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Changelog archive

Release notes from July 2026 and earlier — every entry, unchanged. The current changelog is /changelog.

Note This is the archive. Entries from August 2026 onwards are on the changelog; everything below is kept exactly as it was published, so an older integration can still find the day its behaviour changed.

July 2026

Essence 2 — sharper mouth and teeth, and a much smaller model file (2026-07-27)

Essence 2 now renders each identity through a new unified renderer. The mouth interior — the teeth especially — is rendered sharply rather than being averaged out of the source frames, and it shows most on wide-open speech: measured against each identity’s own previous build, mouth-region fidelity improved roughly 2× to 4.7× across the launch gallery. That ratio is LPIPS — a learned perceptual image-distance metric — computed only inside the mouth-interior mask of the reference render, on each identity’s held-out frames, so it is a per-identity improvement factor and not a cross-identity score (the renderer). It was also checked frame by frame by eye, not only by metrics. Mouth motion is also re-centred and wider, so speech reads as more dynamic.

Two practical consequences:

  • The downloadable model got about 5× smaller. A .lebundle.imx from GET /v1/agent/{code}/model/download is now roughly 85–105 MB instead of several hundred. Read Content-Length rather than hard-coding a size.
  • No serving-cost or pricing change. Measured warm and end to end, the new renderer costs nothing extra to serve. Rates are unchanged: 4 credits/min cloud, 2 self-hosted, 500 credits to create.

Nothing in the API, the session contract, or the tier slugs changed. New creations get the new renderer automatically; existing agents move over as they are retrained, so an older agent keeps serving its current build (and its larger model file) until then. Runs on all three runtimes — cloud GPU, Apple Silicon, and CPU.

Expression 2 — faster creation, same quality bar (2026-07-22)

Expression 2 agent creation now runs the adaptive-ladder recipe by default: it starts from a short, efficient training schedule and climbs to more training only when an identity needs it to pass the same quality checks. In head-to-head testing this reaches essentially the same quality as the previous full-length recipe at roughly 40% of the training time and cost. Creation now takes about 1 to 1.5 hours (a recent cold-start run measured ~1h40m; runs trend faster as the shared training pool stays warm). No API, pricing, or serving changes — new creations get the faster path automatically.

Run Expression 2 locally from the CLI (2026-07-16)

The bitHuman CLI now renders expression-2 avatars on your own hardware. bithuman run with no arguments is a zero-config quickstart: it fetches the free Wise Pup avatar and renders it live — on macOS (Apple Silicon) via CoreML / Apple Neural Engine, and on Linux x86_64 via LiteRT; Windows is coming. Each avatar is one self-contained .imx file and the render engine ships inside the CLI, so a fresh install runs its first avatar with no extra setup — the CLI downloads only your platform’s slice (about 26 MB on macOS, 63 MB on Linux). See Local rendering by platform.

Expression 2 — smaller, sharper serving model (2026-07-16)

Expression 2 now serves each identity through a more compact per-identity model — roughly 6× smaller and faster to run than the previous build — with sharper rendering of the mouth and teeth. The result is a crisper avatar at a lighter serving cost. The change is live across the gallery identities and is applied to new creations automatically. Serving surfaces, the platform contract (push audio in, drain video out), the APIs, and pricing are unchanged — existing agents get the improvement with no action needed.

Expression 2 — adaptive per-identity training (2026-07-15)

Expression 2 agent creation now runs an adaptive training recipe: every agent must pass the same quality checks as before, and an identity that needs more work automatically gets more training rather than a lower bar. In practice creation completes in about 1 to 1.5 hours — see Expression 2 for the updated expectations. The Expression 2 identities in the gallery have been refreshed with models trained under the new recipe, with the same quality checks enforced. No action is needed: existing agents, integrations, APIs, and pricing are unchanged.

Agent creation is image-only (2026-07-10)

The video creation input is removed for all models (essence-1, expression-1, essence-2, expression-2):

  • Provide a portrait image (or let the prompt generate one) — bitHuman generates the identity video internally, always 10 seconds, authored so idle loops seam perfectly (first frame == last frame). User footage can’t guarantee that loop contract, which is why it’s no longer accepted.
  • Never send video to POST /v1/agent/generate: as enforcement rolls out platform-wide, requests carrying it are rejected with 400 VIDEO_INPUT_NOT_SUPPORTED before anything is billed — never silently ignored.
  • video_aspect_ratio is removed with the video input; duration is deprecated (accepted but ignored — the internally generated identity video is always 10 seconds).
  • Existing agents are unaffected, and POST /v1/files/upload still accepts video files as assets — video just isn’t a creation input.

