# Jan 5, 2026 ## 🌟 Clarity & Control: Empowering Your Development Journey We’ve focused this sprint on fortifying our platform's integrity, enhancing financial flexibility, and polishing every corner of the UI to ensure your focus stays exactly where it belongs. ### **New Features** **🔐 Building a Trusted Platform: SMS Verification for Sign-up**\ To provide a stable and reliable service environment, we have integrated SMS verification into the registration flow. By verifying every user, we ensure a more secure platform and higher quality service for everyone. ### **Changes** **💳 Flexible Refunds: Partial Credit Refunds within 7 Days**\ You can now request a partial refund for any unused portion of your credits within the 7-day cooling-off period. Manage your budget with peace of mind, knowing your purchases are protected. **⏳ Optimized Data Retention: Post-Block Deletion Policy**\ To ensure the safe disposal of personal information and secure resources for a more stable service, the data retention period after an account block has been changed from 30 days to 7 days. **🛑 Clearer Status: Guidance for "Stopping" Containers**\ We’ve added clear UI guidance for containers in a "Stopping" state, providing real-time feedback so you can track the process at a glance. **🍪 Privacy at Your Fingertips: Customizable Cookie Consent**\ Our new cookie consent banner lets you selectively manage service cookie collection, ensuring your browsing experience aligns with your privacy preferences. **📜 Trusted Operations: Enhanced Transparency & Terms** * **Mandatory Data Consent:** Added a required checkbox on the Payment page. You can now clearly track exactly where your data is managed with total transparency. * **Updated Terms:** Refreshed Credit and Membership terms are now live on the Payment page, providing clearer protection of your rights for a more reliable experience. * **Official Business Info:** Business details added to the Landing Page footer. This guarantees our corporate accountability, letting you build with a platform you can truly trust. ### **Bug Fixes & Quality of Life** * **Smart Container Inactivation Logic:** Fixed the bug where containers unused for over a month failed to automatically inactivate, eliminating unnecessary duplicate email notifications. * **Accurate Container Inactivation Schedules:** Fixed the bug where the scheduled container inactivation date on the Container Card was incorrect. Users can now rely on the exact scheduled date to manage their containers more effectively. * **Reliable Billing Emails:** The 30% First-Purchase Bonus Credits are now correctly reflected in your payment confirmation emails. * **Precision AI: Reasoning Effort for OpenAI Models:** Fixed an issue where Reasoning Effort was not applied to the OpenAI models, including gpt-5.2, 5.1, o3, and the o4/5-mini series (excluding gpt-4.1). You can now achieve the exact depth of reasoning required for your projects. * **Stable Side Chat:** Fixed the bug that caused the scroll position to jump while typing in the Side Chat, ensuring a seamless and uninterrupted conversation experience. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.arkain.io/whats-new/arkain-release-note/jan-5-2026.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.