NBI 4.8.0 — Smarter workspace picker, atomic config saves, GitHub-import gate

NBI 4.8.0 focuses on the small surfaces that users hit most: the chat sidebar’s @-mention workspace picker, the on-disk config file, and the Skills import path.

Workspace picker — faster, quieter, gitignore-aware

When you type @ in the chat sidebar, NBI now scans your workspace in parallel. On a 1,000-file project the scan is roughly an order of magnitude faster than the 4.7.x serial walk, with a single concurrent dispatch instead of nested awaits per directory.

Three other improvements land alongside the perf work:

  • Skip dot-prefixed files. .git/, .venv/, .idea/, .DS_Store and similar entries no longer clutter the picker by default.
  • Honor .gitignore. Workspace files matched by the project’s .gitignore are excluded. This is the right default for most repos and stops the picker from returning multi-megabyte build artifacts.
  • Extensible filter system. Filters are pluggable internally, so future filters (a per-user allowlist, a max-file-size cap, a JupyterLab settings-driven exclude list) slot in without churn.

If you want a folder back that’s currently ignored, set additional_skipped_workspace_directories in ~/.jupyter/nbi/config.json or override at the deployment level via NBI_ADDITIONAL_SKIPPED_WORKSPACE_DIRECTORIES.

Atomic config saves

NBIConfig.save() is now atomic. Previously, a crash mid-write (or a hard kill of the JupyterLab process) could leave ~/.jupyter/nbi/config.json truncated or partially-written, and the next launch would either error out or fall back to defaults with no warning.

The new path:

  1. Write the new contents to a sibling temp file in the same directory.
  2. fsync() the temp file.
  3. rename() the temp file over the target — atomic on POSIX, single-syscall-ish on Windows.
  4. Preserve the original file’s mode and symlinks.

Net effect: the config file is either the full old contents or the full new contents at all times. No more silent corruption.

allow_github_skill_import admin policy

A new traitlet and environment variable gate the Import from GitHub Skills dialog:

  • Traitlet: NotebookIntelligence.allow_github_skill_import (Bool, default True).
  • Env override: NBI_ALLOW_GITHUB_SKILL_IMPORT=true|false.

When set to false, the dialog is removed from the Skills UI and the server rejects GitHub-import API calls. Org-managed manifest installs still work — this gate is for the user-driven path.

The env-var parser is fail-loud: a typo like NBI_ALLOW_GITHUB_SKILL_IMPORT=ture raises at startup rather than silently falling through to the default.

Redirect hardening on Skill fetches

The Skills GitHub-import path used to follow HTTP redirects without restriction. 4.8.0 narrows the policy:

  • No HTTPS-to-HTTP downgrades. If a https://... redirect points at http://..., the request fails.
  • Scope-checked redirects. Redirects to hosts outside the original request’s scope (e.g. github.com → evil.example.com) are blocked.

A malicious or hijacked Skill bundle source can no longer redirect NBI through an attacker-controlled host.

Cell toolbar position adjustment

The NBI cell toolbar’s position has been nudged to coexist better with JupyterLab’s native cell toolbar — fewer overlaps on narrow notebooks. The NBI notebook toolbar button (sparkle icon) is also now correctly gated on whether Claude mode is active.

Skipping dot-files in @-mentions

Beyond the workspace scan, the @-mention context picker also now skips dot-prefixed files at the top level. Previously they could appear in the picker if you typed @.<character> — useful in rare cases but mostly noise.

Install

pip install --upgrade notebook-intelligence

Then restart JupyterLab. Full set of changes in the v4.8.0 release notes.