1 October 2026 — Externa Core v1.1.0, the first post-GA product cut. Editorial preview, Public API surface, and the official Next.js starter. Notes: GitHub Release v1.1.0 · Changelog.
Who should upgrade
- Anyone on
1.0.0who wants Live Preview, scheduled publish, or OpenAPI. - Frontend teams wiring headless sites — pair with Next.js starter 1.0.0.
What matters
Editorial & preview
- Live Preview — per-collection (or project default) URL template with signed short-lived
{{token}}; item toolbar opens your frontend; frontends callGET /api/v1/preview. Docs: Live Preview. Walkthrough: Live Preview in practice. - Draft / publish UX — badges, discard,
has_draftfilter (Content versioning). - Scheduled publish / unpublish —
publish_at/unpublish_at,collections:process-schedules,item.publishedwebhook.
Public API & integrations
- OpenAPI 3 at
GET /api/v1/openapi.json(YAML source underresources/openapi/). - Outbound webhooks — frozen event catalog in Project settings, last success/error, recent delivery log.
- Official Next.js starter — qiick-io/externa-next-starter (Headless starter).
Collections & AI
- Richer field conditions (
contains, comparisons,in/not_in, flat OR). - AI assistant asks Approve / Reject before destructive tools;
laravel/ai^1.0. - Opt-in
externa:upgrade --sync-upstream=vX.Y.Zdocumented for code sync.
Admin quality
Keyboard-reachable password toggle and critical aria-labels; activity log CSV/JSON export (streamed, 10k row cap); DE admin i18n key parity.
Upgrade steps (from 1.0.0)
- Back up DB +
.env(Backup & restore). - Move code to
v1.1.0(git tag orghcr.io/qiick-io/externa-core:1.1.0). - Install and build:
composer install
npm ci && npm run build
php artisan externa:upgradeYou must migrate before opening existing AI conversations: laravel/ai 1.0 uses a polymorphic participant and stores message steps + status instead of tool_calls / tool_results (Upgrade).
- If you use scheduled publish, ensure the scheduler runs (
schedule:runor the Composeschedulerservice) socollections:process-schedulesfires. - Restart Horizon / queue workers and Reverb if enabled.
Breaking / behavior notes
- AI chat history schema change — migrate first.
- Destructive AI tools require explicit Approve/Reject in the UI.
- Live Preview tokens expire (~15 minutes); treat links like temporary share URLs.
Sources
Try Externa on your own server
Open source under MIT, self-hosted, built on Laravel.