Torvian Chatbot v0.8.0: Sandboxed built-in worker tools for your self-hosted AI workspace

We just shipped Torvian Chatbot v0.8.0, and the headline feature is a brand-new Built-in Worker Tools system that brings first-class, sandboxed tool execution to your self-hosted AI workspace.

For anyone running their own AI stack, the hard part has never been the model — it's safely letting an agent do things: read files, run commands, fetch the web. v0.8.0 tackles exactly that, with three ideas we think matter a lot for self-hosters:

🔒 Workspace isolation by default. Built-in tools (file ops, run_command, web access) execute inside a configured workspace root. Filesystem escapes are blocked, and web tools reject localhost, loopback, and private-network addresses. Your agent can act without being handed the keys to your whole machine.

✍️ Signed authorization (E2EA). Tool executions are authorized through a signed payload validated by the worker's verification service. You register trusted signers (clients) via CLI or env vars, so only approved devices can trigger tool runs. No more trusting the network.

🧰 Full management UI + human-in-the-loop. A new Settings tab lets you enable/disable tools per worker, set per-tool auto-approve / auto-deny preferences, edit schemas, and reset to catalog defaults. Tool calls still require approval by default — you stay in control of every agentic action.

Under the hood this replaces the old generic tool paths with a shared BuiltInToolCatalog so advertised schemas stay in sync between server (seeding/LLM discovery) and worker (execution), plus a Flyway migration and a server→worker dispatch service with typed events and timeouts.

Torvian remains fully self-hosted: bring your own LLM providers (OpenAI-compatible, Ollama), keep your data on your hardware, and chat from Desktop, Web (WASM), or Android.

👉 Downloads & full notes: https://github.com/Torvian-eu/chatbot/releases 👉 Live demo: https://chatbot.torvian.eu/demo.html

We'd love to hear how you're using (or planning to use) worker tools — what would make this more useful for your setup? Questions and feedback welcome below!