Roadmap: parity estimate — ~65% feature parity (weighted over 22 areas), ~50% including fidelity and hardening; ~330–500 h of Opus 5.5 to feature parity and ~440–670 h to full parity for one agent (~85–140 h / ~115–190 h with 4–6 agents); inventories and milestone estimates reconciled

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

ROADMAP.md

@@ -2,9 +2,9 @@
 
 VectorCraft is a clean-room, open-source, pure-Rust reimplementation of the Adobe Illustrator workflow. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux and the web (WASM), and agents can drive it fully over a JSON control channel and MCP.
 
-This file tracks **how far we are and what's left**. Estimates are wall-clock hours of continuous agent work (Claude Opus 5.5 lead plus 4–6 parallel agents). They were made by counting the remaining work, not measured, and are updated as work lands.
+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), given both for **one agent** and for **4–6 parallel agents** on disjoint crates. They are counted from the remaining work (see [Parity estimate](#parity-estimate)), calibrated against measured throughput, and updated as work lands.
 
-_Last updated: 2026-10-01._
+_Last updated: 2026-10-02._
 
 ## Where we are
 
@@ -12,17 +12,18 @@ _Last updated: 2026-10-01._
 |---|---|
 | Infrastructure (engine, command registry, history, render, formats, MCP, web, packaging, tests) | **~90%** |
 | Look & feel vs Illustrator 2026 default workspace (measured) | **~75–80%** |
-| Feature surface vs full Illustrator | **~45–50%** |
-| Estimated time to **checklist parity** (every menu item, tool, panel and dialog functional) | **~200–330 h** (sum of the milestone rows below) |
-| Estimated time to **1:1 feel** (edge cases, modifier nuances, typographic/colour fidelity) | **~500+ h** |
+| Feature surface vs full Illustrator (weighted, see below) | **~65%** |
+| Parity including interaction fidelity and hardening ("a power user can't tell the difference, but faster") | **~50%** |
+| Time to **feature parity** (every menu item, tool, panel, effect and dialog functional) | **~330–500 h** one agent · **~85–140 h** with 4–6 agents |
+| Time to **full parity** (feature parity + interaction-fidelity pass + hardening) | **~440–670 h** one agent · **~115–190 h** with 4–6 agents |
 
 ### Shipped so far
 - **Architecture:** 19+ crates with enforced layering (`cargo xtask layers`). Every action is a command (~400 engine + ~50 UI). Undo is unlimited via structural sharing. `command.batch` runs several commands as one transaction.
 - **Automation:**
   - Actions panel (record/playback, persisted), generic parameter dialogs for every "…" command.
   - JSON-lines control channel with real egui pointer and keyboard injection.
-  - MCP server with 19 tools, which can attach to the running app or run headless.
-  - Headless CLI (`vectorcraft-cli`).
+  - MCP server with 25 tools (drawing, text, effects, Pathfinder, transforms, graphs, text wrap, export, screenshots, any command), attached to the running app or headless.
+  - Headless CLI (`vectorcraft-cli run`, `convert`, `info`, `bench`, `perf`, `mcp`).
   - Actions panel that records and plays back commands.
 - **UI:** Illustrator 2026 layout restyled to measured values:
   - Medium Dark theme, categorized and Advanced toolbars, 35 pt document tabs, 33 pt panel tabs.
@@ -53,26 +54,77 @@ _Last updated: 2026-10-01._
 
