Roadmap: M3 stage 2 (M3.30–M3.39, M3.42–M3.48)

The M3 row, the shipped list and the colour, stroke and appearance parity rows
cover Swatches panel depth, Gradient panel depth and rebased gradients, stroke
export parity and Outline Stroke fidelity, corner-fitted dashes, appearance
editing depth and effects on every object kind, knockout and page groups, and
graphic style links. Remaining estimates are recalibrated on the measured
throughput of the first two M3 waves.

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

ROADMAP.md

@@ -12,10 +12,10 @@ _Last updated: 2026-10-04._
 |---|---|
 | 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 (weighted, see below) | **~66%** |
+| Feature surface vs full Illustrator (weighted, see below) | **~67%** |
 | 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) | **~460–660 h** one agent · **~115–190 h** with 4–6 agents |
-| Time to **full parity** (feature parity + interaction-fidelity pass + hardening) | **~570–830 h** one agent · **~145–235 h** with 4–6 agents |
+| Time to **feature parity** (every menu item, tool, panel, effect and dialog functional) | **~340–540 h** one agent · **~85–155 h** with 4–6 agents |
+| Time to **full parity** (feature parity + interaction-fidelity pass + hardening) | **~450–710 h** one agent · **~115–200 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.
@@ -48,19 +48,21 @@ _Last updated: 2026-10-04._
 - **Transparency:** opacity masks (clip/invert/disable/link), exported as SVG `<mask>` and PDF soft masks.
 - **Advanced art:** live Blends (steps/distance/smooth colour, spine), Envelope Distort (warp/mesh/top object), Gradient Mesh, Shape Builder, Live Paint, Image Trace (12 presets), pattern swatches with pattern editing mode, live Repeat (radial/grid/mirror).
 - **Paint and appearance (M3):**
-  - **Swatches:** names follow the colour model and are unique; Swatch Options (process/spot, Global, Gray/RGB/HSB/CMYK/Web, live preview); editing a global or spot swatch recolours every linked fill, stroke and text run in one undo step; multi-select and delete with confirmation; New Swatch and New Color Group dialogs (a group from the selected artwork's colours); swatches in colour groups convert, separate and count like any other.
+  - **Swatches:** names follow the colour model and are unique; Swatch Options (process/spot, Global, Gray/RGB/HSB/CMYK/Web, live preview); editing a global or spot swatch recolours every linked fill, stroke and text run in one undo step; multi-select and delete with confirmation; New Swatch and New Color Group dialogs (a group from the selected artwork's colours); swatches in colour groups convert, separate and count like any other. The Swatches panel selects ranges and whole groups, has a find field, and drags swatches to reorder, regroup or paint art; Add Used Colors, Select All Unused, Merge, Ungroup and Sort by Kind; a CMYK document keeps applied colours in CMYK.
   - **Colour:** a Color Picker (colour field, H/S/B/R/G/B channel slider, HSB/RGB/Lab/CMYK fields, hex, web-only snapping, out-of-gamut correction); the Color panel follows each colour's own model and Alt-click paints the other proxy; proxies look through groups and show "?" for mixed paint; Invert, Complement, Apply Last Color (`,`) and Apply Last Gradient (`.`) keep the colour model; every paint command feeds the recent colours.
-  - **Gradients:** lossless, validated gradient params; gradients follow rotate, reflect, shear, non-uniform scale and distortions; the Gradient tool edits the fill or stroke of the active proxy, type included; an interactive on-canvas annotator (move, length/angle, rotate, add/move/delete/duplicate stops, midpoints, a stop popover, Delete and arrow keys).
-  - **Strokes:** one stroke-geometry module shared by the canvas, SVG, PDF and Outline Stroke; dotted lines (zero-length dashes draw dots or squares); arrowheads with hollow outlines, tip-on-end or extend-past-end alignment and one opacity for line and head.
-  - **Appearance:** the Appearance panel's selected row drives every paint, stroke, gradient and transparency edit (`item` on the commands); effects apply to one fill or stroke; per-item Opacity popups; Mixed Appearances, Layers target dots and basic-appearance rules.
+  - **Gradients:** lossless, validated gradient params; gradients follow rotate, reflect, shear, non-uniform scale and distortions; the Gradient tool edits the fill or stroke of the active proxy, type included; an interactive on-canvas annotator (move, length/angle, rotate, add/move/delete/duplicate stops, midpoints, a stop popover, Delete and arrow keys). The Gradient panel has the Fill/Stroke proxy, a gradient-swatch dropdown with Save to Swatches, midpoint locations, Alt-drag to copy or swap stops, swatch drops on the ramp and a stop eyedropper; copied appearances and graphic styles place gradients on each target's own bounds; gradient handles snap and honour Constrain Angle.
+  - **Strokes:** one stroke-geometry module shared by the canvas, SVG, PDF and Outline Stroke; dotted lines (zero-length dashes draw dots or squares); arrowheads with hollow outlines, tip-on-end or extend-past-end alignment and one opacity for line and head. SVG and PDF export arrowheads, width profiles, brushes and aligned strokes exactly as the canvas draws them; Outline Stroke and the live Outline Stroke effect outline every stroke item as drawn (dashes, heads, profiles, alignment); dashes can be fitted to corners and path ends; width profiles carry through dashes, and their corners take the join.
+  - **Appearance:** the Appearance panel's selected row drives every paint, stroke, gradient and transparency edit (`item` on the commands); effects apply to one fill or stroke; per-item Opacity popups; Mixed Appearances, Layers target dots and basic-appearance rules. Effects can be reordered, moved between items and copied by dragging; Show All Hidden Attributes; clicking an effect edits it in place; the object thumbnail drags onto art; effects render on type, images, symbols, blends, envelopes, meshes and repeats, and per-item raster effects export.
   - **Masks and clipping:** opacity-mask controls work while the mask is being edited; transparency commands take ids and work without a selection; clipping sets clip by compound paths, even-odd paths, text and groups on screen and in raster export, matching SVG/PDF.
+  - **Transparency:** three-state Knockout Group (on, neutral, off), Opacity & Mask Define Knockout Shape, Page Isolated Blending and Page Knockout Group, on screen and in SVG/PDF.
+  - **Graphic styles:** styles keep opacity and blend mode, capture groups and type, apply on top with Alt, and link to the objects using them; Redefine, Break Link, Graphic Style Options, Select All Unused, Sort by Name, and Select > Same Graphic Style / Appearance Attribute.
   - **Neutral wording:** labels, MCP tool text, docs and packaging use neutral names, and `cargo xtask brands` (part of `cargo xtask ci`) fails on vendor names.
 - **Colour, type and file workflows:** Recolor Artwork (dialog with harmonies), Edit Colors, Find & Replace, Change Case, Smart Punctuation, Guides, Lock/Hide Above, Transform Each, Rasterize.
 - **Formats:**
   - `.vectorcraft` (lossless JSON), SVG import/export, PDF export/import (including PDF-compatible `.ai`).
   - PNG, JPEG and WebP export, Export for Screens, Place.
 - **Performance:** 20k shapes + 1k texts render in 27 ms per full-retina frame (7.8 ms zoomed), 7× faster than the first version. The UI thread never blocks. The web build is 7.1 MB gzipped.
-- **Tests:** ~1,300 automated tests: model-based property tests, a junk-parameter sweep over every command, golden renders, and MCP end-to-end tests over stdio.
+- **Tests:** ~1,430 automated tests: model-based property tests, a junk-parameter sweep over every command, golden renders, and MCP end-to-end tests over stdio.
 
