figcraft/ROADMAP.md

FigCraft Roadmap

FigCraft is a clean-room, open-source, pure-Rust reimplementation of the Figma design workflow. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and the web (WASM), and agents can drive it completely through the CLI, a JSON control channel and MCP.

This file tracks how far we are and what's left. Time estimates are wall-clock hours of continuous Claude Opus 5.5 agent work (including builds and the CI gate), for one agent and for 4–6 parallel agents on disjoint crates. They are counted from the remaining work in the parity table below and updated as work lands.

Last updated: 2026-10-10 (vector edit mode tools, auto layout depth, layers panel depth).

Where we are

Dimension	Status
Infrastructure (crates, command registry, undo, renderer, formats, control channel, tests)	~70%
Look & feel vs the incumbent's 2026 UI (measured side by side)	~65%
Menu/command breadth (docs/parity.md)	96% of the catalogued menu tree has a command
Feature depth (weighted rubric below)	~40%
Parity including interaction fidelity and hardening	~25–30%
Time to feature parity	~260–380 h one agent · ~70–110 h with 4–6 agents
Time to full parity (feature parity + fidelity pass + hardening)	~420–600 h one agent · ~110–170 h with 4–6 agents

Honest assessment (2026-10-09)

In one line: the architecture is complete end to end (document model → commands → renderer → UI, CLI/MCP and control channel), and the everyday core (frames, shapes, text, auto layout, components with overrides, variants, styles, variables, effects, booleans, prototyping basics, SVG/PNG/JPG export) works. What's missing is depth: vector editing, rich text editing, the long tail of auto-layout and component behaviours, real-file interop and a fidelity pass against the incumbent.

How much to trust the numbers: scores are self-graded by the agents that built the features from public documentation and black-box observation. Treat them as upper bounds. Look & feel is the only dimension measured side by side.

Where we're lacking (priority order)

1. Vector edit mode: landed: edit-mode toolbar (move, pen, bend, paint bucket, lasso, cut), pen that extends, branches and closes paths (vector networks), paint bucket fill/unfill of any closed area (faces with holes), point/segment selection, handle mirroring (none/angle/angle and length) with a Point panel (position, corner radius, mirroring), smooth/sharp points, join and merge, delete vs delete-and-heal, nudging, one undo step per gesture. Left: eraser, variable width strokes, shape builder, transform box for several points, point snapping. 12–18 h.
2. Text editing depth: landed: OpenType features panel, small caps, lists, title case, truncation/max lines, font picker with previews and recents, word/line selection, IME commit. Left: inline IME preedit, variable font axes, visual QA. 8–12 h.
3. Auto layout depth: landed: on-canvas padding/gap handles (also wrapped-row and grid column/row gaps, grid tracks outlined), min/max width/height (UI, Hug/Fill/Fixed, hugging text wraps at its max), ignore auto layout (absolute position) with constraints, text baseline alignment, grid tracks (fixed/hug/fr), grid cells and spans, wrap row gap UI. Left: grid/wrap-aware drag-reorder and drag-to-cell, nested hug/fill edge cases. 6–10 h.
4. Components depth: landed: component properties (edit/delete/bind) with the properties panel, add variant, instance swap UI, per-layer overrides with reset, restore main, instance structure protection; Assets panel with live thumbnails, search and drag-to-canvas (drops into the frame or auto layout slot under the pointer). Left: nested instance overrides depth, slots, local libraries (publish/use across files), component descriptions UI. 10–14 h.
5. Prototyping depth: landed: on-canvas connections with drag-to-connect, interaction editor, flows, smart animate, overlays, scroll/fixed/sticky, change-to and set-variable in the presenter. Left: overlay close animation, springs, device frames, multi-selection editing. 6–10 h.
6. Interop: .fig import (best effort), PDF export (in progress), image crop handles (landed), paste from other apps, Figma REST JSON import. 25–40 h.
7. Look & feel and interaction-fidelity pass: tool by tool, panel by panel against the incumbent (cursors, modifier keys, hover states, menus, popovers). 40–60 h.
8. Collaboration (local): comments landed (pins, threads, resolve, panel). Version history UI, multiplayer and plugins are not started. 30–60 h.
9. Hardening and performance: real-world file corpus, perf budgets at 50k layers (tile cache, incremental re-render), Windows/Linux/browser QA, accessibility. 40–60 h.

Where we're going

• Next: text depth (2) and auto layout depth (3) in parallel with the fidelity pass (7); the rest of vector editing (1).
• Then: auto layout/components/prototyping depth (3–5), interop (6).
• Alpha: release builds on every push to release (packaging in progress), demo files, docs.