Essence 2 naming settled (2026-07-10)

  • essence-2 is the standard tier name — the light-name retirement completed (the former essence-2-light was consolidated into essence-2 on 2026-07-05): the standard photoreal model, optimized to run everywhere (GPU / Apple Silicon / CPU / WebGPU-WASM), and the default. See Essence 2. The premium tier of the family (previously essence-2-quality) became an internal model and is no longer offered publicly; see Naming & migration.
  • Rates unchanged. essence-2 stays 4 credits/min cloud, 0.5× when self-hosted; creation stays 500 credits. GET /v1/pricing advertises the canonical names only in agent_generation.by_model and talking_video.rates; deprecated aliases are not advertised.
  • Docs moved. The model guide now lives at /concepts/essence-2; the old URLs (/concepts/essence-2-light, /concepts/essence-2-quality) redirect.

Expression 2 creation price: 2000 credits (2026-07-10)

Creation pricing is now per engine:

  • expression-2 creation (and model-add) costs 2000 credits — up from 500. Expression 2 is the fully generative engine; each per-identity train runs substantially more GPU time than an Essence 2 train, and the price now reflects that cost.
  • Essence 2 stays at 500 credits; v1 stays at 250.
  • auto bills the routed model’s rate — 500 when your subject routes to essence-2 (photorealistic person), 2000 when it routes to expression-2 (cartoon / animal / stylized character). The dashboard shows the range before you generate; GET /v1/pricing advertises auto at the 2000 ceiling so callers never see a number lower than the possible charge.

Essence 2 & Expression 2 — launch rollout begins; model pages refreshed (2026-07-10)

The second-generation models reach their announced launch date and the rollout is underway. Creation access opens progressively (a v2 creation ahead of your account’s access returns 503 MODEL_NOT_YET_AVAILABLE and bills nothing; the dashboard’s v2 creation entries ship separately from the API). Alongside the rollout, the model documentation gained the shipping characteristics:

  • essence-2 — photorealistic people; animates real identity footage at its native resolution (full-HD 1080p identity video by default) at ~25 fps; serves GPU → Apple Silicon → CPU (corrected 2026-09-02: this entry originally said “fully on-device on Apple Silicon”; no on-device Essence 2 build has been published — the Apple tier is bitHuman’s own hardware), and a browser-local tier is rolling out (?render=local, WebGPU with WASM fallback) as per-identity web bundles publish.
  • expression-2 — stylized and universal characters; fully generative across the whole 416×720 scene at 20 fps from a single photo (no face detection or cropping anywhere in the pipeline), which is why any character morphology animates naturally; serves GPU → Apple Silicon → CPU; its on-device Apple engine shipped later, in Swift SDK 2.5.0 — engine only, with no model bundle published.
  • The family overview’s device matrix and creation guide were refreshed to match.

Plan concurrency, offline licensing preview, and one pricing page (2026-07-10)

Rounding out the launch — plan allowances and a documentation overhaul:

  • Concurrent avatar sessions are now a plan allowance — Creator 3, Pro 10, Business 50, Enterprise 200, Custom unlimited. Enforcement is rolling out: once active, a session start beyond the allowance returns 403 CONCURRENCY_LIMIT_REACHED, and live sessions are never cut off mid-stream by the limit. See Session concurrency.
  • Offline licensing is coming soon — run avatars fully self-hosted with per-device, per-model signed credit bundles minted through your online account: Business $999/year prepacks 120,000 credits (Essence 2 + Expression 2); Enterprise $1,999/year prepacks 240,000 credits. Self-hosted minutes meter at half the cloud rate. Preview at Pricing → Offline licensing. Superseded: those per-tier packages no longer apply. Offline licensing is Business and Enterprise only, from 100,000 credits per licence with no upper limit, on a one-year term — see Pricing → Offline licensing for the current terms.
  • Pricing is now the single home of every number — per-model serving rates (cloud and self-hosted), creation credits, talking-video rates, and the plan table live there; other pages link to it instead of repeating figures.
  • Naming and migration history has one home — every alias, retired name, and response-name lag is consolidated at Models → Naming & migration.
  • Every API operation ships a runnable example — all 33 operations in the interactive API reference now carry copy-paste curl samples with realistic bodies and next-step hints.
  • Android documentation restored — the Kotlin / Android SDK page and the Android hello example are reachable again, and the voice reference URLs consolidated at Text to speech.

