for unverified accounts	flowfuse#7149	Merged	First SSO login on an unverified local account now rotates the password to a random string, preventing account takeover (FlowFuse/security#113).
3	Expert chat request timeout	flowfuse#7057	Merged	Front-end chat requests time out cleanly instead of hanging forever.
4	Git integration feature flag override fix	flowfuse#7050	Merged	gitIntegration feature flag respects the all-feature override (Azure DevOps users on edge configurations).
5	Suspended team logging	flowfuse#7110	Merged	When trial expiry or billing failure leaves an instance running, we now log why so support can act faster.
6	Device palette settings sanitisation	flowfuse#7175	Merged	Saving palette changes on a device no longer accidentally sends the sanitised security pass: true flag back.
7	Native HTML tooltips	flowfuse#7198	Merged	Replaces the buggy custom tooltip directive with the native title attribute (less flicker, fewer stuck tooltips).
8	Device Agent NodeJS 24 build	device-agent#616	Merged	Container image now built against Node 24.
9	driver-k8s redundant poll loops removed	driver-k8s#332	Merged	Faster instance creation on Kubernetes (no more poll loops for resources Kubernetes already returns synchronously).
10	Expert open-by-default + close-persistence docs	flowfuse#7060, #7042, #7045	Merged	Documentation catches up with 2.29 behaviour.
11	Audit log: stop reason detail (candidate)	flowfuse#7078	Open (approved). Author: Steve-Mcl. Awaiting merge	AuditEntryVerbose.vue now shows stop-reason details on a stopped event instead of the previous generic message.

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Not user-facing (internal / infrastructure)

#	Feature	Repo(s)	Category	Status	Note
1	Move Expert code to ee/	flowfuse#7132	Refactor	Merged	Code reorganisation, no behaviour change.
2	TypeScript Phase 2, Domain Types	flowfuse#7067, #7019	Refactor	Merged	Continues the TS migration.
3	Pinia migration final tasks	flowfuse#6987, #6979	Refactor	Merged	Vuex to Pinia (closes #6522).
4	Account-settings feature checks refactor	flowfuse#7176	Refactor	Merged	Replaces ~130 lines of boilerplate with data-driven config.
5	App-cache TTL + Expert insights migration	flowfuse#7136, #7138	Backend	Merged	Centralised cache abstraction replaces direct lru-cache.
6	OpenAPI / FE type drift detection	flowfuse#7125	Build/CI	Merged	Surfaces backend/frontend schema drift in dev.
7	HTTP Bearer Token client-side permission alignment	flowfuse#7097	Internal	Merged	Backend permission was already correct.
8	Tighten response schemas (candidate)	flowfuse#7131 resolves #7126	Internal	Open (review pending). Author: n-lark	Adds required and additionalProperties: false to API response schemas, reducing client/server drift risk.
9	Sentry / PostHog / rrweb noise reduction	flowfuse#7053, #7055, #7192	Telemetry	Merged	Stops cross-origin and rrweb errors from filling Sentry.
10	EXPERT_COMMS_BETA_ENABLED feature flag	flowfuse#7169, helm#865, CloudProject#1266	Infra	Merged	Gates the agentic flow building soft-launch.
11	Expert dedicated EMQX broker (FFC)	CloudProject#1317, #1287, helm#880 candidate: flowfuse#7184	Infra	Mostly merged. Open: flowfuse#7184 (FF App team broker to Expert Broker bridge provisioning, Steve-Mcl, changes-requested)	Backbone for agentic flow building, Cloud-only.
12	Traefik ingress migration on FFC + FFD	CloudProject#1271, #1260, #1283, #1285, #1286, #1292, #1295	Infra	Merged	Hosting platform migration, no user-visible change.
13	FFD Windows project EKS 1.32 + EMQX + metrics	CloudProject#1272, #1273, #1288, #1290, #1291, #1293	Infra	Merged	FlowFuse Dedicated upgrade for the Windows customer.
14	release-please / project-automation CI	admin#552, #558, #559, #567 nr-assistant#274, #284 flowfuse#7179	Build/CI	Merged	Internal release tooling improvements.
15	Test stability fixes	flowfuse#7200, #7121	Tests	Merged	Flaky admin.spec test.
16	Dependency updates across 13 repos	flowfuse, device-agent, driver-k8s, driver-localfs, driver-docker, file-server, nr-launcher, nr-project-nodes, nr-assistant, nr-tools-plugin, helm, CloudProject, admin	Maintenance	Mostly merged. ~50 dependabot bumps merged; routine ones still open (flowfuse#7187 sentry/profiling-node, #7191 tailwindcss, #7146 cypress action, #7189 slack action, nr-tools-plugin#80 postcss)	~50 dependabot bumps (axios, fastify, hono, protobufjs, dompurify, uuid, GitHub Actions, etc.).

