0.8.1 — an installer a teacher can run, and a page that stops saying there is none

[peopleworks]

The desktop app is for the teacher who wants to open a folder of PDFs. The zip asked that teacher to right-click it, tick Unblock, run Get-FileHash in PowerShell, extract it, and then keep the folder together — because WebView2 needs wwwroot next to the executable, and a teacher who drags the .exe to the desktop ends up with a broken app.

This adds an installer beside the zip, makes it what the page offers first, and releases it as 0.8.1.

The installer

Inno Setup, built on the runner from the same staging folder as the zip, so the two can never carry different files.

• Per-user, no administrator rights (PrivilegesRequired=lowest, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs). A teacher on a managed school laptop can install it without asking IT.
• Start menu entry, and an uninstaller registered under the current user — it leaves from Settings → Apps like any other program.
• English and Spanish wizard; Windows 10 1809 minimum, as the page already promised.
• No version is written in the .iss. It is passed with /DAppVersion, because the version already lives in seven places ReleaseVersionTests holds together.
• Both artifacts get a .sha256 and both are attached. The dry run keeps both.

It is unsigned, exactly like the executable inside it, so SmartScreen still warns. The page says so. Only code signing removes that.

Verified, not assumed

On the runner (dry run 35119013341): Inno Setup 6.7.1 is already on windows-latest, and the Spanish wizard file is found. The installer is 57.6 MB against 83.8 MB for the zip — the same 488 files, compressed with LZMA2 instead of the zip's deflate. Nothing is left out.

On a real Windows machine, from that artifact:

Silent per-user install	exit code 0
Installed tree vs the zip	488 files each, 0 differences, wwwroot included
Settings → Apps entry	present, under HKCU
Start menu shortcut	present
Launch	app alive after 12 s, window titled Signs of AI Writing
Silent uninstall	entry, shortcut and every file removed — 0 left

A running process with its window proves only that WPF started; a WebView2 that could not find wwwroot would show the same window with a blank pane. The evidence that the UI loads is the file comparison: the installed tree is identical to the zip's, paths included, and that tree has worked since desktop-v0.1.0.

The page, which was about to lie three times

The moment an installer exists, three sentences on /download become false: "no installer" under the button, "There is no installer" in the zip notes, and a three-step warning whose middle step was Get-FileHash. Rewritten in both languages:

1. Run the installer. It installs for you only.
2. On the warning: More info → Run anyway.
3. It is in the Start menu; uninstall it from Settings → Apps.

The checksum is still explained, as an option beside the steps rather than an obstacle in them. The size under the button said 80 MB, which was the zip. It now says under 100 MB — true of both files, and not a number that drifts with the next release, since DesktopRelease already keeps sizes in the release notes. The README's download link went to a GitHub releases search page instead of /download; fixed. Rendered and checked: the button resolves to the 0.8.1 Setup.exe, the secondary link to the zip.

Why the version is bumped here

The page builds the installer's URL from DesktopRelease.Version, and Pages deploys on merge. Merged at 0.8.0, the primary button would point at desktop-v0.8.0, which has no Setup.exe. The version and the page must land together.

Order:

1. Merge A list of data is not a tricolon #101 first, so v0.8.1 carries the rule-of-three fix.
2. Merge this.
3. Cut desktop-v0.8.1 first — until it exists, the download button 404s.
4. Then v0.8.1, then the MCP registry after NuGet indexes.

Known gaps, not fixed here

• The WebView2 runtime is not checked. The app assumes it is present, which it is on nearly every Windows 10/11 machine but not guaranteed on managed or LTSC images. That was already true of the zip; the installer could bootstrap it later.
• Uninstalling leaves %LOCALAPPDATA%\SignsOfAI, where the perplexity model weights are downloaded. That is the usual behaviour for user data, and it is the one thing a teacher short on disk might want removed.
• Unsigned. See above.

375 + 72 + 7, plus the desktop job's 31.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_015PEbbiYSNPw7jE3LrPNhyF