Hello everyone,
We are proud to announce the immediate availability of the Oxygen
AI Positron 8.3 plugins for all our major Oxygen XML suite
products, including Oxygen XML Editor, Author, Developer (desktop
and Eclipse distributions), Oxygen JSON Editor, Oxygen XML Web
Author, and Oxygen Content Fusion.
Version 8.3 introduces stronger enterprise AI governance,
a new project-aware development agent mode, expanded AI model
support, and new XML automation capabilities. The release gives
technical writers, XML developers, information architects, and
enterprise administrators more control over AI behavior while
improving assistance for technologies such as XSLT, Schematron,
XPath, and DITA.
What's New in Oxygen AI Positron 8.3
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* AI Governance with Event Hooks
Organizations can now monitor and control AI-driven workflows more
closely with the introduction of a hook system for intercepting AI
events, offering improved visibility and control over AI-driven
workflows. Organizations can use hooks to audit AI activity,
enforce governance policies, collect usage metrics, or block
potentially risky operations before they are executed.
To simplify integration with existing enterprise tooling, the new
Oxygen AI Positron Hooks add-on lets teams run external
scripts when specific AI hook events occur. This makes it easier
for administrators to connect AI lifecycle events to auditing,
analytics, policy enforcement, and workflow automation systems.
* Dev Agent Chat Mode for XML Development Projects
The new Dev Agent chat mode gives XML teams a
project-aware AI assistant for development tasks such as XSLT,
Schematron, XPath, validation, and transformations. The Dev Agent
can explore the project, propose a plan, and perform project-wide
changes, while you remain in control of reviewing and deciding
which modifications to keep.
* Specialized Development Skills
Version 8.3 adds specialized skills for development vocabularies
including XSLT, XSD, Schematron, and XSpec.
These skills help the AI produce more accurate code suggestions
and reduce errors, enabling faster and more efficient development.
Custom skills can also now be packaged as ZIP archives with the .skill
file extension. Once placed in the configured skills folders,
these packages are automatically recognized and loaded by AI
Positron, making it easier for you to distribute and share custom
AI capabilities.
* Expanded Enterprise AI Connectivity
Organizations can now access newer OpenAI reasoning models through
a new OpenAI Responses enterprise connector.
Version 8.3 also adds support for connecting to Model Context
Protocol (MCP) HTTP servers that use OAuth authentication.
You can view a summary of running or failed servers in the Connection
status section, with integrated login and logout controls.
For AWS users, the AWS Bedrock connector now supports AWS
Credentials (Profile/SSO), offering a more secure
authentication option than API keys.
* New AI Models and Improved Reasoning Visibility
Oxygen AI Positron 8.3 expands the list of available AI models for
AI-assisted tasks, including:
- GPT-5.4 Thinking, GPT-5.5, and GPT-5.5
Thinking through the Positron Service or an OpenAI Responses
enterprise connection.
- Claude Opus 4.8 Thinking and Claude Opus 4.8,
designed for agentic workflows and complex multi-step tasks.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash through the Positron Service or the
Vertex AI enterprise connection.
You can now inspect reasoning from supported OpenAI thinking
models in a collapsible chat section, improving transparency
without cluttering the conversation.
Administrators can also manage which models are available for
configured AI connections, define recommended defaults, and add
models beyond the predefined list.
* Automatic Conversation Compaction for Longer AI Sessions
Long AI conversations can now continue more smoothly with the new
automatic conversation compaction feature. When the allowed
context usage reaches 70%, AI Positron summarizes older portions
of the conversation and replaces them with a concise recap,
preserving relevant context while allowing the discussion to
continue.
You can disable automatic compaction from the Preferences
page or manually trigger compaction using the Context
Consumption button in the footer of the AI Positron view.
* Fix Multiple Validation Issues at Once
The AI Positron Fix action can now be applied to multiple
selected validation problems in the Results pane. This
allows you to resolve several issues in a single AI-assisted
operation, improving productivity when working with large or
complex XML documents.
* More Flexible Custom AI Actions
When creating custom AI actions, you can now use Oxygen editor
variables in the prompt_ref property. For example, a
prompt can reference content from your home folder, and the
variable will be expanded automatically.
* New AI Tool Function for XPath Evaluation
AI Positron now includes an evaluate_xpath tool function
that helps AI-assisted workflows access structured XML content
more precisely.
* New XPath AI Functions for Advanced Automation
Two new AI extension functions, ai:chat() and ai:resolve-action(),
are now available for XPath-based automation workflows, with full
technical details available in the supporting documentation.
For the complete list of features added in Oxygen AI Positron
8.3, please see:
https://www.oxygenxml.com/ai_positron/whats_new.html
As always, thank you for your support and don't forget that
feedback is welcome!
Best regards,
Alin
-- Alin Belu Oxygen XML Editor