 ## Milestones and estimates
 
-| # | Milestone | Status | Est. remaining (h) |
+| # | Milestone | Status | Est. remaining, one agent (h) |
 |---|---|---|---|
 | M0 | Skeleton + vertical slice | ✅ done | — |
-| M1 | Selection, transform, layers, MCP | ✅ mostly done (rotated persistent bbox pending) | 3–5 |
-| M2 | Drawing tools + smart guides | ✅ mostly done (Flare, Reshape landed; Shaper, Pen modifier nuances) | 4–8 |
-| M3 | Paint & appearance (swatches, color, gradient, stroke, appearance, transparency, styles) | 🟡 panels done; opacity masks done (make/release, clip, invert, disable, link; render + SVG `<mask>` in/out + PDF soft mask); mask-editing mode, freeform gradients pending | 6–10 |
-| M4 | Files (native, SVG, PDF, raster, Export for Screens, clipboard interop) | 🟡 Export for Screens (PNG/JPG/WebP/SVG/PDF × scales) done; headless CLI/MCP export every format; system clipboard: copy puts SVG markup on it, paste takes SVG from other apps (Ctrl/Cmd+C/X/V now also work off macOS); live effects now survive SVG/PDF/clipboard export (geometry baked, SVG filters for shadows/glows/blur/feather); PDF raster effects, PNG/PDF clipboard flavours, EPS/DXF pending | 7–11 |
-| M5 | Performance | 🟡 background render + caches + MT done; `vectorcraft-cli bench` and `vectorcraft-cli perf` (budget suite); file format v2 opens 3× faster (50k paths: 722 → 244 ms); raster effects (glows, shadows, blur, feather) no longer force the whole frame single-threaded (filtered offscreen per effect, verified equal to the single-threaded reference); effect-heavy demos need a clean-machine benchmark; dirty-region rendering, GPU backend spike pending | 10–20 |
+| M1 | Selection, transform, layers, MCP | ✅ mostly done (rotated persistent bbox pending) | 4–6 |
+| M2 | Drawing tools + smart guides | ✅ mostly done (Flare, Reshape landed; Shaper, Pen modifier nuances) | 15–20 |
+| M3 | Paint & appearance (swatches, color, gradient, stroke, appearance, transparency, styles) | 🟡 panels done; opacity masks done (make/release, clip, invert, disable, link; render + SVG `<mask>` in/out + PDF soft mask); mask-editing mode, freeform gradients pending | 18–27 |
+| M4 | Files (native, SVG, PDF, raster, Export for Screens, clipboard interop) | 🟡 Export for Screens (PNG/JPG/WebP/SVG/PDF × scales) done; headless CLI/MCP export every format; system clipboard: copy puts SVG markup on it, paste takes SVG from other apps (Ctrl/Cmd+C/X/V now also work off macOS); live effects now survive SVG/PDF/clipboard export (geometry baked, SVG filters for shadows/glows/blur/feather); PDF raster effects, PNG/PDF clipboard flavours, EPS/DXF pending | 52–73 |
+| M5 | Performance | 🟡 background render + caches + MT done; `vectorcraft-cli bench` and `vectorcraft-cli perf` (budget suite); file format v2 opens 3× faster (50k paths: 722 → 244 ms); raster effects (glows, shadows, blur, feather) no longer force the whole frame single-threaded (filtered offscreen per effect, verified equal to the single-threaded reference); effect-heavy demos need a clean-machine benchmark; dirty-region rendering, GPU backend spike pending | 15–25 |
 | M6 | Path operations (Pathfinder, Shape Builder, offset…) | ✅ mostly done (Shape Builder edge erase, large-offset bug open) | 3–6 |
-| M7 | Type (point/area/path, editing, styles, OpenType, threading, glyphs) | 🟡 Character/Paragraph Styles, Area Type Options, threaded text, Fit Headline, Glyphs, OpenType panel, Find Font, Text Wrap (offset, invert; follows edits), Type on a Path effects done; Tabs panel, spell check, vertical type, wrap on both sides of an object pending | 9–15 |
+| M7 | Type (point/area/path, editing, styles, OpenType, threading, glyphs) | 🟡 Character/Paragraph Styles, Area Type Options, threaded text, Fit Headline, Glyphs, OpenType panel, Find Font, Text Wrap (offset, invert; follows edits), Type on a Path effects done; Tabs panel, spell check, vertical type, wrap on both sides of an object pending | 45–60 |
 | M8 | Transform & distort (Puppet Warp, Liquify tools, Envelopes, Blends, Perspective Grid) | 🟡 live Blends, Envelopes (warp/mesh/top object), Width tool, Liquify tools, Puppet Warp and Perspective Grid landed; fidelity pass pending | 8–12 |
