Wayland Nano
Wayland Nano is a new engine in the back of the app.
It is written in Rust, properly sandboxed, speaks the agent protocol natively, and is a great deal lighter and quicker than anything we have shipped before.
The important part: it runs alongside Wayland Core, not instead of it. Nano and Core sit side by side as backends you can pick between, and picking one does not take the other away.
Nano has been on the bench for a while, and it may well be where Core ends up one day. That is not today’s promise. Right now its job is to be fast, nimble, and dependable, and to earn the rest later.
Nano arrived in Wayland 0.12.0.
Nothing to download
Section titled “Nothing to download”Most agents you connect to Wayland are installed separately. They need a runtime, a package manager, and a working network on the day you first try them.
Nano does not. Its runtime is bundled inside the app and pinned to an exact checksum. You pick it from the menu and it goes. No download, no npm, no install-this-first. On a fresh install, on a machine with no Node and no package manager, Nano is ready the first time you open it.
It runs on providers you already connected
Section titled “It runs on providers you already connected”Nano draws on every provider on your Models page. There is no separate key to add and no second place to configure a model.
If you have connected a provider for anything else in Wayland, Nano can use it, so it spends the credits you are already paying for and not a penny more. See Models and Providers.
Sandboxed, and native to the protocol
Section titled “Sandboxed, and native to the protocol”Two properties worth stating plainly:
- Sandboxed. Nano is written in Rust and runs contained. It is not a shell script with your permissions.
- Native to the agent protocol. Nano speaks ACP natively over stdio, which is the protocol Wayland uses to drive its backends. There is no translation layer in between, so what Nano reports is what Wayland shows. Nano also returns typed errors that the app consumes directly, rather than strings the app has to guess at.
For the protocol itself, see ACP Server and Client.
Hooks and checkpoints
Section titled “Hooks and checkpoints”Nano v0.1.1 ships with 0.12.0 and makes two things work that were previously wired to nothing:
- Hooks run when Nano is driven over ACP, which is exactly how the desktop drives it. Hook configuration that had no effect before now takes effect as written.
- Checkpoint tools are reachable.
Verified before it runs
Section titled “Verified before it runs”Nano is held to the same supply-chain standard as the rest of the release. Every Nano release archive is verified against:
- its published checksums, and
- a signed SLSA provenance attestation
before it is unpacked or executed, not after. Anything missing or malformed fails the build rather than shipping. See Desktop Security Model.
Nano and Wayland Core
Section titled “Nano and Wayland Core”They are peers, and it is worth being precise about that because it is easy to assume the newer one replaces the older one.
| What it is | |
|---|---|
| Wayland Core | The mature engine. Broad, deep, and the default. See Wayland Core Overview. |
| Wayland Nano | The new engine. Lighter and quicker, and still earning its range. |
Both are listed as backends in the app, and both are always present. You pick per chat, and you can change your mind. If you want the full surface, use Core. If you want speed and a small footprint, try Nano.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Agents for how agents work in Wayland generally.
- Build a Custom Agent.
- Install and Manage Desktop Extensions for installing other agents from inside the app.