 ## Milestones and estimates
 
@@ -69,7 +71,7 @@ _Last updated: 2026-10-04._
 | M0 | Skeleton + vertical slice | ✅ done | — |
 | M1 | Selection, transform, layers, MCP | ✅ mostly done (transform reference point snaps to anchors/centres; rotated persistent bbox pending) | 4–6 |
 | M2 | Drawing tools + smart guides | ✅ mostly done (Flare, Reshape, Live Corners widget dragging landed; Shaper, Pen modifier nuances) | 15–20 |
-| M3 | Paint & appearance (swatches, color, gradient, stroke, appearance, transparency, styles) | 🟡 M3.7–M3.29 done: swatch options, global/spot edits and colour groups; Color Picker and Color panel behaviour; proxy commands; gradients that follow every transform and an interactive annotator; shared stroke geometry, dotted lines, arrowheads; Appearance-panel targeting and per-item effects and opacity; opacity-mask editing reach; clipping by any shape; neutral labels with a vendor-name CI gate (opacity masks, mask-editing mode and the panels were already done). Pending (M3.30–M3.98, 33 packages): swatch panel depth and libraries, tints, gradient panel depth, freeform gradients and gradient on strokes, stroke export parity and Outline Stroke, dash alignment, stroke on type, width profiles, graphic style links and libraries, container appearance, Expand Appearance, knockout and isolation accuracy, overprint and the Attributes panel, Colour Guide and Recolor depth, Flatten Transparency | 160–200 |
+| M3 | Paint & appearance (swatches, color, gradient, stroke, appearance, transparency, styles) | 🟡 M3.7–M3.39 and M3.42–M3.48 done: swatch options, global/spot edits, colour groups and Swatches panel depth (drag and drop, find, panel commands, document colour mode); Color Picker and Color panel behaviour; proxy commands; gradients that follow every transform, an interactive annotator, Gradient panel depth and rebased gradients; shared stroke geometry, dotted lines, arrowheads, SVG/PDF stroke parity, Outline Stroke fidelity, corner-fitted dashes, profiles through dashes; Appearance-panel targeting, per-item effects and opacity, effect drag/edit, effects on every object kind; three-state knockout and page groups; graphic style links and management; opacity-mask editing reach; clipping by any shape. Pending (M3.40–M3.41, M3.49–M3.98): stroke on type, overprint and the Attributes panel, swatch and style libraries, tints and linked gradient stops, freeform gradients and gradient on strokes, width profile library and Width tool depth, Scale Strokes and preview bounds, container appearance, target circles and Expand Appearance, blend accuracy and isolation, layer clipping masks, Colour Guide and Recolor depth, Expand, mask view, CMYK blending, Flatten Transparency | 45–85 |
 | M4 | Files (native, SVG, PDF, raster, Export for Screens, clipboard interop) | 🟡 one engine loader/encoder for every frontend (desktop, web, CLI, control channel, headless MCP open native/SVG/SVGZ/PDF/.ai/.ait/PNG/JPEG/GIF/WebP/TIFF/BMP; `document.formats`; MCP `export` takes artboard/range/options; one PDF page per artboard in Export for Screens; template layers left out of raster exports); 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); Save / Don't Save / Cancel before closing modified documents; 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 |
@@ -83,7 +85,7 @@ _Last updated: 2026-10-04._
 | 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)) | | **~570–830** |
+| | **Total to full parity** (one agent; sum of the rows above — matches [Parity estimate](#parity-estimate)) | | **~450–710** |
 
