designcraft/ROADMAP.md

DesignCraft roadmap

DesignCraft aims at full Adobe InDesign parity — and to be better: faster, open (documented JSON format + IDML), scriptable by agents (MCP), and available on the web.

Status (2026-10-01)

Working today

• Document model: facing/non-facing spreads, parent pages with page-number markers, sections, layers, frames (text / graphic / unassigned), threaded stories, paragraph/character/object styles with based-on, swatches (process/spot/tints/gradients), corner options, text wrap, drop shadow, opacity/blend.
• Text engine: Knuth–Plass paragraph composer and single-line composer, dictionary hyphenation (public-domain Moby list + our own trained Liang patterns), justification with word/letter/glyph-scaling ranges, keep options (keep with next, keep lines together, widows/orphans), balance ragged lines, optical margin alignment, hyphenation zone/limit, columns, threading across frames and spreads, tabs, bullets/numbering, rules, shading, baseline grid, first-baseline options, vertical justification, wrap exclusions, overset detection, caret/hit testing.
• Rendering: vello_cpu (SIMD, multithreaded) — pages, items, images with mip levels, gradients, composed text.
• UI (egui): application bar + menus, Control panel (object and text modes), Tools panel with flyouts, document tabs, rulers, pasteboard, guides (margins, columns, bleed, baseline grid), frame edges, selection handles, text ports and threads, Properties / Pages / Layers dock, Swatches, Styles, Character, Paragraph, Stroke, Text Wrap panels, New Document dialog, ⌘K palette, 4 brightness themes.
• Pen tool, Direct Selection anchor/handle editing, rotate from corners, Rotate/Scale/Shear tools, Eyedropper, snapping & smart guides, Align/Distribute, Find/Change (text + GREP), Story Editor, Paragraph Style Options, Effects panel, hidden characters, native macOS menu bar, measured InDesign 2026 look (Medium Dark): Properties sections per selection state, 21 pt spinner fields with arithmetic, Contextual Task Bar, inverse (black) text selection, Pages panel with drag-and-drop reorder / parent apply, Layers panel with per-object rows.
• Tools: Selection (click, marquee, move, Alt-duplicate, resize handles), Direct Selection, Type (draw frame, click caret, select, type), Rectangle/Ellipse/Polygon (+ frame variants), Line, Hand, Zoom.
• PDF export (krilla): real selectable text with embedded font subsets, DeviceCMYK/RGB + spot Separations, bleed boxes, crop/bleed marks + page info, pages or spreads, PDF/A-2b (PDF/X-4 output intent pending) — file.exportPdf, File › Export PDF…, designcraft-cli run --export out.pdf.
• IDML interchange (designcraft-idml): export and import of swatches, styles, fonts, preferences, parent spreads, spreads/pages, frames, groups, images (embedded or linked), formatted threaded stories — opens in InDesign 2026 and round-trips InDesign-exported files (file.exportIdml, file.openIdml, File → Export IDML…, CLI --in x.idml / --export x.idml).
• Tables (M8): tables anchored in stories (header/footer/body rows, merged cells, per-edge strokes, fills + alternating fills, insets, vertical justification, at-least/exact row heights); composed into the text column (columns scale to fit, rows break across columns/frames with repeating headers/footers, overset); rendered, exported to PDF (real text) and IDML (export + import); Table menu, Table panel, Create Table dialog, caret/typing/Tab navigation and cell selection in cells; table.* commands.
• Hyperlinks (text or frames → URL / e-mail / page) and bookmarks, exported as PDF link annotations and outline.
• EPUB 3 (reflowable) export: stories in reading order, CSS from paragraph/character styles, images, navigation (file.exportEpub, CLI --export x.epub).
• Data Merge (CSV or JSON rows, <<Field>> placeholders), spell checking (public-domain Moby list + document dictionary, suggestions), Step and Repeat (count or grid), snippets, object styles, Numbering & Section Options.
• Footnotes: Type › Insert Footnote (caret moves into the note), Document Footnote Options (numbering style incl. symbols, start/restart per page/spread/section, prefix/suffix, reference position/character style, paragraph style, separator, spacing, first baseline, rule above); notes composed at the bottom of the referencing column with the body text making room; edited in place on the canvas; rendered, exported to PDF (real text) and IDML (InDesign's structure, verified opening in InDesign 2026) and imported from IDML; footnote.* commands.
