What's new

Deployment variables can now be transformed directly inside their #{...} references. Extended syntax adds 18 chainable filters for case conversion, trimming, regular-expression replacement, substrings, truncation, number and date formatting, base64, JSON/XML/HTML/URI escaping, and comparisons.

Extended workspaces can also render if, unless, and else blocks. Conditions support truthy values, equality and inequality, filtered expressions, multiline bodies, and nesting.

Compatibility by workspace

Every workspace now has a substitution syntax setting. Existing workspaces are pinned to Legacy, reproducing the original plain-token behavior. New workspaces default to Extended unless the creator chooses Legacy in the UI, through POST /api/workspace, or through MCP create_workspace.

A second setting controls unresolved tokens. Silent keeps the old behavior. Warn leaves the token in place and records it in the deployment log. Strict stops the deployment before an unresolved value is used. A safe rollout is therefore Legacy → Warn → Extended → Strict.

Current agents apply the same syntax and unresolved-token policy when replacing variables inside package files. If an Extended step can replace package-file variables but its target agent is too old, Jaws blocks the step with an update instruction rather than allowing literal filter syntax into deployed configuration.

Step-template details over REST

The Infrastructure REST API adds Get step template details: GET /api/step-template/details. Supply a workspace and either the template ID or its name to retrieve the complete definition, including the version, script language, supported run modes, script body, and JSON property schema. The existing list endpoint continues to return the smaller discovery shape.

The workspace creation endpoint now accepts and returns variableSyntaxMode; omission means Extended.

See Using Variable Filters & Substitution Modes for the complete filter reference, conditional syntax, error behavior, agent notes, and migration checklist.

Highlights

  • 18 variable filters — transform, format, encode, escape, and compare values inline; filters chain from left to right.
  • Conditional rendering — if, unless, and else blocks with comparisons, filtered conditions, multiline content, and nesting.
  • Legacy and Extended modes — existing workspaces remain Legacy; new workspaces default to Extended unless explicitly configured otherwise.
  • Silent, Warn, and Strict unresolved-token policies — audit missing variables before choosing failure behavior.
  • Safe package-file replacement — current agents share server behavior, and incompatible agents are blocked before writing files.
  • Workspace creation API and MCP option — optional variableSyntaxMode, returned in the REST response.
  • Full step-template REST lookup — retrieve one template by ID or name without expanding the existing list response.