-| M9 | Live effects (+ 3D & Materials) | 🟡 2D effects done incl. Effect → Pathfinder; SVG Filters, Document Raster Effects Settings, 3D pending | 24–38 |
-| M10 | Brushes, symbols, patterns, Repeat | 🟡 pattern swatches (5 tile types, Pattern Options, editing mode, SVG `<pattern>`/PDF export) and live Repeat (radial/grid/mirror) done; brushes/symbols in progress | 8–15 |
-| M11 | Artboards & views (artboard panel/tool done, Trim View; print tiling, multiple windows, presentation polish) | 🟡 | 9–14 |
-| M12 | Advanced color & art (CMYK/ICC, separations, Gradient Mesh, Live Paint, Image Trace, Graphs) | 🟡 Gradient Mesh, Live Paint, Image Trace (12 presets, 18 ms/1k² image), Recolor Artwork, colour management (ICC, soft proofing, separations preview), Graphs (all 9 tools, Graph Data/Type, regenerate in place) done; graph Design/Column/Marker designs pending | 8–14 |
-| M13 | Automation (Actions ✅ record/playback, persisted; variables, scripting, batch) | 🟡 | 8–12 |
-| M14 | 1.0 polish (preferences, shortcut editor, workspaces, accessibility, packaging for all OSes) | 🟡 Preferences, shortcut editor, workspaces done; accessibility, Windows/Linux packaging pending | 12–20 |
-| — | Interaction fidelity pass (every tool's modifiers, Properties panel per context, isolation, nuance) | ⬜ | 40–60 |
-| — | Hardening at scale (big-file corpus, fuzzing, cross-platform + browser QA) | 🟡 | 30–50 |
-| | **Total to checklist parity** (sum of the rows above) | | **~200–330** |
+| M9 | Live effects (+ 3D & Materials) | 🟡 2D effects done incl. Effect → Pathfinder; SVG Filters, Document Raster Effects Settings, 3D pending | 86–135 |
+| M10 | Brushes, symbols, patterns, Repeat | 🟡 pattern swatches (5 tile types, Pattern Options, editing mode, SVG `<pattern>`/PDF export) and live Repeat (radial/grid/mirror) done; brushes/symbols in progress | 23–37 |
+| M11 | Artboards & views (artboard panel/tool done, Trim View; print tiling, multiple windows, presentation polish) | 🟡 | 20–33 |
+| M12 | Advanced color & art (CMYK/ICC, separations, Gradient Mesh, Live Paint, Image Trace, Graphs) | 🟡 Gradient Mesh, Live Paint, Image Trace (12 presets, 18 ms/1k² image), Recolor Artwork, colour management (ICC, soft proofing, separations preview), Graphs (all 9 tools, Graph Data/Type, regenerate in place) done; graph Design/Column/Marker designs pending | 6–10 |
+| M13 | Automation (Actions ✅ record/playback, persisted; variables, scripting, batch) | 🟡 | 18–27 |
+| M14 | 1.0 polish (preferences, shortcut editor, workspaces, accessibility, packaging for all OSes) | 🟡 Preferences, shortcut editor, workspaces done; accessibility, Windows/Linux packaging pending | 20–30 |
+| — | Interaction fidelity pass (every tool's modifiers, Properties panel per context, isolation, nuance) | ⬜ | 60–90 |
+| — | Hardening at scale (big-file corpus, fuzzing, cross-platform + browser QA) | 🟡 | 50–80 |
+| | **Total to full parity** (one agent; sum of the rows above — matches [Parity estimate](#parity-estimate)) | | **~440–670** |
+
+## Parity estimate
+
+_Method (2026-10-02):_ Illustrator's feature surface is split into 22 areas, weighted by how much of the app (and of
+real users' work) each represents. Each area is scored by depth of behaviour, not by presence of a menu item: an area
+is 100% only when every feature in it behaves like Illustrator. Feature parity = Σ weight × score / Σ weight. Remaining
+time is counted per area from what is missing, calibrated on measured throughput: in the last session one agent landed
+about 20 medium features (Text Wrap, Graphs, Effect → Pathfinder, export baking…) in ~16 h wall clock including builds
+and CI on a heavily loaded machine — about 0.8 h per medium feature; large subsystems (3D, raster filters, vertical type)
+are counted bottom-up.
+
+| Area | Weight | Done | Missing (main items) | One agent (h) |
+|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
+| Selection, transform & align tools | 6 | 85% | rotated persistent bounding box, Start Global Edit, transform nuances | 4–6 |