• Cross-references and text anchors: Insert Cross-Reference (paragraph by style, or text anchor), 11 formats with InDesign's building blocks (full/partial paragraph, paragraph text/number, page number, anchor name, chapter, file name) plus user formats; resolved live at composition — never out of date, no Update step; unresolved destinations show ??; PDF link annotations to the destination page; IDML export/import as InDesign cross-reference sources, hyperlinks, text destinations and formats (verified in InDesign 2026); xref.* / anchor.* commands.
• Index: page references (topic from the selection or up to 4 levels, sort keys; current page, to end of story, next n paragraphs, suppressed, See / See also), Generate / Update Index (section headings, nested or run-in, page ranges merged, Index Title / Section Head / Level 1–4 styles); IDML export/import as InDesign topics, page references and topic cross-references (verified in InDesign 2026); index.* commands.
• Text clipboard keeps formatting (character/paragraph formats, footnotes, cross-references, index markers, tables) and falls back to plain text when the system clipboard changed; Paste without Formatting (⇧⌘V); Change Case (UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case — formatting kept); Type › Insert Special Character / White Space / Break Character submenus.
• Anchored objects: items flow in the text inline (on the baseline, with Y offset; lines grow to fit) or above the line (left/center/right, space before/after); paste copied items into text to anchor them; Anchored Object Options and Release (back onto the page where shown); rendered, exported to PDF and to/from IDML (InDesign anchored object settings; verified in InDesign 2026); copy/paste and threading carry them; anchored.* commands.
• Ruler guides: drag out of the rulers (page guides, or spread guides on the pasteboard), drag to move, drop on a ruler to delete; Layout › Create Guides (rows/columns with gutters, fit to margins or page); Delete All Guides on Spread; guide.* commands.
• Links panel: every placed graphic with status (OK / Modified / Missing / Embedded, checked against the file on disk), page and effective PPI (low resolution flagged); Relink…, Go To, Update, Embed; links.* commands.
• Missing fonts: highlighted pink on screen (never in output), listed by Preflight; Type › Find/Replace Font (fonts in the document, missing first; replace in text, cells, footnotes and styles); font.list / font.replace.
• Damage-region repaint: after an edit the canvas re-renders only the frames whose composed text (or the items that) changed and patches its texture — pixel-identical to a full render; typing in a frame repaints in under a millisecond instead of a full-viewport render (22 ms measured on the sample).
• Crash recovery: unsaved documents are written to the recovery folder every 30 s and reopened (unsaved, remembering their files) after a crash; File › Revert and Save a Copy…; file.recovery.*, file.revert, file.saveACopy.
• Edit › Paste Into (copied objects become a frame's content, clipped by it; rendered, PDF and IDML both ways — verified in InDesign 2026); Polygon Settings (sides, star inset; double-click the Polygon tool).
• Color panel (fill/stroke proxy, CMYK/RGB/Lab sliders with channel ramps, tint slider for swatches, spectrum ramp, Add to Swatches) and Color Picker (double-click the proxy); mixed colours are unnamed (not listed in Swatches until added); object.color, swatch.addToSwatches, swatch.addUnnamed.
• Place text files: Word (.docx: styles by name with their attributes, bold/italic/underline/size/font, footnotes, tables, tabs, breaks), RTF and plain text, into the insertion point, the selected frame or a new frame; autoflow adds pages and threaded frames until the text fits; Remove Styles option (designcraft-textimport).
• Menus expose the engine's features (TOC, numbering & sections, text variables, hyperlinks, cross-references, footnotes, step and repeat, spelling, fitting/content, effects, Data Merge, Preflight, EPUB); any menu command with parameters gets a dialog generated from its parameter documentation.
• Table of contents (generate/update, dot leaders) and text variables (running headers, last page number, chapter number, file name, dates, custom) resolved per page.
• Soft effects: blurred drop shadow, inner shadow, outer glow, basic feather.
• ~200 commands, all reachable through the JSON control channel; headless CLI rendering to PNG.
• MCP server (designcraft-cli mcp [--connect PORT], docs/mcp.md): headless engine or the running app; commands, batch, document/story inspection, page renders as images, window screenshots, pointer/keyboard/dialog input.
• Web build (apps/designcraft-web, trunk): the same UI on WebGPU with a WebGL2 fallback; open/place via the browser file picker or drag-and-drop, save/export as downloads.

