vectorcraft/ROADMAP.md

DrawCraft Roadmap

DrawCraft 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: 2026-09-30.

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)	~170–260 h
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.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 (drawcraft-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 and the line, arc, spiral and grid tools.
  • Cutting: Eraser, Scissors, Knife.
  • Transform: Rotate, Reflect, Scale, Shear, 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, and raster drop shadow, glows and feather.
• 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).
• 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:
  • .drawcraft (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 (Shaper, Pen modifier nuances)	5–10
M3	Paint & appearance (swatches, color, gradient, stroke, appearance, transparency, styles)	🟡 panels done; opacity masks, freeform gradients pending	10–15
M4	Files (native, SVG, PDF, raster, Export for Screens, clipboard interop)	🟡 Export for Screens (PNG/JPG/WebP/SVG/PDF × scales) done; system clipboard SVG/PNG interop, EPS/DXF pending	8–12
M5	Performance	🟡 background render + caches + MT done; dirty-region rendering, GPU backend spike	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)	🟡 in progress	20–30
M8	Transform & distort (Puppet Warp, Liquify tools, Envelopes, Blends, Perspective Grid)	🟡 live Blends + Envelopes (warp/mesh/top object) done; Puppet Warp, Liquify, Perspective Grid pending	20–30
M9	Live effects (+ 3D & Materials)	🟡 2D effects done; 3D pending	25–40
M10	Brushes, symbols, patterns, Repeat	🟡 brushes/symbols in progress; patterns, Repeat pending	15–25
M11	Artboards & views (artboard panel/tool done; print tiling, multiple windows, presentation polish)	🟡	10–15
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 done; CMYK/ICC, separations, Graphs pending	25–40
M13	Automation (Actions ✅ record/playback, persisted; variables, scripting, batch)	🟡	8–12
M14	1.0 polish (preferences, shortcut editor, workspaces, accessibility, packaging for all OSes)	⬜	20–30
—	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		~170–260

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.
• 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.