We’re excited to share the latest improvements included in Next Lab 2.26.0.

This release focuses on improving the handling of uploaded resources, streamlining agent workflows, and enhancing the experience during AI-guided steps.

📎 Better resource upload experience

When uploading a file in an Opportunity or Small Bet, the interface now displays a loader, making it clear that the upload is in progress and preventing confusion during processing.

💰 Opportunity budget flexibility

Users can now update an Opportunity even when the portfolio budget is lower, avoiding unnecessary errors when changes are unrelated to budgeting.

⚡ Faster agent setup

Clicking “Advance with AI” now automatically starts the agent session, providing a smoother and faster experience.

📄 Resource disclaimer

A new disclaimer informs users that uploaded resources are processed by AI models and used as context for suggestions and reasoning.

🧹 Cleaner agent responses

Agent outputs previously returned in HTML are now parsed for a cleaner, more readable display.

📊 Vision & Purpose progress indicator

The Vision & Purpose agent now includes a progress bar to make it clear how far along you are in the guided Q&A workflow.

🔍 AI context expanded with Small Bet resources

Resources added to Small Bets are now interpreted and included as part of the AI context, enabling more grounded suggestions and better use of agent capabilities.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for the feedback that guided these improvements — keep sharing ideas and issues through the boards!

We’re excited to announce Next Lab 2.25.0. This release focuses on strengthening how context is built and consumed by agents, enabling more accurate reasoning and better answers—along with important fixes in the Vision and Purpose A agent.

📎 Resources as part of the Opportunity context

We made major improvements to how resources are added to an Innovation Opportunity.

Opportunity resources are now interpreted and included as part of the AI context, allowing agents to reason with richer, real inputs instead of isolated prompts.

🧠 Better LLM suggestions for Vision & Purpose

Opportunity resources now directly feed the LLM suggestions that help answer Vision & Purpose questions.

This means the agent can generate responses that are more grounded, consistent, and aligned with the actual context of the Opportunity.

🧠 Vision & Purpose Agent improvements

We improved the Vision & Purpose Agent to address reliability issues and enhance the quality of its reasoning.

The agent now performs better when synthesizing context and providing strategic guidance.

🚦 Triage Agent fixes

We fixed errors that could occur when applying Triage recommendations to an Opportunity.

The Triage flow is now more stable and reliable when users apply agent-generated recommendations.

🐞 Additional fixes

This release also includes a set of additional bug fixes and small improvements reported through Frill and internal testing to improve overall stability.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for your continued feedback—keep sharing your ideas and issues through the boards!

We’re shipping Release 2.24.0 with a focus on the unglamorous-but-essential stuff: clearer operational signals, safer user onboarding, and a backend upgrade that sets us up for smoother scaling.

This release includes five key improvements:

• Better critical error notifications to Slack
• A tighter review flow for unusual/new users
• Next Cycle Agents moved onto the new queue architecture
• Updates to our user confirmation review process

Below is a quick walkthrough of what changed and why it matters.

1) Clearer critical error reporting (with Slack notifications)

When something breaks, the first job is knowing it broke—and knowing it fast.

In 2.24.0 we improved how critical errors are sent to Slack so alerts are more dependable and easier to act on. That means fewer “silent failures,” less guesswork, and faster time-to-triage when something is genuinely urgent.

Why it matters: better signal → faster response → less downtime.

2) Improved review for strange/new users

We’ve made changes to how we review unusual or newly-created users. The goal is simple: catch edge cases earlier while keeping the process lightweight for the team.

This update helps us identify “doesn’t look right” patterns sooner, while maintaining a consistent, repeatable review workflow.

Why it matters: safer onboarding and fewer support escalations later.

3) Vision and Purpose Agent upgraded to the new queue architecture

One of the bigger internal changes in 2.24.0 is migrating the Next Cycle Agents to our new queue architecture.

Queue systems are the plumbing of many modern apps: they manage background work, smooth out load spikes, and provide a reliable way to process jobs asynchronously. Moving the Next Cycle Agents to the new queue design is an investment in stability and throughput—especially under heavier usage.

Why it matters: improved performance under load and a cleaner foundation for future features.

4) Updated user confirmation review

We also refined the user confirmation review workflow. This is about making confirmations easier to validate and reducing ambiguity during review.

Why it matters: fewer confusing edge cases for reviewers and more consistent decisions.

What to watch after updating

As always, we’ll be keeping an eye on a few areas post-release:

• Slack alert volume and formatting (ensuring signal stays high)
• Any friction in the new/strange user review flow
• Next Cycle Agents job processing latency and retry patterns
• Confirmation review throughput and consistency
• A drop in RecordNotUnique / UniqueViolation occurrences

Release 2.24.0 is about building a smoother, safer, and more reliable platform—incrementally, but meaningfully. If you notice anything unexpected after the update, or if you have ideas for improving these workflows further, we’d love to hear it.

We’re excited to share the updates included in Next Lab 2.23.0, focusing on performance, clearer AI suggestions, improved notifications, and several UX enhancements.

⚡ LLM suggestions moved to background jobs

LLM-powered suggestions are now processed through Sidekiq, making the experience faster and more reliable while reducing timeouts.

💾 Loader added when saving Agenda Items

Saving an Agenda Item that includes uploading a resource could take a few seconds.

We’ve added a loader indicator so it’s clear that the action is being processed.

