September 2026
Lite mode has been retired
Lite mode — the zero-credit fallback offered when you ran out of usage — has been removed. It answered using whichever models your board was set to, so it was never the lightweight fallback its name suggested. When you reach your usage limit you will now be offered a top-up or a plan change, both of which keep you on the models you chose. Conversations that used Lite are unaffected and still open normally.
Change your plan from inside Ask Tone
You can now upgrade, downgrade, or switch between monthly and annual billing without leaving the app. Settings → Billing has a Change plan button that opens the plan picker; choosing one takes you to a single Stripe confirmation screen and brings you straight back. Upgrades apply right away and are prorated; downgrades and a switch to monthly take effect at your next renewal. Your top-ups and unused usage come with you either way.
Executive is now available annually
The Executive plan can be billed yearly at $1,200 a year — twelve months at the monthly price, with nothing to remember in between. Starter and Pro keep their annual discount; Executive is offered at the same rate either way, so choose whichever billing rhythm suits you.
Annual plans now refresh your usage every month
If you pay yearly, your monthly usage allowance now arrives each month for the whole year, instead of all at once at renewal. Nothing changes for monthly plans, and no usage is lost — annual subscribers simply get their allowance on the same monthly rhythm everyone else does.
August 2026
Solo mode
A new way to chat: Solo. Pick one model and talk to it directly — no routing, no board. It starts on Claude Sonnet, and you can switch to any other model mid-conversation; the conversation carries on with everything it already knows. Solo is the first mode in the picker on both Chat and Code, and costs the same as a single answer. Auto remains the default for new chats; if Solo is how you prefer to work, set it as your default in Settings → Preferences.
Chairman is now Executive
Our flagship plan has a new name: Executive. Nothing else changes — same price, same monthly usage, same board of four with the full Council and Opus presiding. If you are on the plan, you will simply see it called Executive from now on. The Council’s Chairman — the voice that reconciles your Council and delivers the verdict — keeps its name.
July 2026
Introducing Chairman
Chairman is our new flagship plan for the heaviest use — a board of four models, the full Council with Opus presiding, and by far the most monthly usage. It sits above Pro for the calls where you want everything in the room. See it on the pricing page.
Usage, shown as a percentage
Your usage now reads as a clear share of your monthly plan across the app — in the sidebar, the composer, and the usage page — rather than a raw number to keep track of. Top-ups are shown by name and never expire. And there is no commitment: you can change or cancel anytime, and keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.
Pinned conversations
You can now pin a conversation from its menu — in the sidebar or on the History page. Pinned conversations stay in a Pinned section at the top of the sidebar, so a chat you return to often never ages out of the recent list, and they carry a small pin marker in History. Unpin from the same menu.
Code workspace
The Code workspace is wired end-to-end. Paste or upload source files, put a question to your board, and review proposed changes as diffs — then run Python or JavaScript directly in the browser sandbox, with no setup and nothing leaving the page. Code Council brings five code-specialist perspectives plus a Chairman’s verdict to harder reviews.
Developer docs for the API beta
docs.asktone.ai is now a full developer-docs site for the public API private beta: a quickstart, the complete synthesize reference, a streaming guide, the error catalog, rate limits, credits and billing semantics, and a machine-readable OpenAPI description. The API remains invite-only during the beta — contact us from a Pro or Team account to request access.
Before this changelog
Ask Tone’s core took shape before we started keeping this page: multi-model chat with Auto, Side-by-side, and Synthesis modes, the five-voice Council with a Chairman’s verdict, conversation history with folders and search, read-only share links, ChatGPT import, team workspaces with pooled credits, and per-user encryption of chat content. Entries begin July 2026; everything from here on gets dated.