Shipped so far

• Architecture: 13 crates with enforced layering (cargo xtask layers): geom, color, doc, layout, text, pathops, render, format, svg, engine, ui-egui (+ mcp, pdf in progress). Every action is a command (~250); undo is unlimited via structural sharing (Arc node snapshots); gestures are one undo step; command.batch runs several commands as one step.
• Document model: pages, frames, groups, sections, rectangles, ellipses (arcs/rings), polygons, stars, lines/arrows, vector networks, text with styled runs, boolean groups, components, component sets (variants), instances with per-layer overrides, slices; fills (solid, linear/radial/angular/ diamond gradients, images with fill/fit/crop/tile + adjustments), multiple strokes with inside/center/outside alignment, per-side weights, dashes, caps/arrowheads, joins; effects (drop and inner shadow with spread, layer blur, background blur, noise, texture); corner radii with smoothing; constraints; auto layout (horizontal, vertical, wrap, grid; hug/fill/fixed; min/max; absolute children); layout grids; export settings; prototype interactions, flows and transitions; paint/text/effect/grid styles; variables with collections, modes and aliases.
• Renderer: CPU (tiny-skia) scene renderer used for canvas, export and the web: isolated layers for opacity/blend/effects, clip content, masks, booleans (linesweeper), text (harfrust shaping, skrifa outlines, font fallback), aligned strokes with caching.
• Engine: pointer tools (move/marquee/deep select/resize/rotate/Alt-duplicate with smart-guide snapping, frame/section/slice/shapes/line/arrow with Shift/Alt, text, pen, pencil, hand, eyedropper), text editing (caret, selection, words, lines), auto layout reorder by dragging, drop into frames, align/distribute/tidy, z-order, flip/rotate, scale tool, booleans, flatten, outline stroke, components (create, instances, sync with overrides, reset, detach, push changes, variants, properties), styles and variables, prototype commands, find/replace, batch rename, copy/paste (internal + SVG/text), file new/open/save/import/export (native .figcraft, SVG in/out, PNG/JPG/WebP), version snapshots.
• UI (egui, swappable): the incumbent's 2026 layout: tab strip, icon rail, file header, pages and layers tree (rename, visibility/lock, drag to reorder/reparent), Assets panel, floating bottom toolbar with flyouts and mode switcher, Design / Prototype / Inspect (CSS) panels, colour picker (HSB square, hue/alpha, hex, gradient stops, image fills), main menu generated from the catalog, context menu, Actions palette (⌘K), keyboard shortcuts from the catalog, presentation player with transitions, light and dark themes, home screen, About/Preferences/shortcuts/variables dialogs.
• Automation: desktop control channel (--control <port>: execute commands, inspect document/UI, synthetic pointer/keys/typing, menu invocation, screenshots, renders).
• Tests: ~120 automated tests including a junk-parameter sweep over every command.

Parity estimate (weighted rubric)

Scores by behaviour, 0–100%. Hours are what remains (one agent).

Area	Weight	Score	Remaining work	Hours
Canvas & navigation	6	60%	rulers/guides dragging, pixel preview, minimap-free perf at scale	8–12
Selection & transform	8	60%	rotated multi-select handles, scale tool polish, measure hover polish	10–15
Layers panel	5	70%	drag polish (auto-scroll while dragging, drop into collapsed groups), keyboard row navigation	4–6
Shapes & vector	8	55%	eraser, variable width, shape builder, multi-point transform box, point snapping, live boolean editing, arc handles on canvas	15–22
Paint	7	65%	colour profiles (Display P3), paint style picker polish, image adjustment presets	6–10
Strokes	3	55%	arrowhead set, dash/gap UI, per-side UI, stroke styles	5–8
Effects	4	60%	effect styles UI, glass/texture fidelity, shadow spread on non-rects exactness	6–10
Frames, groups, sections, masks	5	55%	section tooling, mask types (luminance/outline), frame presets UI	6–10
Auto layout & constraints	9	60%	grid/wrap-aware drag-reorder, drag to grid cell, nested hug/fill edge cases	6–10
Text	8	35%	in-text mouse selection, styled ranges UI, lists, OpenType, variable fonts	20–30
Components & variants	9	55%	nested overrides depth, libraries, slots, descriptions	12–18
Styles & variables	5	45%	style picker everywhere, variable binding UI, aliasing UI, scoping	10–16
Prototyping	6	30%	noodle editing, overlays, scrolling, smart animate	20–30
Import/export	6	45%	PDF (in progress), .fig import, export panel polish	20–35
Dev mode / inspect	2	35%	measurements on canvas, code variants (Swift/Compose), assets	6–10
Comments, versions, misc	3	25%	comments, version history UI, plugins (WASM)	15–25

Weighted feature depth ≈ 50%.

Milestones

Milestone	Status
M0 Foundation: workspace, model, renderer, engine, UI shell, app, control channel	done (2026-10-09)
M0.9 CLI + MCP, web build, release packaging, PDF export	in progress
M1 Core editing completeness (tools, panels, menus, clipboard, files)	~60%
M2 Layout depth	~60%
M3 Components & styles depth	~40%
M4 Vector & text depth	~45%
M5 Prototype & present	~30%
M6 Interop & dev mode	~35%
M7 Release (signed builds for all platforms, README screenshots)	started