What's New

Reliable Snapshots

Snapshots used to fail on documents that use section prefixes (such as “A‑1” style page numbering), and asking for a spread only captured its first page. Now snapshots work whatever your page numbering, multi‑page spreads come back as a single joined image, and when an export does fail you’ll see the actual reason rather than a generic error.

Smarter Connection Health

When something isn’t working, asking Claude (or any other AI assistant) to run “sidekick health” now does a real live check instead of reporting what it remembered from when it started. It tells you whether commands are actually getting through, which part of the connection is failing, how long it’s been running, and when it last worked — so connection problems are much quicker to track down.

More Reliable Reconnection

Previously, a brief hiccup between Sidekick and your AI assistant could leave the panel permanently stuck on “Update required” — even when nothing was actually wrong. Sidekick now recovers from these transient drops on its own and stays on a stable “Connecting…” state until the connection comes back.

Clearer Connection Messages

When the panel can’t reach your AI assistant, you’ll now see a plain-English description of what’s happening — for example, “The AI Assistant isn’t responding. Try restarting it.” — along with a Learn more → link to a help article for that specific situation. No more cryptic jargon when things go wrong.

Crash Diagnostics

Previously, certain errors could cause Sidekick to stop working silently — with no indication of what went wrong. Now these errors are caught and logged, making it much easier to diagnose connection issues.

Smarter Code Handling

When your AI assistant writes code for InDesign, Sidekick now automatically fixes a common mistake that could cause errors. This means fewer failed attempts and smoother workflows.

Cleaner Updates

Sidekick now cleans up old versions after installing updates, keeping your system tidy.

Better Connection Diagnostics

When something goes wrong with the connection between Claude Desktop and InDesign, the logs now capture much more detail about what happened. This helps us troubleshoot issues faster — especially on Windows setups where connections can be tricky.

Usage Statistics

Sidekick now tracks basic session statistics (like how many operations succeeded or failed) to help us identify and fix reliability issues. No document content is ever collected — just aggregate counts. You can disable this by asking your AI assistant to “disable Sidekick telemetry”.

Improved Error Tracking

We’ve enhanced our anonymous telemetry to better understand how Sidekick is performing. This helps us identify and fix issues faster, ensuring a smoother experience for everyone.

As always, telemetry contains no document content and can be disabled by asking your AI assistant to “disable Sidekick telemetry”.

Fewer Failed Attempts

You may have noticed that Claude (or your favorite AI assistant) sometimes needs a few tries to get things right in InDesign. We’ve added more guardrails to catch common mistakes before they happen.

The result: your AI assistant stays on track more often, so you spend less time waiting for retries and more time on your creative work.

Font Metrics Reliability

Fixed an issue where the font metrics tool could fail to read your installed fonts. Claude can now reliably measure font characteristics like x-height and cap-height for precise text positioning.

Claude Desktop Compatibility

Improved how Sidekick communicates with Claude Desktop to follow the latest MCP protocol standards. This fixes an error some users saw about “structured content” when using certain tools.

Image Placement

You can now place images directly into your InDesign documents. Just tell Claude (or any other AI assistant) where to find an image on your computer, and Sidekick will add it to your layout.

For example, you can say “Place the logo from my Desktop into the header” and Sidekick will create an image frame and insert your file.

Note: When you update the plugin, you’ll see a permission prompt asking for file system access. This is required so Sidekick can read image files from your computer.

Error Telemetry

Sidekick now sends anonymous error data when code execution fails in InDesign. This helps us identify and fix common issues that users encounter.

What’s captured: Error messages, code snippets (first 500 characters), and version information. No document content is ever captured, and all data is anonymous.

Easy opt-out: Just ask Claude to “disable Sidekick telemetry” and it will turn off error reporting.

Configuration Tools

You can now ask Claude about Sidekick’s settings using the new configuration tools. Currently this lets you view and toggle the telemetry setting, with more options planned for future releases.

Font Cache Fix

When using refresh=true with the font metrics tool, the cache is now properly cleared. Previously, stale font data could persist even after requesting a refresh.

Website Blog

The Sidekick website now has a blog with articles about getting the most out of Sidekick. The first post covers how Sidekick can read font metrics that are normally inaccessible through InDesign scripting.

Font Metrics Fix

The font metrics feature introduced in v1.0.4 had an issue that prevented it from working in some environments. This has been fixed, so Claude can now reliably measure fonts for precise text positioning.

We’ve also added automated testing to catch similar issues before they reach you.

Font Metrics

Claude can now read detailed font measurements like x-height, cap-height, ascender, and descender heights. This helps position text more precisely, especially when aligning text to baselines or creating typographic grids.

The connector supports fonts from your system fonts folder and Adobe Fonts. Font measurements are cached locally for faster lookups after the first scan.

Update Notifications

When Sidekick downloads and applies an update while you’re working, you’ll now see a notification in Claude Desktop’s server panel showing the old and new version numbers. This keeps you informed about new features and fixes as they become available.

What’s New Page

The Sidekick website now has a What’s New page showing user-friendly descriptions of each release. You’re reading it right now!

Better Tool Discovery

The connector now correctly signals that it provides tools dynamically. This improves compatibility with MCP clients that automatically discover available tools.

Better Object Naming

When Claude creates objects in InDesign (text frames, shapes, etc.), they now get meaningful names that appear in the Layers panel. This makes it easier to find and select objects that Sidekick created.

Previously, objects were named generically. Now they get descriptive names like “Header Text Frame” that tell you what they are.