Bike 2.0 (Preview 282)

jessegrosjean · May 22, 2026, 2:28pm

Added JSON outline format
Lots of work/polish on bike CLI
Added man bike for high-level orientation
Added MCP tool to help you build outline paths
Autocorrect revert popups age out after 10 seconds
Changed OPML format to use markdown text formatting
Changed Commands Explorer override indicator to be less alerting

Download:

jessegrosjean · May 22, 2026, 2:32pm

Previous release got bike out there. This release polishes things significantly. Some locations have changed, you will need to repeat:

Bike > Install Command Line Tools…

And make sure to start with man bike to get overview. If you are a CLI user I encourage you to explore through the docs and commands. They are what I believe is final form (final last words!), let me know anything that’s confusing or doesn’t work as expected.

complexpoint · May 22, 2026, 3:29pm

FWIW a PDF version:

manBike.pdf.zip (17.8 KB)

doug · May 23, 2026, 9:45am

I want to delete lines row by row, not block by block, so i added cmd-k to Row: Text Delete.

I think this has just started in 282; I now need to press cmd-k twice to delete each row.

knufo · May 23, 2026, 10:41am

The CLI does not run on Intel Macs. Is this correct?

jessegrosjean · May 23, 2026, 10:59am

Oops, yes I broke the connection between that command and actual code. Fixed for next release.

jessegrosjean · May 23, 2026, 11:01am

Yes, though not on purpose. I’ll make the build universal for next release.

knufo · May 23, 2026, 11:20am

Thank you very much. I am still using an Intel iMac and therefore am very interested in that feature.

complexpoint · May 24, 2026, 10:56am

Problem with OmniGroup’s non-standard `_note` attribute in OPML

I may have reported this elsewhere, but just to document a bit more fully, and provide a test.

If we begin with an OmniOutliner document with a multi-line "note"

test.ooutline.zip (19.9 KB)

and use their Save As to .opml,

test.opml.zip (1.1 KB)

we find that they serialise the note lines as the (
 entity delimited) string value of a _note attribute:

Expand disclosure triangle to view OPML source

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="2.0">
  <head><!-- <editor inspector-sidebar-visible="yes">
      <sidebar visible="yes" width="194"/>
      <column name="text" width="248"/>
    </editor> -->
    <title>test</title>
    <dateCreated>Sun, 24 May 2026 10:51:11 GMT</dateCreated>
    <expansionState>0</expansionState>
    <vertScrollState>0</vertScrollState>
    <windowTop>259</windowTop>
    <windowLeft>293</windowLeft>
    <windowRight>562</windowRight>
    <windowBottom>946</windowBottom>
  </head>
  <body>
    <outline text="Alpha">
      <outline text="Beta" _note="First line of note,&#10;second line of note,&#10;third line of note."/>
      <outline text="Gamma"/>
      <outline text="Delta"/>
    </outline>
  </body>
</opml>

We can open this without a problem in Bike 2, which then saves in a slightly different pattern – delimiting the _note value with raw \n bytes, rather than escaped XML 
 entities:

Expand disclosure triangle to view Bike OPML source

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="2.0">
  <head>
    <title>test</title>
    <dateCreated>Sun, 24 May 2026 10:51:11 GMT</dateCreated>
    <expansionState>0</expansionState>
    <vertScrollState>0</vertScrollState>
    <windowTop>259</windowTop>
    <windowLeft>293</windowLeft>
    <windowRight>562</windowRight>
    <windowBottom>946</windowBottom>
  </head>
  <body id="PBJv6rurZ5GqhubkxmUEY">
    <outline created="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" modified="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" text="Alpha">
      <outline created="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" modified="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" _note="First line of note,
second line of note,
third line of note." text="Beta"/>
      <outline created="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" modified="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" text="Gamma"/>
      <outline created="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" modified="0001-01-01T00:00:00Z" text="Delta"/>
    </outline>
  </body>
</opml>

I’m not sure whether XML parsers will generally accept the unescaped \n characters in attribute values, but we seem to hit a problem of some kind if we now try, in Bike (282), a Save As.

What I see here is that:

The Save As panel doesn’t appear, and
we get an apparently indefinite beach ball, while Bike is reported, in Activity Monitor, as “not responding”

PS I notice, FWIW, that the created and modified attributes added by Bike seem to be stamped for a zero-valued date-time – not sure if that is by design.

doug · May 25, 2026, 7:20pm

sometimes i cannot type the letter k until i press esc, which i suspect also has something to do with this problem. I don’t think i’m in block mode, and it’s only the letter k.

jessegrosjean · May 25, 2026, 11:38pm

That’s odd. I guess wait for next release and see if fixed. If not, please report back so I can track it down.

porekm · May 26, 2026, 2:59am

Hi Jesse,
Have you heard of Hookmark? I use it with Bike to connect my documents, websites and something like that. Recently I tried Bike 2, Hookmark would displayed that “No linkable items found in Bike” as the image showed.

However, everything is normal on Bike 1. Could you please look into it? I would definitely appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

doug · May 26, 2026, 9:08am

happened again, and i had logs on. I was able to type k by hitting the twice in succession.

[trace] IME: hasMarkedText() → false
[trace] IME: insertText: “k” replacementRange: NSNotFound
[trace] IME: state before: selectedRowRange=Optional(Range(33..<33)), markedRowRange=nil, text=“”
[trace] IME: converted replacementRange: nil
[trace] IME: state after: selectedRowRange=Optional(Range(34..<34)), markedRowRange=nil, text=“”
[trace] ScriptContext: bikeappcalendar_bxkwbgaj app→dom: {
type = clearSelection;
}
[trace] ScriptContext: bikeappcalendar_bxkwbgaj app→dom: {
type = clearSelection;
}
[trace] IME: hasMarkedText() → false
[trace] IME: insertText: “k” replacementRange: NSNotFound
[trace] IME: state before: selectedRowRange=Optional(Range(9..<9)), markedRowRange=nil, text=“”
[trace] IME: converted replacementRange: nil
[trace] IME: state after: selectedRowRange=Optional(Range(10..<10)), markedRowRange=nil, text=“”
[trace] ScriptContext: bikeappcalendar_bxkwbgaj app→dom: {
type = clearSelection;
}

jessegrosjean · May 27, 2026, 3:11pm

Forgot to mention in release notes. Should run on intel now. Also lots smaller binary size!

knufo · May 27, 2026, 4:31pm

Thank you. Works like a charm.

jessegrosjean · May 27, 2026, 4:56pm

Yes, will look into it.

jessegrosjean · May 27, 2026, 5:02pm

The original cmd-k bug I think is now fixed in 283.

I’m not quite sure how that would cause having to type a double k, but it put the app in a weird state, so maybe. Two options that I can see:

Do you have any pure letter keybindings. Ie ones that don’t require a modifier key and are in outline mode?
Otherwise please use the latest 283 release, and report back again if double k problem comes back.

jessegrosjean · May 27, 2026, 5:56pm

I believe Hookmark links are now working in 284.

doug · May 28, 2026, 7:11am

no pure letter keybindings.
so far haven’t seen the k-key bug in 284. will let you know.

Bike 2.0 (Preview 282)

Download:

Problem with OmniGroup’s non-standard _note attribute in OPML

Problem with OmniGroup’s non-standard `_note` attribute in OPML