Multi-agent avatar rooms — audio binds to the launching agent (2026-07-09)

The cloud avatar now pins its audio to the agent that starts the AvatarSession (via the LiveKit lk.publish_on_behalf attribute), fixing wrong-agent audio binding in rooms with more than one agent participant. The avatar previously bound to the first agent it saw, so with a facilitator + persona in the same room it could latch onto the wrong agent — staying silent for the persona and never returning playback_started/playback_finished. Server-side fix; no SDK or plugin upgrade required. See LiveKit → Multiple agents.

essence-2-light consolidated into essence-2; force-tier slugs (2026-07-05)

The Essence 2 request surface is now just essence-2 (plus the explicit essence-2-quality reference tier):

  • The essence-2-light name is retired. Create and render with model: "essence-2" — the light tier is what it serves. Requests naming essence-2-light (or the old essence-2-light-ane slug) get a targeted 400 pointing at essence-2. Existing agents and saved links keep working (retired values route to the essence-2 chain), and essence-2-light remains the internal family name you’ll still see in supported_models, 409 messages, and model downloads.
  • Serving chains + force tiers. By default essence-2 and expression-2 sessions route down a serving chain (GPU → Apple Silicon → CPU) with automatic overflow. New force-tier slugs — essence-2-gpu / essence-2-ane / essence-2-cpu and expression-2-gpu / expression-2-cpu / expression-2-ane — pin one tier for benchmarking/placement testing and never overflow. See tier pinning.
  • Talking videos: POST /v1/video/generate accepts essence-2 (4 credits/min) in place of the retired name; essence-2-quality (8) and expression-2 (4) unchanged.
  • Where each model runs: the family overview gains a device/runtime matrix (cloud tiers, self-hosted, on-device Apple Silicon, browser-local status).

Android / Kotlin SDK docs restored (2026-07-04)

The Android SDK page and the Kotlin hello-avatar example are back. The on-device Essence runtime for Android — ai.bithuman:sdk:2.3.6, a self-contained arm64-v8a AAR on Maven Central — is unchanged and installable; only its documentation had been removed. It’s pinned at 2.3.6 (Essence, Engine ABI v7, Beta) and renders Essence .imx models fully on-device.

Pick-for-me creation, model adds & downloads (2026-07-02)

Named as of today: these two tiers were called Essence 2 Light and Essence 2 Quality when this shipped; Light is essence-2 now and Quality became an internal model that is no longer offered publicly — both retired names and the migration are documented under Naming & migration.

The model-release UX wave — one creation surface across all five model families, plus post-creation adds and artifact downloads:

  • model: "auto" — let the platform pick. POST /v1/agent/generate now accepts auto: an LLM classifies your input (the image if provided, else the prompt) and routes it — a photorealistic person → essence-2, a cartoon / animal / exotic creature → expression-2. It’s the default selection in the dashboard’s create flow; API callers send it explicitly (an omitted model keeps the historical essence-1 default). Charges the routed model’s 500-credit rate.
  • The Essence 2 subject gate. Explicit essence-2* creations require a photorealistic human subject — anything else is rejected with a clean 422 MODEL_SUBJECT_MISMATCH before billing and before any agent row is created (auto routes instead of rejecting). See the subject gate.
  • Per-model creation pricing. Creation is billed per model — 500 credits for the second generation (essence-2, essence-2-quality, essence-2-light, expression-2, auto), 250 for v1 (essence-1, expression-1). GET /v1/pricing now returns the per-model map (agent_generation.by_model) — the old flat field is gone.
  • POST /v1/agent/{code}/models — add a model to an existing agent. No re-creation: add essence-1 (250), essence-2 (500), expression-2 (500), or expression-1 (free, instant — the shared v1 engine drives the agent’s existing image + voice, nothing trained). Async adds poll via supported_models; failures auto-refund; re-POSTing never double-charges.
  • GET /v1/agent/{code}/model/download — download your generated model. A 302 to the artifact (?redirect=false for JSON): essence-1 → .imx, essence-2-light → .lebundle.imx (licensed weights), essence-2-quality → .pkl, expression-2 → .avatar (the Mac-runnable CoreML build). Per-family error matrix including the poll-able 404 MODEL_ARTIFACT_NOT_READY.
  • The CLI recognizes every model family. bithuman run / info / pull now sniff any bitHuman artifact and answer honestly: essence-1 .imx runs locally as always; .lebundle.imx / .pkl / .avatar are recognized with a clear handoff to where they run (launch matrix). New: bithuman pull <AGENT_CODE> downloads your own agent’s model through the endpoint above.