 ## Parity estimate
 
@@ -94,17 +96,17 @@ time is counted per area from what is missing, calibrated on measured throughput
 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. The M3 rows (colour, strokes, appearance) come from a detailed 92-task M3 plan whose review
-found more missing depth than the first estimate; they are calibrated on its first wave, where 6 packages planned at
-~61 h took ~39 agent-hours.
+found more missing depth than the first estimate; they are calibrated on its first two waves, where 13 packages planned at
+~120 h took roughly 25–45 agent-hours.
 
 | 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 | 85% | Shaper Groups (merge/punch overlapping shapes), pen/pencil modifier nuances, Touch Type | 10–15 |
 | 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 | 80% | swatch panel depth and libraries (original), tints, linked gradient stops, freeform gradients, gradient on strokes, Expand, Colour Guide and Recolor depth, overprint, Tile Edge Color | 75–95 |
-| Strokes, brushes, width profiles | 5 | 72% | stroke export parity and Outline Stroke fidelity, dash alignment, stroke on type, width profile library, Width tool depth, Scale Strokes, brush options depth, brush libraries (generated in code) | 28–38 |
-| Appearance, transparency, graphic styles, masks | 5 | 87% | appearance editing depth, container appearance, graphic style links and libraries, knockout and isolation accuracy, Flatten Transparency, mask view (Alt-click) | 60–75 |
+| Colour, swatches, gradients, patterns, mesh, recolor | 7 | 85% | swatch libraries (original), tints, linked gradient stops, freeform gradients, gradient on strokes, Expand, Colour Guide and Recolor depth, overprint, Tile Edge Color | 23–44 |
+| Strokes, brushes, width profiles | 5 | 80% | stroke on type, width profile library, Width tool depth, Scale Strokes, brush options depth, brush libraries (generated in code) | 6–12 |
+| Appearance, transparency, graphic styles, masks | 5 | 91% | container appearance, target circles, Expand Appearance, graphic style libraries, blend accuracy and isolation, Flatten Transparency, mask view (Alt-click) | 15–29 |
 | 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 |
@@ -121,18 +123,18 @@ found more missing depth than the first estimate; they are calibrated on its fir
 | 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** | **~66%** | | **~460–660** |
+| **Feature parity** | **103** | **~67%** | | **~340–540** |
 | 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%** | | **~570–830** |
+| **Full parity** | | **~51%** | | **~450–710** |
 
 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): **~115–190 h** to feature parity,
-**~145–235 h** to full parity.
+(integration, review and shared files such as `menus.rs` serialize some work): **~85–155 h** to feature parity,
+**~115–200 h** to full parity.
 
 _Inventories (2026-10-02):_ 426 engine commands + ~60 UI commands; 316 menu items wired, ~70 still disabled; 69 of 79
 tools implemented (missing: Slice ×2, Touch Type, vertical type ×3, Print Tiling); 32 panels of ~45; 44 live
-effects of ~110 (Illustrator effects 44/54, Photoshop-style raster effects 1/56); ~1,050 tests (~1,300 on 2026-10-04).
+effects of ~110 (Illustrator effects 44/54, Photoshop-style raster effects 1/56); ~1,050 tests (~1,430 on 2026-10-04).
 
 _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