desktop: What's New popup never appears after updates (changelog.json has no highlights) #60134

Summary

The Desktop "Release notes" setting is enabled, but no What's New dialog appears after updating 2.2.0 → 2.2.1. showWhatsNew fetches https://opencode.ai/changelog.json and only opens the dialog when it finds highlights whose source contains "desktop". The feed currently returns "highlights": [] for every release, so the code silently marks the new version as seen.

Environment

• opencode version: 2.2.1 (desktop, packaged; bundled CLI 2.2.1)
• OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26300 x64
• Terminal: Desktop app
• Shell: n/a
• Install/channel: packaged desktop, channel latest
• Active plugins: env-guard.ts, headroom-compress.ts, memory-inject.ts, modelscope-imagegen.ts (none related to release notes)

Reproduction

1. Enable Settings → General → Updates → Release notes (default is on).
2. Update from 2.2.0 to 2.2.1 with the in-app updater and restart.
3. No What's New dialog appears.
4. Inspect %APPDATA%\ai.opencode.desktop\drafts.sqlite: plugin.updater.seen is {"version":"2.2.1"}, written about 3 seconds after startup.

Expected Behavior

A What's New dialog with the desktop highlights for 2.2.1 (the release notes contain four Highlights, including /goal, image generation, background shell output, and the new model picker).

Actual Behavior

No dialog. The version is recorded as seen, so those highlights are skipped permanently.

Additional Context

• Code path: packages/gui-plugins/src/updater/whats-new.tsx (showWhatsNew), stores in packages/gui-plugins/src/updater/index.ts.
• showWhatsNew does if (highlights.length === 0) return input.markSeen().
• https://opencode.ai/changelog.json (fetched today) returns 20 releases, all with "highlights": [].
  • v2.2.1: {"tag":"v2.2.1","name":"v2.2.1","date":"2026-10-29T05:16:55Z","highlights":[],"sections":[]}
  • v1.18.26: highlights: [], but sections contains Core and Desktop entries.
• The rendered changelog page (https://opencode.ai/changelog) still shows v2.2.0 highlights, so the source data exists but is not carried into the JSON feed.
• Likely causes: the JSON generator does not parse the v2 release-note format (### Highlights plus product sections), and the app only reads highlights while ignoring sections.
• Suggested fix: emit highlights for v2 releases, or fall back to Desktop sections; and avoid markSeen() when the feed is present but has no parseable highlights (or log the parse failure), so a bad deploy does not silently consume the update.

Impact

Any stable Desktop user with the default setting never sees release highlights, and each new version is recorded as seen.