Official model guides + natural idle for the second generation (2026-07-02)

Named as of today: these two tiers were called Essence 2 Light and Essence 2 Quality when this shipped; Light is essence-2 now and Quality became an internal model that is no longer offered publicly — both retired names and the migration are documented under Naming & migration.

  • Per-model official documentation. Each second-generation model now has a full product guide — what it is, how creation works (inputs, pipeline steps, realistic durations), serving tiers and ?model= pinning, idle behavior, pricing, and limits: Expression 2, Essence 2 — plus a new session behavior & troubleshooting guide covering connect latency (warm first line vs scale-from-zero overflow), idle vs speaking behavior, and the common errors.
  • Expression 2: real-footage idle on every creation. During silences the avatar now plays a looping clip derived from the identity itself — cropped from your source footage when available, or captured from the trained model’s rest pose for photo-only creations — instead of generated idle frames. Baked in automatically at creation; existing agents’ idle clips were regenerated.
  • Forward-only looping. Idle and base-video loops now always play forward, wrapping from the last frame back to the first — footage never plays in reverse. Applies to expression-2 (all tiers, including on-device) and essence-2-light (idle and speech, all tiers).
  • supported_models + early model gate. Agent responses (status, get, list, and the embed-token response) now include supported_models — the canonical model families the agent can be launched as right now. POST /v1/embed-tokens/request accepts an optional model field, validated up front; requesting expression-2 / essence-2-light before the agent’s trained model exists returns a clean 409 MODEL_NOT_GENERATED (“agent <code>’s <model> model hasn’t been generated yet”) — on talking video, before any charge. (Update, later on 2026-07-02: essence-2-quality — originally never gated here — is now gated on the agent’s source video, the footage its identity prepares from; see the model-release entry above.) A live ?model= override to an ungenerated model now ends the session cleanly with avatar_error: "model_not_generated" instead of hanging.

Announced — Essence 2 & Expression 2 (launching July 10, 2026)

bitHuman’s two second-generation avatar models — essence-2 and expression-2 — are announced and launch July 10, 2026 on every surface (the REST API, the embed widget, the dashboard, and the SDKs). Until then, essence-1 and expression-1 are available today. See Essence 2 & Expression 2 for the full guide.

  • expression-2 — the second-generation expression engine. Audio-driven, real-time avatar video from a single photo: agent creation trains a small per-identity model, then the engine synthesizes fully generated motion live. (Update 2026-07-02: per-model creation-time expectations are now documented — roughly 45 minutes for expression-2; see the per-model guides.) Serves on three tiers — gpu, cpu, and Apple (the Apple tier — the slug is historical; serving tiers). 4 credits/min cloud · 2 credits/min self-hosted.
  • essence-2-quality — the highest-fidelity tier of the Essence family: a heavy GPU renderer for close-up, hero-quality output on cloud GPUs. 8 credits/min cloud · 4 credits/min self-hosted.
  • essence-2-light — the cost-effective tier: an efficient renderer that runs across gpu, cpu, and Apple — including fully on-device, where audio and video never leave your hardware. 4 credits/min cloud · 2 credits/min self-hosted.

All three are train-on-create via POST /v1/agent/generate (500 credits, one-time) and serve through the existing session flows unchanged. The v1 models (essence-1, expression-1) remain fully supported at 250 credits creation.

June 2026

Talking video generation — new API (2026-06-29)

  • New endpoints: POST /v1/video/generate + GET /v1/video/{job_id}. Render a finished talking-video mp4 of one of your agents from text or audio. With text input, the agent’s own voice speaks your script; with audio input, your hosted audio_url drives the render directly. The API is asynchronous — submit a job, then poll for the public mp4 URL, output duration, and credits charged. Launch engines: expression-2 (4 credits/min) and essence-2-quality (8 credits/min), billed per minute of output rounded up; a failed render is automatically refunded. Limits: 120 seconds of output, 5000 characters of text. See Talking video generation and the Video API reference.