+| Drawing tools | 7 | 80% | Shaper, pen/pencil modifier nuances, Touch Type | 15–20 |
+| Path operations, Pathfinder, Shape Builder, Live Paint | 5 | 85% | Live Paint gap options, Shape Builder edge cases | 3–6 |
+| Colour, swatches, gradients, patterns, mesh, recolor | 7 | 75% | freeform gradients, swatch libraries (original), Tile Edge Color | 10–15 |
+| Strokes, brushes, width profiles | 5 | 65% | brush options depth, brush libraries (generated in code) | 15–25 |
+| Appearance, transparency, graphic styles, masks | 5 | 80% | opacity-mask editing mode, Flatten Transparency, style libraries | 8–12 |
+| Live vector effects | 5 | 85% | Outline Object, Pathfinder Hard/Soft Mix and Trap, SVG Filters | 6–10 |
+| Raster effects (Effect Gallery, Document Raster Effects Settings) | 4 | 15% | ~55 filters (Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Pixelate, Sketch, Texture…), resolution setting, raster effects in PDF | 30–45 |
+| 3D and Materials | 4 | 0% | Extrude & Bevel, Revolve, Inflate, Rotate, lighting, materials (software renderer) | 50–80 |
+| Type core | 9 | 75% | wrap on both sides of an object, composer/hyphenation options, Optical Margin Alignment, hidden characters | 15–20 |
+| Type advanced | 4 | 25% | vertical type/CJK, Tabs panel, spell check (open dictionary), Touch Type, Retype | 30–40 |
+| Symbols, blends, envelopes, Repeat, perspective | 5 | 75% | symbol libraries (original), dynamic symbols, perspective edge cases | 8–12 |
+| Image Trace, graphs, image tools | 3 | 70% | graph Design/Column/Marker, Create Object Mosaic, Crop Image polish | 6–10 |
+| Layers, artboards, document setup | 5 | 80% | Layers panel options depth, artboard presets/rearrange polish | 6–10 |
+| View & navigation | 3 | 70% | New View/Edit Views, multiple windows/arrange, print tiling, Snap to Pixel/Glyph | 10–15 |
+| Guides, grids, smart guides, snapping, rulers | 3 | 75% | global/video rulers, smart-guide preference depth | 4–8 |
+| File formats | 6 | 60% | EPS in/out, DXF/DWG, PSD placement, PDF raster effects/presets | 40–55 |
+| Export for Screens, Asset Export, slices, Save for Web | 3 | 45% | Asset Export panel, slices, Save for Web | 12–18 |
+| Print, colour management, separations, flattener | 3 | 40% | Print dialog (platform), flattener presets, print presets | 20–30 |
+| Automation | 3 | 60% | Variables (data merge), scripting surface, batch | 8–12 |
+| UI chrome (panels, contextual Properties, workspaces, prefs) | 6 | 75% | ~14 panels (Tabs, Links, Attributes, Asset Export, SVG Interactivity, Variables, CSS Properties…), Properties per context | 20–30 |
+| Libraries, Links, Package | 2 | 15% | Links panel, Package, local libraries | 10–15 |
+| **Feature parity** | **103** | **~65%** | | **~330–500** |
+| Interaction-fidelity pass (side by side with Illustrator: every tool modifier, cursor, dialog, Properties context) | | | | 60–90 |
+| Hardening (big-file corpus, fuzzing, cross-platform and browser QA, accessibility, packaging) | | | | 50–80 |
+| **Full parity** | | **~50%** | | **~440–670** |
+
+With 4–6 agents working on disjoint crates (as the layering allows) the wall-clock time divides by roughly 3.5–4
+(integration, review and shared files such as `menus.rs` serialize some work): **~85–140 h** to feature parity,
+**~115–190 h** to full parity.
+
+_Inventories (2026-10-02):_ 426 engine commands + ~60 UI commands; 316 menu items wired, ~70 still disabled; 68 of 79
+tools implemented (missing: Shaper, Slice ×2, Touch Type, vertical type ×3, Print Tiling); 31 panels of ~45; 44 live
+effects of ~110 (Illustrator effects 44/54, Photoshop-style raster effects 1/56); ~1,050 tests.
+
+_Where we already beat Illustrator:_ exact curve booleans, off-thread multithreaded rendering, undo that never runs out,
+lossless SVG/PDF export of live effects with SVG filters, a documented JSON format, the same app on the web, and every
+command, gesture and dialog drivable by agents (MCP, CLI, control channel).
 
 ## Out of scope (by design or by law)
 - **Native `.ai` private data:** it's undocumented. We read the PDF-compatible part, so Illustrator-only live objects arrive as appearance.