Next (in order): books, footnotes in EPUB / span columns / split footnotes · table/cell styles, text rotation in cells · PDF/X-4 output intent, tagged PDF · UI for Data Merge/spelling/hyperlinks.

How far from full parity (estimate, 2026-10-02)

Breadth: ~63% weighted (P0 core 86%, P1 44%, P2 15%) over the 275 features of the InDesign catalogue, scored row by row in docs/parity.md (cargo xtask parity recomputes it). Many features scored done still lack some of InDesign's options or dialog details, so overall parity including depth is about 55%.

Remaining work: about 600 wall-clock hours of a single Claude Opus 5.5 agent (±30%), or roughly 150–200 hours with four agents in parallel on separate crates:

Work	Estimate
Open P0 (23: autosave/recovery, Preferences, Color panel/picker, Gradient tool, Place PDF/SVG, DOCX/RTF import, PDF/X-4, parent overrides UI, …)	35 h
Open P1 (66: type on a path, nested/GREP styles, table/cell styles, pathfinder, glyphs panel, package, print, variable fonts, …)	165 h
Open P2 (68: liquid/alternate layouts, books, buttons & forms, XML, conditional text, HTML, tagged PDF, …)	205 h
Depth and pixel fidelity of every dialog, panel and menu against InDesign 2026	130 h
Performance (incremental composition, GPU raster) and interchange hardening (IDML/PDF corpus)	85 h

Basis: this session landed 12 arcs (footnotes, cross-references, index, anchored objects, guides, Links, Find Font, clipboard, menus, damage repaint, agent scripting) in about 13 hours on a heavily loaded machine — roughly 1–3 hours per catalogue row depending on size.

Agents: CLI and MCP

Every command is reachable from designcraft-cli (run, script with $N.path result references, app for the running window, describe, commands), from MCP (designcraft-cli mcp, tools including execute and batch with the same references), and from the app's JSON control channel. See docs/agents.md.

Milestones

#	Milestone	State
M0	Skeleton + vertical slice	✅
M1	Selection, transform, layers, pages, MCP	in progress
M2	Type I (Type tool, threading, Character/Paragraph, composer)	in progress
M3	Styles (nested/GREP, bullets, keeps, span columns)	started
M4	Color & effects	started
M5	Graphics & links	started
M6	Files & export (native, IDML, PDF, PNG/JPEG)	in progress (IDML ✅, PDF export)
M7	Long documents (sections, TOC, index, footnotes, books)	in progress (sections, TOC, text variables/running heads, hyperlinks, bookmarks, footnotes, cross-references, index)
M8	Tables	✅ core (table/cell styles, rotation, diagonal lines pending)
M9	Performance (MT composition, tiles)	in progress (glyph path cache, culling, parallel compose 6.7× faster, perf harness)
M10	Find/Change, spelling, Preflight	in progress (Find/Change ✅, spelling ✅, Preflight)
M11	Layout power features (liquid/alternate layouts, data merge)	started (data merge, step & repeat, snippets)
M12	Interactive & digital (EPUB, HTML, interactive PDF)	started (EPUB, PDF links/bookmarks)
M13	Automation (scripts, batch)
M14	1.0 polish & packaging