Agent generation — v2 model names accepted (2026-06-29)

  • POST /v1/agent/generate now accepts the v2 model names. The model parameter takes essence-2-quality, expression-2, and essence-2-light as supported generation targets (alongside essence-1 / expression-1). The v2 models launch July 10, 2026 (upcoming). Update 2026-06-30: the legacy aliases (elevate, embody, embody-gpu, essence-2-mobile) were retired ahead of GA — requests using them now return a 400 VALIDATION_ERROR naming the current model list. Share links are unaffected.

Model naming — versioned public taxonomy (2026-06-26)

  • The avatar model families now have versioned public names. The model parameter on agent generation (and the viewer’s ?model= selector) accepts the consolidated names essence-1, essence-2-quality, essence-2-light, expression-1, and expression-2. Essence 2 ships in two tiers — Quality (essence-2-quality, the high-fidelity cloud GPU renderer) and Light (essence-2-light, the efficient run-everywhere renderer). The older values essence and expression map to essence-1 / expression-1; the pre-release codename values (elevate, embody, essence-2-mobile) were transitional aliases and have since been retired (see the 2026-06-30 note above — they now return a validation error naming the current model list). Share links are unaffected. Documentation, dashboards, and app labels now use the new family names.

Python SDK bithuman 2.3.10 (2026-06-23) — self-hosted streaming lag fix

  • Streaming no longer degrades over a long turn. Self-hosted streaming now holds a steady frame rate for the full length of a turn (long utterances used to slow down as they grew), with byte-identical output. The audio stream also resets at the start of each turn so idle frames can’t shift lip-sync.

Python SDK bithuman 2.3.9 (2026-06-23) — barge-in / interrupt fix

  • Interrupt (barge-in) no longer wedges the runtime. Interrupting the avatar mid-utterance previously froze it after the first barge-in (the interrupt path shared the terminal stop signal). 2.3.9 routes interrupts through a separate event, drains in-flight frames, and resumes on a fresh runtime — so a user can talk over the avatar repeatedly without it getting stuck.
  • Recommended LiveKit stack: bithuman 2.3.9+ with livekit-plugins-bithuman 1.6.3 and livekit-agents 1.6.x (plus pillow).

Python SDK bithuman 2.3.8 (2026-06-16)

  • Maintenance release on the 2.3 line (2.3.5–2.3.7 were not published).

Python SDK bithuman 2.3.4 (2026-06-12) — Linux CA auto-discovery

  • Linux CA auto-discovery. The SDK now finds your distro’s CA bundle automatically on Linux — self-hosted auth (AsyncBithuman.create()) works zero-config on Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, and Alpine-glibc layouts. The /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt symlink workaround needed on ≤ 2.3.3 is obsolete. Thanks to the customer report that pinned down the Debian/Ubuntu Problem with the SSL CA cert failure.
  • Env-var override preserved. CURL_CA_BUNDLE / SSL_CERT_FILE take precedence over auto-discovery when set — a stale or wrong value will still break auth, so unset them unless they point at a valid bundle.
  • macOS wheel tags. The 2.3.4 macOS wheels are tagged for macOS 26+ (arm64). On older macOS, pip reports No matching distribution found — see the Python SDK page for options.

