9.0 KiB
9.0 KiB
VectorCraft Roadmap
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.
Last updated: 2026-10-01.
Where we are
| Dimension | Status |
|---|---|
| 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 |
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.batchruns 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). - 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.
- Hint bar, contextual task bar, 19 dock panels with ≡ menus.
- Native macOS menu bar, vector tool cursors, a ⌘K command palette.
- Four brightness themes, persistent preferences.
- Tools:
- Selection: Selection, Direct/Group Selection, Magic Wand, Lasso.
- Drawing: Pen, Curvature, anchor tools, Pencil, Paintbrush, Blob Brush, Smooth, Path Eraser, Join.
- Shapes: all shape tools (including Flare) and the line, arc, spiral and grid tools.
- Cutting: Eraser, Scissors, Knife.
- Transform: Rotate, Reflect, Scale, Shear, Reshape, Free Transform (distort/perspective).
- Other: Eyedropper, Gradient annotator, Artboard, Measure, Type, Hand, Zoom, Rotate View.
- Drawing aids: Smart Guides and snapping, and Draw Normal / Behind / Inside modes.
- Geometry and effects:
- Pathfinder (10 exact curve booleans), Offset, Outline Stroke, Simplify, Clean Up, Split Into Grid, Divide Objects Below.
- Live effects with previewing dialogs: Distort & Transform, Path, Convert to Shape, 15 Warp styles, Round Corners, Scribble, Effect → Pathfinder (all 10 operations, live on groups), and raster drop shadow, glows and feather. SVG and PDF export keep live effects (geometry baked; SVG raster effects as filters).
- Type: Character and Paragraph Styles (override-preserving redefine), Area Type Options (rows/columns/inset/first baseline), threaded text across any closed shapes, Fit Headline.
- 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).
- 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: ~700 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
| # | Milestone | Status | Est. remaining (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 |
| 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 done; Tabs panel, text wrap, spell check, vertical type pending | 10–17 |
| 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) done; Graphs pending | 12–20 |
| 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 |
Out of scope (by design or by law)
- Native
.aiprivate data: it's undocumented. We read the PDF-compatible part, so Illustrator-only live objects arrive as appearance. - Adobe cloud services (Libraries sync, Adobe Fonts, Firefly/generative): these are pluggable provider APIs, not built in.
- Adobe's bundled assets (swatch/brush/symbol libraries, presets, icons): ours are original.
Where we aim to be better than Illustrator
- Speed: off-thread multithreaded rendering, instant startup, a responsive UI on huge files.
- Robustness: exact curve booleans (no "cannot perform operation"), property-tested undo/redo and file round trips.
- Openness: a documented native format, first-class SVG, and the same app in the browser.
- Automation: every command, gesture, dialog and widget is drivable by agents (JSON channel + MCP), with headless batch mode.
How to update this file
After each milestone task lands, update the status column and remaining estimates, and move items into "Shipped so far". Keep estimates honest: re-derive them from what remains, never from wishful velocity.