3-27-26 Launch & Waypoints

Hey all,

Posting the first of what will hopefully be a bi-weekly devlog series. The goal here is to keep you all updated on where the project is going and give a glimpse into what current feature development looks like. The Community Discord is still small right now but I've been seeing a consistent increase in users since this weeks reddit post and am hopeful for a lot of new users over the weekend!

Feature Improvement: Wake Word Detection

We just opened up the open beta last week, and with the reddit post on r/arcraidersfriendly this week we're starting to see the first influx of users! The reception has been very positive so far and I'm trying to address feedback as it's coming in, via DM's mostly. The biggest piece of feedback so far has been inconsistent wake word detection, especially when the user has a non-American accent. The keyword spotting model we used is advertised as being trained on English speakers with various accents, so I'm hopeful we can fix this with some tweaking of the configuration, but this is a work in progress right now.

My recommendation to people with this issue so far has been to point them to our push-to-talk client, Canis Link. Which is an alternative means of triggering Canis to listen by utilizing a lightweight system tray application on Windows to talk with our backend, instead of relying on the wake word detection in Discord. If you're interested in trying it you can download Canis Link from the site, here: Canis-Link I find the push-to-talk behavior way more natural for me than the wake word, so I actually interact with Canis via Canis Link about 90% of the time now.

New Feature: Waypoints

One piece of feedback I've already heard from a few users, and a feature which I've been wanting myself, is the ability to set goals and have Canis track them for you while also offering advice on how to achieve them. This is currently possible with the notes system, but it's a very clunky UX as each note a user creates is it's own node in the graph. So if you try to use notes to track progress on something, like the Trophy Display project for example, Canis has trouble figuring out where exactly you are in the process as it has to work though organizing your notes and ordering them properly on each request.

So I'm super excited to be adding Waypoints to Canis. You can think of waypoints as goals which Canis will keep track of for you. If you're trying to stock up on Springs for a big craft you have planned, just tell Canis 'Set a waypoint that I need 30 springs' or 'Track that I need 30 springs' and Canis will create a Waypoint for you. Then as you're playing you can just tell Canis 'found 2 springs!' and Canis will update your Waypoint and keep you informed of your progress.

The Waypoint system integrates with Canis' existing Star Chart (Knowledge Graph) for the game, so it can handle setting up Waypoints for a given item craft or project without you having to specify everything needed. You can see an example of this integration on the attached screenshot!

Feature Summary

Waypoints

• Set goals via voice or text
• Report progress naturally and Canis updates your counts automatically
• Auto-discovers crafting requirements from the knowledge graph
• Multi-stage tracking for complex goals (e.g. crafting recipes broken into gather → craft → upgrade stages)
• Auto-advances to the next stage when all items in the current stage are complete
• Only shows current stage requirements to keep things focused
• Up to 10 active waypoints at a time
• Check status, drop, complete, or clear waypoints with natural language commands
• Waypoint context is injected into Canis's responses so it stays aware of your goals