May 2026

2.3.0 (2026-05-28) — layered architecture + PyPI wheel split

  • PyPI wheel split. pip install bithuman is now the Python SDK library only (~5 MB) — from bithuman import AsyncBithuman still works. The bitHuman CLI moved to a sibling bithuman-cli wheel, published beside the Homebrew formula and the universal installer — all three delivered the same Rust binary, which printed libessence 1.19.1 ABI 7 / bithuman 2.3.0 on bithuman --version. That wheel is no longer published; the CLI comes from Homebrew or the universal installer today (the CLI page).
  • CLI surface trimmed. The binary now exposes exactly six runtime subcommands: run, render, info, pull, list, doctor (plus init for scaffolding a new project — seven in total). Legacy 1.x verbs (voice, text, avatar, stream, speak, action, generate, asr, tts, models pull|list, cleanup) were removed during the 2.x line and stay removed.
  • Wheel matrix. The Python library bithuman ships on PyPI for macOS arm64 and Linux x86_64 + aarch64 (manylinux). The CLI wheel was macOS Apple Silicon only and is no longer published at all — install the CLI via Homebrew or the universal install.sh / tarball, on macOS and Linux alike. Python 3.10–3.14.
  • Repo layout. Public source lives in two repos: bithuman-sdk-public (since archived; examples now live in homebrew-bithuman/Examples) — docs source, runnable examples, and landing pages — and homebrew-bithuman — the Homebrew tap, universal install.sh, and tarball release mirror. The engine and language SDKs ship as prebuilt, statically linked artifacts on PyPI and SwiftPM.
  • BITHUMAN_BRAIN_* → BITHUMAN_AGENT_* env-var rename (carried through from Wave 5 of the 2.x line): BITHUMAN_AGENT_PORT, BITHUMAN_AGENT_PYTHON, BITHUMAN_AGENT_SCRIPT. The old BITHUMAN_BRAIN_* names are still read with a deprecation warning.
  • No external API breaks. Python (from bithuman import AsyncBithuman) and Swift (import Bithuman) public APIs are unchanged from 2.2.x. Migration for existing pip install bithuman && bithuman run users was install-time only: install the CLI separately to keep the bithuman command (the CLI page is the one writer for how).
  • Engine ABI bumps to v7 (libessence 1.19.1) — adds be_runtime_tick_compose_from_mel (compose a tick directly from a mel feed). Additive on top of v6; old SDK builds keep working. (be_set_default_audio_encoder is an additive, ABI-unchanged entry point and did not bump the ABI.)
  • LiveKit integration. The upstream pin-relaxation PR (livekit/agents#5882) has since merged — livekit-plugins-bithuman (1.6.3) now pins bithuman<3,>=0.5.25, so pip install bithuman livekit-plugins-bithuman resolves cleanly.
  • Removed surfaces. The bithuman.utils and bithuman.audio Python modules are gone from the slim 2.3.0 wheel (helpers are inlined into the examples). Elevate was removed from the cloud model family but is retained as the on-device engine (vendored libelevate, used by AvatarUIKit and the expression/iphone sample app) — it was not deleted from the platform.

Python SDK bithuman 2.2.2 (2026-05-25) — Linux CLI tarballs restored

  • CI-only cleanup release; no API / runtime changes. Same Python wheel content as 2.2.1.
  • Linux CLI tarballs (bithuman-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz and bithuman-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz) ship on the GitHub Release again — they had been missing since 2.0.1 because of two container-build blockers, both now fixed in main.
  • Pin bithuman==2.2.2 if you want pip install AND the standalone Linux CLI binary from the same tag; ==2.2.1 is fine for wheel-only consumers.

Python SDK bithuman 2.2.1 (2026-05-25) — the on-device brain

Note 2.2.0 was skipped; 2.2.1 is the first published build of this release, with identical source content. Install 2.2.1.

  • A [local] extra on the CLI wheel added a fully on-device conversation brain to bithuman run, flipped on with BITHUMAN_LOCAL=1; no API key required, no outbound network. The wheel is gone and the brain is not: local mode names the packages to install today.
  • Stack: whisper.cpp (STT) + llama.cpp (LLM, default Qwen 2.5 0.5B-Instruct Q4_K_M) + Supertonic 3 (TTS, 31 languages, voice M1 default) + Silero VAD. All in-process — no Ollama or other server.
  • All three backends have first-party iOS C++ cores, so the same .gguf / .bin / .onnx model files are reusable when porting to mobile.
  • New plugins live in livekit.plugins.bithuman.{WhisperSTT, LlamaCppLLM, SupertonicTTS} alongside AvatarSession. The avatar-only install path is unchanged (heavy deps are lazy-imported).
  • Tuning via env vars: BITHUMAN_LOCAL_WHISPER, BITHUMAN_LOCAL_LLM, BITHUMAN_LOCAL_LLM_FILE, BITHUMAN_LOCAL_VOICE, BITHUMAN_LOCAL_LANG, BITHUMAN_INSTRUCTIONS. See Python SDK.
  • Footprint: ~860 MB on disk (auto-downloaded from HuggingFace on first run), ~1.5 GB RAM, ~717 ms warm load, ~1.4 s warm end-to-end on Apple Silicon.
  • Cloud path (BITHUMAN_LOCAL unset, OPENAI_API_KEY set) is byte-for-byte unchanged.

Python SDK bithuman 2.1.0 (2026-05-24) — figure → avatar

  • Retired legacy “figure” terminology. CLI flag --figures-root is now --avatars-root (old name kept as a deprecated alias). Default cache moved from ~/.cache/bithuman/figures to ~/.cache/bithuman/avatars.
  • No runtime behavior change; alignment with the public-facing “avatar” product term.

