The Genesis (Sep-Nov 2024)

The journey of Improve ImgSLI began in September 2024, initially conceived with ChatGPT's assistance to address a personal need for straightforward image comparison. The early version provided basic side-by-side functionality. The following month, October, marked an enhancement phase using Claude, which introduced a magnifier tool and drag-and-drop support, significantly improving usability. By November, further refinements to the magnifier were implemented, but the codebase's expansion made complete code regeneration impractical, necessitating manual integration.

Finding the Right Tools (Jan-Mar 2025)

A turning point came in January 2025 when a user request for dynamic window resizing led to the exploration of DeepSeek, which successfully guided the implementation of this crucial feature. February brought renewed focus, leveraging Claude Sonnet 3.7 and Grok 3 for significant feature additions and bug fixes, including dynamic image swapping, a multilingual dictionary, and optimized rendering. Late March was dedicated to cross-platform compatibility, a solo effort that led to the discovery and resolution of several bugs, culminating in a successful launch on multiple platforms.

AI-Powered Acceleration (May-Jun 2025)

In May 2025, the discovery of Cursor AI allowed for the rapid implementation of three key features: a smarter caching service that improved smoothness by 2-3 times, selectable magnifier interpolation, and quick image preview using the keyboard. The project's structure also became much more multi-layered and less coupled after a two-day refactoring session with Gemini. In June, with Gemini's assistance again, the entire UI was ported to qfluentwidgets for a modern aesthetic.

Architectural Maturity (Jul-Aug 2025)

July saw a major overhaul of the rendering pipeline and the launcher script, but also highlighted persistent bugs related to race conditions, confirming the need for a more robust architecture. This led to the monumental rewrite in August 2025. The qfluentwidgets library was replaced with 100% custom components, and the entire application was migrated to a proper Model-View-Presenter (MVP) architecture. This new, solid foundation resolved numerous underlying issues and paved the way for more stable and ambitious future development.

GPU Revolution & Architectural Renaissance (Sep 2025 - Mar 2026)

With the solid MVP foundation established in August 2025, the focus shifted to deep performance work. Using Claude Code as the primary development tool, a period of intensive architectural evolution began. The rendering engine was rebuilt from scratch with hybrid CPU-GPU acceleration via OpenGL shaders, delivering dramatically improved performance on large images. All pop-up and overlay windows were migrated to native Qt widgets, greatly improving Wayland compatibility. Interactive canvas zooming and panning were added to the main comparison view. The Video Editor received a complete overhaul — the timeline was rewritten with a keyframe-based model, aspect-ratio-correct thumbnails, and dynamic spacing. Finally, a plugin-based architecture was introduced for extensibility and a cleaner internal structure. These advances culminated in v8.1.0, released on March 30, 2026.

Compatibility Patching & Release Hardening (Apr 2026)

After the huge February-March refactor, early April 2026 became a cleanup phase focused on edge cases rather than flashy features. Work concentrated on split-line behavior near image borders, magnifier geometry and clamping, and high-DPI mismatches between the visible render area and the interaction area. The application also moved further toward the Qt Quick canvas path because the older OpenGL widget path kept exposing platform-specific issues. At the same time, packaging and release automation were strengthened across Flatpak, AUR, and Windows, and the first proper Windows GitHub Actions pipeline with release-metadata validation was added. This less glamorous work ultimately became the foundation of v8.2.0.