Valence 1.4.0 - Safer for kids, calmer for everyone
Our biggest release yet: a real step forward for families, and a calmer, more honest everyday experience - still private and on your machine.
We previewed this work here: Coming in 1.4.
What’s new
Kids privacy & safety
- Locked down by default. Kids Mode is now deny-by-default - a child can only reach what a parent has explicitly opened.
- Real help in a crisis. If a child in distress mentions self-harm, Valence reliably surfaces the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline rather than trying to handle it alone.
- Private, even on the device. Conversations can now be encrypted at rest - locked on disk so no one else with access to the computer can read them. A new Local-Only mode blocks all network egress, so nothing leaves the machine.
- A parent console to review a child’s activity and emotional patterns at a glance, with the moments that matter surfaced first.
A calmer, more honest AI
- Calm streaming (new default). While the model works you see a quiet “responding” state; the finished reply appears once, cleanly formatted - no jittery live text. Want to watch it stream? One click.
- Your AI, by name (like “Qwen 3 - Medium (Fast)”), not a cryptic ID.
- Honest first run - no claiming a graphics card you don’t have; on a slower machine it tells you plainly while the first model warms up, then answers the moment it’s ready.
- Tidier thinking - the Chain of Thought is a small, collapsible note instead of a wall of text.
- Quieter by default - optional tools don’t connect on their own.
Fixes
- Sharper, more relevant memory.
- Fixed a rare crash on very long replies, a greeting quirk on small local models, and a case where a follow-up reply could land in the previous message’s space.
Download
Two installers - both ship every release:
Valence 1.4.0 - All-in-one (.msi) · 809 MB · CUDA + Vulkan bundled, fully offline.
Valence 1.4.0 - Slim (.msi) · 303 MB · your GPU pack is fetched on first run.
Windows 10/11 (64-bit) · 7-day free trial, then $59.95 once.
All-in-one SHA-256:
B32F874DA5442D5BC75AE35D73F90EAE6FA744DF32C541583CC943307805F0BFSlim SHA-256:0C507161CB4CAB88081E0DC136F681BE26C3D68C433FD428CF98671149BFC5B2Unsigned installer - SmartScreen may warn: More info → Run anyway. Existing installs upgrade in place.