Python SDK bithuman 2.0.2 (2026-05-24) — graceful drain

  • bithuman run now cancels active sessions and waits up to 2 s for libessence/HDF5 teardown before the process unwinds. Eliminates the H5F.c: decrementing file ID failed + exit 134 SIGABRT on Ctrl-C / LaunchDaemon stop. Required for production-style supervisors.

Python SDK bithuman 2.0.1 (2026-05-24)

  • AsyncBithuman.cleanup is now async — await b.cleanup() works (was raising TypeError and segfaulting at interpreter shutdown).
  • CLI error message polish: bithuman pull <bad-slug> and bithuman render no longer reference renamed subcommands.
  • essence-render --help shows the correct prog name (was bithuman).

Python SDK bithuman 2.0.0 (2026-05-22) — bundled-CLI release

  • pip install bithuman now ships a bithuman console-script that runs the full talk-to-your-avatar stack (Rust CLI + embedded livekit-server + the agent brain (STT/LLM/TTS) + browser UI). One install, one command, one URL — same Rust binary as the Homebrew CLI.
  • The runtime library API (import bithuman, AsyncBithuman, from bithuman import Avatar) is unchanged — existing library consumers keep working.
  • The legacy 1.x Python CLI is preserved as the essence-render console-script.
  • Wheels: macOS arm64, Linux x86_64, Linux aarch64. Python 3.10+.
  • Quickstart: pip install bithuman && bithuman run — see the quickstart for the full flow.

v1.18.5 (2026-05-18)

  • Unified bithuman: one pip install bithuman = full prior 1.11.3 API + native engine, 100% backward-compatible (==1.11.3 code runs unchanged).
  • Native engine: far faster cold load + lower memory than pure-Python, exact output parity. Loads fresh console .imx TAR exports natively.
  • Python 3.9–3.14 (Linux x86_64/ARM64, macOS Apple Silicon). Pin >=1.18.5 (1.18.0–1.18.4 predate the unification; Windows / macOS-Intel stay on ==1.11.3).

v1.17.x (2026-05-14)

  • bithuman avatar --openai — workstation Realtime, browser-rendered avatar.
  • voice / text auto-pick cloud vs --local; explicit flags override.
  • Interactive TUI for voice (mic/bot meters + transcript); BITHUMAN_NO_TUI=1 opts out.
  • Flutter plugin renamed bithuman_avatar → bithuman (one Dart codebase, mac/iOS).
  • Canonical OpenAI Realtime path is now the Rust CLI’s --openai mode.

v1.16.0 (2026-05-14)

  • Streaming API on Swift (pushAudio/frames()/resetStream()). Flat per-tick cost on long sessions.
  • Default Realtime model: gpt-realtime-mini.

v1.12.0 (2026-05-12)

  • First unified release: Python, Swift, CLI from one source, identical output.
  • Linux + Windows Python wheels (no WSL).

April 2026

  • Chat Widget v5 — text/voice/video in one floating widget; themes, FAB styles, JS API (open/close/setTheme/destroy).
  • FAQ KB — search always runs; removed dedup that dropped valid results.
  • Voice — Siri-style animation; multilingual TTS (+11 languages including Thai, Chinese, and Arabic).
  • Streaming — instant text to UI without waiting for audio sync.

March 2026

  • Platform UI — sidebar (Explore / Library / Billing / Developer); Explore replaces Community, Library replaces My Agents; credit balance in top nav.
  • Docs — screenshots + navigation refreshed for the new UI.

February 2026

  • Expression Avatar v2 — 24% faster pipeline; no concurrent-session artifacts.
  • Self-hosted GPU container — up to 8 sessions/GPU; ~50 s cold / 4–6 s warm; ~5 GB weights auto-cached.
  • Examples overhaul — fixed Compose env_file; standardized .env.example; added AGENTS.md, llms.txt, OpenAPI spec.
  • REST API — /v1/agent/{code}/speak, /v1/agent/{code}/add-context; consistent error codes.
  • SDK — livekit-plugins-bithuman Expression support; bithuman.AvatarSession unified cloud/CPU/GPU; animal mode for Essence.

January 2026

  • Essence Avatar — CPU-only .imx rendering, 25 FPS, Linux / macOS / Windows.
  • Platform API — agent generation, CRUD, file upload, dynamics/gestures.
  • Integrations — LiveKit cloud plugin, iframe embed (JWT), webhooks, Flutter example.