Happy New Year!
The tl;dr highlights of Wave 2:
Web search: Automatically pulls context from the Internet, and reads from a URL with the @ command.
Automated Memories: Cascade learns your patterns from your usage.
Enterprise Ready: Available on Enterprise SaaS + Hybrid plans.
Code execution improvements: Cascade uses underlying IDE terminal shell.
Problems Tab: Push issues to Cascade.
Explain Problem UI: Explain and fix issues in the editor.
You can read the full changelog here.
The theme to Wave 2 is setting the foundational pieces for what we hope to be an incredible 2025.
That starts with Windsurf and Cascade being fully Enterprise ready on our SaaS and Hybrid deployment offerings. The magic of an AI Flow system as powerful as Cascade comes when working with it on large, complex production codebases. We have experienced this first-hand internally at Codeium, and now every enterprise will have the ability to see this at scale.
But that’s just the beginning…
Web Search
Cascade’s magic started with our multiple years in building industry-leading codebase awareness engines, giving grounded results from the beginning on private production codebases. A couple weeks after launch, we added image inputs. But there was still one more major source of explicit knowledge missing - real time information on the internet.
As of Wave 2, Cascade has access to a tool that can search the internet and parse the resulting web pages. You can also use the @ symbol with a specific URL if you want to pull in the latest API docs for an enterprise platform or the changelog of your favorite open source project. Cascade will ground its work in the most up-to-date information by parsing and reasoning over the web page identified by the search or specified by the @url.
Cascade Web Search
We’ve also made sure that this works well for the enterprise. For example, if you are on your corporate VPN, you will be able to use @url to access sites on your company network.
We now have the foundational set of inputs - private codebases, images, and the up-to-date public internet. A lot more to come this year, but this is the core start.
Automated Memories
In Wave 1, we added explicit Memories via global rules and repository-specific windsurfrules. This was one of the biggest asks from the community. However, the reason we called this Memories is because we already had a feeling that, while telling Cascade how you want work to be done is good, Cascade learning how you do work would be even better.
With automated Memories, Cascade will automatically figure out patterns in how you want work to be done, and save them to a bank of Memories that you can later inspect and edit. This allows Cascade to get more personalized to you the more you use it.
Cascade Automated Memories
With both explicit and implicit Memories, we have the foundational base for Cascade getting smarter about how to work with you, and you specifically. We are rolling out automated Memories gradually across our userbase, so expect to see them come to you shortly!
Streamlining execution
When Cascade runs terminal commands as part of its execution, it is now able to do so utilizing the underlying IDE terminal shell - nothing visibly different for the user, but commands like venv now work as expected. Another step towards making Cascade seamlessly fit into a user’s development environment. We have also made many improvements to the devcontainer extension. With an integrated terminal shell and strong devcontainer support, we have more foundational pieces for the AI to do work both autonomously and safely.
Besides these major foundational pieces, there are a whole list of other improvements that are coming with this wave. For example, we’ve integrated Cascade with the Problems Tab so that you can get Cascade to have the context of (and solve) your issues without a single copy-paste.
Send Problems to Cascade
Wave 2 is our first wave of the new year, but is just the start of what we think will be possible with Windsurf in 2025.
Contact us if you are looking for a full enterprise solution, with SSO, deep analytics, training & support, attribution & audit logging, heterogenous Windsurf and Codeium extension usage, and so much more.
Surf’s up.