9.5.8: Simba and Composer ship
The AI agent and the canvas-based flow builder both landed in this release, along with a rebuilt mapping editor.
Two things in 9.5.8 changed how most people start a flow.
Simba, our AI agent, now ships inside the application. It searches templates, creates connections including HTTP APIs built by reading public vendor docs, assists with mapping, drives the canvas, and runs CLI commands. State-changing actions require explicit approval.
Composer, our canvas-based flow builder, is the second. Drop connections, wire them together, and Composer infers the flow type. Build by dragging, ask Simba to build it, or start from a template. It is the default path for creating a flow, and any existing flow converts.
The mapping editor was rebuilt around a dual-panel layout, a Flat and Nested view toggle, and an explicit binding model of Direct, Expression, and Constant. Nested is the larger change. One mechanism now covers flat to nested, nested to flat, and nested to nested, and the transform engine gained full flat normalization, so deep hierarchies run faster and emit fewer redundant rows.
Also in this release: an Insights dashboard for cluster CPU, memory, disk, and JVM threads; an AI usage dashboard with token consumption and cost; billing moved in-app; a widget-based home screen; and the developer documentation hub at etlworks.com/dev.