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Related changelog coverage

The release blog post embeds inline changelog links per section (the <div class="ff-related-changelogs">…</div> pattern, plus the featureCatalog.yaml changelog: array per feature ID for tier-badge auto-injection). Current state for 2.30:

Authored:

• website#4916 — src/changelog/2026/04/immersive-editor-drawer.md (merged 2026-04-29). Covers row 2 (Immersive Editor).

Gaps to close before merging the blog PR (one changelog entry per section we publish):

• Agentic Flow Building in Expert (Beta) — no changelog yet. Needed for row 1, the lead story. New featureCatalog.yaml entry likely required (sub-feature under ff-expert, tier badges: Cloud Starter / Pro / Enterprise on request, Self-Hosted unavailable for now).
• Snapshot Comparison Viewer Polish — no new changelog yet. The existing snapshot-compare feature in featureCatalog.yaml already has a 2.29 changelog link; we should append a 2.30 entry to its changelog: array.
• Markdown Code Block Line Breaks in Expert — small, optional changelog.
• Device Editor Auto-Recovery — small, optional changelog.
• Force All Users to Always Use SSO (if #7119 lands) — extends existing sso feature; needs new changelog entry and a sub-feature entry (Enterprise self-hosted only).
• Audit log: stop reason detail (if #7078 lands) — extends audit-log feature; small changelog.

No 2.30-relevant featureCatalog changes have been opened in the website repo yet. The pricing-badge auto-injection only fires for IDs listed in features: frontmatter, so any new feature row above will need a featureCatalog entry shipped in the same blog PR (or a precursor PR) for the badges to render.

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Watch list (open PRs that could land before 2026-05-07)

Not yet folded into rows above, surfaced here for the team to decide:

• flowfuse#7119 Force-all-users-SSO. Highest impact if it lands: this is the Bosch one-stop SSO from the Sprint Demo. Currently REVIEW_REQUIRED. (Listed as candidate row 6 in user-facing.)
• flowfuse#7202 Snapshot viewer UX polish. CHANGES_REQUESTED, last update 2026-05-06. (Folded into row 3.)
• flowfuse#7184 EMQX bridge automation. CHANGES_REQUESTED. (Folded into internal row 11.)
• flowfuse#7180 Editor-disabled UX in immersive mode. CHANGES_REQUESTED. (Folded into row 2.)
• flowfuse#7131 Tighten response schemas. REVIEW_REQUIRED. (Listed as candidate internal row 8.)
• flowfuse#7078 Audit-log stop reason. APPROVED. Most likely to land of the candidates. (Listed as candidate bug-fix row 11.)

Confirmed not coming for 2.30 (skip): drafts (flowfuse#6585 immersive POC, #7185 / nr-launcher#533 / device-agent#626 Node-RED 5.0 theme, flowfuse#7017 Sentry upgrade, #7090 mqtt agent, #7203 tailwind), stale PRs (>2 months no update), and routine deps bumps already noted in row 16.

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Proposed blog structure

Two headline sections, then a catch-all.

1. Agentic Flow Building in FlowFuse Expert (Beta) — lead.
   • Frame explicitly as Cloud-only soft launch with request access.
   • Available on Starter, Team and Enterprise.
   • Tease that self-hosted enablement follows once the central broker work lands.
   • Hint at "bring your own key" as an exploratory direction without committing.
2. A More Immersive Editor Experience.
   • Covers #7098 plus the snapshot diff polish (#7081 + flow-renderer 0.5.1).
   • Stephen and Knolleary both flagged this as visibly impactful in the Sprint Demo.
3. What else is new?
   • Markdown code-block line breaks in Expert.
   • Device editor auto-recovery.
   • SSO security hardening (Google token reuse, unverified-account rotation, and if #7119 lands, force-all-users SSO).
   • Node-RED 5.0 readiness teaser ("under-promise: by end of May").
   • Tooltip cleanup.

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Notes

• Headline label coverage: 0 of ~5 user-facing candidates carry the headline label on the source issue or PR.
• Lead-story parent linkage:
  • Initiative: product#39.
  • Deliverables: product#63 (Enabling Actions & Flow Generation), product#64 (Two-Way Communication).
  • Closed and superseded: product#47 (Expert as Agentic Co-pilot), now covered by Landing - Hero Secondary Tagline #63.

[dimitrieh]

Blogpost in draft at #4951