Release Notes

v1.0.0-beta.1 May 2026

First public beta of Vesper Orbit. A new tool in the Vesper suite that crawls a single domain and downloads its media (PDFs, images, audio, video) into a per-site folder.

What it does

• Crawls one domain (or its subdomains, optionally) breadth-first.
• Captures every linked PDF, image, audio file, and video. Toggle types on or off independently.
• Original filenames preserved when present in the URL. Numeric collision suffixes (-2, -3) and short-hash fallbacks for nameless URLs.
• Output structure: [chosen folder]/[site-name]-[YYYY-MM-DD-HHMM]/{pdfs, images, audio, video}/ plus a _manifest.csv mapping every source URL to its local file with status flags (ok, too_large, error, skipped_type).
• Defaults: all four media types ON, subdomains OFF, 100 MB per-file cap, max 5,000 pages per scan.

Smart URL exclusions

Skip dynamic-page traps that would otherwise generate thousands of pointless page loads (event calendars, faceted search filters, date pickers).

• Defaults match Vesper Audit's defaults so library and civic sites work cleanly out of the box.
• New Edit link on the idle screen opens a settings panel where you can add, remove, or toggle exclusion patterns. Three categories: path, query string, and regex.
• Patterns import/export to JSON files for sharing across machines or with Vesper Audit. Reset returns to defaults.
• Universal always-skip patterns (mailto:, tel:, javascript:, /wp-json/, /feed/, /tag/, /author/, ?s=) are always on.

Custom save folder

• New Change folder link below the Start button lets you pick where downloads go. Default is still ~/Downloads.
• Output folders always include a date-and-time stamp so re-scans of the same site never collide.

Persistent settings

• Output folder, exclusion patterns, exclusions on/off, and media-type toggles all survive across launches.
• Settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/Vesper Orbit/settings.json.

Polished macOS experience

• Branded DMG installer with the Vesper Orbit wordmark, nebula background, and amber arrow pointing to the Applications shortcut.
• Smooth Luna animation during scans. Luna rests at her crescent pose between scans (matches the Vesper logomark) and only animates while a scan is running.
• Live X pages scanned count - monotonic, no inflated discovered numbers that bounce as the crawler filters URLs.
• Closing the window or quitting during an active scan asks before aborting. Keep scanning is the default; Stop scan and close aborts the crawl cleanly.
• Apple menu includes About Vesper Orbit and Check for Updates... items.

Auto-updates

Vesper Orbit checks for updates automatically against https://vesperapps.com/releases/orbit/. New versions download silently in the background; a slim banner at the top of the window prompts you to restart when an update is ready.

Requirements

• macOS (Apple Silicon or Intel).
• Google Chrome installed (used as the rendering engine for crawled pages).