📨 Improved announcement delivery

Announcements published in Frill will now be emailed Sunday nights, reducing load during peak usage and improving overall Lab performance.

🧼 Fix: malformed emails

We corrected user accounts that had invalid or incomplete email formats to ensure proper delivery of system notifications.

🤖 Better agent suggestions in Opportunities

Suggestions now include more detailed reasoning from the agent.

Improved context sent to the agent to reduce “not enough context” responses.

🌐 Translations added to Triage & Vision flows

All fixed UI elements (buttons, labels, static text) are now translated across the Triage and Vision flows for a more consistent experience.

🤝 AI Assistant improvements

You can now:

Ask the assistant to create an Opportunity with a description.

Ask it to edit an existing Opportunity description.

Benefit from several fixes to improve reliability and reduce errors.

🐞 Additional fixes

This release also includes a number of general bug fixes reported through Frill and internal testing.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for all your feedback—keep sharing your ideas and improvements through the boards!

This release bundles all enhancements originally included in 2.22.0, plus additional fixes and refinements introduced in 2.22.1.

✨ New Features & Improvements

Vision & Purpose Agent Integration

Connected the Vision & Purpose Agent API with Next Lab Innovation Opportunities to provide richer context and more accurate guidance.

ChatGPT-like Page in the Lab

Added a conversational interface that allows users to interact with agents in a chat-style workflow.

Performance & Architecture Upgrades

Refactored the agent communication stack — including timeouts, retries, streaming, and connection pooling — resulting in better latency, reliability, and scalability.

🐞 Bug Fixes & Stability

Corrected spelling issues in the SVA Matrix.

Fixed an issue where newly published drills were not appearing correctly.

Repaired the Related Drills button in the drill description.

Added a safeguard to ensure test users are no longer logged to Slack, keeping notifications clean.

Added a flag to prevent new-user Slack notifications when running in development mode.

Improved how critical errors are sent to Slack and refined internal error-handling flows.

This release brings important improvements and refinements to make your workflow smoother and communication clearer inside the Next Lab.

🌐 Next Cycle Agents API Integration

We’ve connected the Next Cycle Agent API with the Next Lab — paving the way for automated cycle management in upcoming releases. This integration sets the foundation for more seamless coordination between your Next Lab Innovation Opportunities and the Next Cycle, try our first integration: The Triage Agent that will help you place an innovation opportunity inside the Next Cycle after a few simple questions.

📢 Announcement Emails

Announcement emails now include a direct “View announcement” link, making it easier for you and your team to jump straight into the details without hunting through your inbox.

✉️ Clearer Email Sender Details

All Lab-generated emails now display a recognizable sender name: Next Lab Updates, helping you quickly identify official communications and avoid confusion.

👥 Team Licensing Clarity

We’ve improved clarity around team licensing — specifically what happens to a user license when a member adds another user to a team. This helps ensure transparency and smoother team management.

That’s it for this release!

As always, we’re continuously improving Next Lab to support your teams and automate more of your product cycles. Stay tuned.

We’re excited to announce Next Lab 2.20.0. This update personalizes announcement emails and improves resource visibility in Opportunity reports—plus a key AI bug fix.

Personalized announcement emails

• Emails are now sent per recipient (no BCC), greeting each user by name and using their preferred Lab language. The Unsubscribe link auto-detects the address and includes a one-click revert if you change your mind.

Painsizer AI fix (Pain Hypo Generation)

• Resolved an issue where AI-based Painsizer generation could fail under certain conditions.

Opportunity Full Report: resource links

• The Full Report now includes direct links to:

• The Opportunity’s own resources.

• The Small Bets resources associated with that Opportunity.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for the continuous feedback—please keep it coming!

We’re excited to announce Next Lab 2.19.0. This update improves how you find users, adds unsubscribe controls to emails, polishes team-join messaging, and ships a round of stability fixes.

Case-insensitive user search

• Searching by name or email is now case-insensitive, improving match rates and reducing missed results.
• Email unsubscribes: Release/announcement emails now include an Unsubscribe option so anyone can opt out of future updates.

• Bug fixes (Frill reports)

We resolved multiple issues reported via Frill and internal QA to improve overall stability and consistency.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for the continuous feedback—please keep it coming through the boards!

We’re excited to announce Next Lab 2.19.0. This update improves how you find users, adds unsubscribe controls to emails, polishes team-join messaging, and ships a round of stability fixes.

Case-insensitive user search

• Searching by name or email is now case-insensitive, improving match rates and reducing missed results.
• Email unsubscribes: Release/announcement emails now include an Unsubscribe option so anyone can opt out of future updates.

• Bug fixes (Frill reports)

We resolved multiple issues reported via Frill and internal QA to improve overall stability and consistency.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for the continuous feedback—please keep it coming through the boards!

We’re excited to announce Next Lab 2.18.0. This update focuses on clarity in the AI Focus Group and a series of UX refinements, plus a bunch of community-reported bug fixes.

AI Focus Group: show the tested hypothesis

You can now see the hypothesis being tested directly in the Focus Group view for better context and evaluation.

UI layout tweaks

We streamlined button placement in key screens to reduce friction and misclicks.

Clearer action texts

Several labels and messages were rewritten to better describe what each action does.

Bug fixes (Frill reports)

We fixed multiple issues reported via Frill to improve overall stability and consistency.

🙌 Thanks

Thanks for the continuous feedback—please keep it coming through the boards!