If you've uploaded a reference image or a source mesh in the last few days, you've already noticed: uploads are faster, and the progress bar is real.
Until this week, your file went through our API on its way to object storage. That kept the auth simple, but it also meant your upload speed was capped by whatever the slowest hop happened to be. For a small image, fine. For a 50MB mesh, much less fine.
We changed the path so it isn't like that anymore. The API now hands you a short-lived signed URL, your browser uploads directly to storage, and the API only sees a confirmation that the bytes landed. You get the full bandwidth of your connection, and we get a smaller bill in the process.
Two more things that came with it
Drag-and-drop works everywhere we accept uploads. Drop a reference on the playground, the asset library, or any modality form, and the UI knows what to do with it.
The progress bar shows real bytes, not a guess. If your connection slows down, you'll see it. If the upload completes, the progress bar means the upload completed.
Cancel buttons also actually cancel now. Before this week, the cancel was a UI-only state and the upload kept running in the background. That's fixed.
This isn't the kind of release that fits a launch post on its own. It's the kind of thing that, once you have it, you stop noticing it. That's the goal.