deckcraft/docs/roadmap.md

DeckCraft roadmap: milestones and what's next

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-10 · Change: minor (core-workflow alpha gate added; stage stays alpha; previous: major, created; milestones carried from the local execution plan, the beta plan built from gaps.md) · Target: Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 16.113 (Microsoft 365)

Forward-looking: where DeckCraft is going and in what order. The one-page summary is ROADMAP.md; every shortfall is in gaps.md; numbers are in target-app-parity.md. Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours.

Alpha gate: PowerPoint's core workflows

What a typical PowerPoint user does every day, checked end to end on macOS, the main platform (craftrules standards/progress-docs.md, "The core-workflow gate"). Every workflow passes, so DeckCraft stays alpha. The "partial" rows don't block the workflow, but they are its weakest points and lead the beta plan.

Core workflow	Works end to end?	Evidence	Hours to full pass
Build a deck from scratch (theme, layouts, titles and bullets, shapes, pictures from file), save, close and reopen it	yes	Commands for all of it; .deckcraft and .pptx round-trip tests (crates/pptx/tests/roundtrip.rs, crates/format); AutoRecover. Close discards edits without asking (#60, PR #75); image paste fails on Windows/Linux (#53), though insert-from-file works	1–3
Open a colleague's .pptx, edit it, save it back as .pptx that PowerPoint opens	partial (not blocking)	The reader is lenient and keeps unknown objects. Files open in PowerPoint without repair (checked 2026-10-06). But only generated decks have been tested; text inside EMF/WMF pictures is missing; comment threads, media options and rewind are lost (#70, #74, #77)	31–55
Present: full-screen show with transitions, animations, media, presenter view with notes, next slide and timer	yes	48/48 transitions, 64 effects, triggers, builds, media playback, presenter window. Presenter view isn't placed on the second display automatically (drag it there)	3–5
Add business content: tables, charts with their data, simple diagrams	partial (not blocking)	Tables with styles, merge/split, all D or P. Charts insert with the common types and edit data in the Chart Data dialog (P0 partial); SmartArt is basic (pre-drawn shapes)	12–20
Share the deck: PDF of slides, notes or handouts; images	yes	file.export PDF with text layer, links, bookmarks, handouts 1–9; PNG/JPEG. Artwork is raster in the PDF; no direct print (print the PDF)	10–16
Review: comments with replies, resolve, spelling	partial (not blocking)	Comments, replies and resolve work and survive .deckcraft; threads are flattened on .pptx save (#70); spelling is a small built-in list	4–8

Current focus (2026-10-10)

1. Stop losing work and crashing: land Close's save prompt (#60, PR #75), the Windows GPU startup crashes (#40, #59), image paste on Windows/Linux (#53). 6–12 h.
2. PPTX on real decks: build an owned corpus, round-trip checks in CI, fix what breaks; comment threads, media options and rewind on save (#70, #74, #77); EMF/WMF and SVG. 31–55 h.
3. Review the open PRs: equations (#55), browser print (#66), Morph alignment (#67), macOS open-with (#68), font lookup (#80), Ukrainian (#34, after the catalog exists). 4–8 h.

Plan to beta (~120–210 h; ~40–70 h wall clock with 3–4 agents)

Beta means ~75% ready for real work and opening and saving PowerPoint's .pptx reliably (craftrules standards/progress-docs.md). Ranked:

#	Work	Hours	Moves
1	Stability: #60, #40/#59, soak and fuzz the editor	10–20	Stability 60 → 85%
2	PPTX real-deck corpus and fixes	20–35	File formats 58 → 75%
3	PPTX round-trip losses (#70, #74, #77), .potx/.ppsx/.pptm content types, embedded fonts	8–15	File formats → 80%
4	EMF/WMF and SVG pictures	8–14	File formats, Pictures
5	Vector PDF, printing	10–16	File formats, Files
6	Localization infrastructure + zh-Hans, es, fr, de, ja (with IME)	27–46	Localization 8 → ~40%
7	Font weights (#69), image paste (#53), Tab in text (#78)	6–11	Features
8	Charts: data grid, elements	6–10	Features
9	Animation Pane timeline, preview, effect options	5–8	Features
10	Presenter view on the right display, timer controls	3–5	Hardware, Slide show
11	Native macOS menu bar, Format Shape pane depth, start screen and window chrome fixes	13–22	UI/UX 60 → 75%
12	Performance baseline and the obvious fixes	4–8	Performance
Total		~120–210	Ready ~55% → ~75%

Parallelizes well: 1 (engine/app), 2–5 (pptx, render, pdf), 6 (ui-egui catalogs), 8–11 (UI) touch different crates. Needs a human: the owner opening PPTX outputs in PowerPoint and making reference renders, a Windows tester with the affected GPUs, native speakers to review translations.

After beta: toward full parity (~245–440 h more)

SmartArt editing, chartex chart types, the remaining animation effects and motion paths, Notes and Handout masters, edit points, text warp and 3-D, proofing dictionaries, Zoom, recording, video and GIF export, legacy .ppt import and .odp (owner decision), GPU rasterization and hardware video decode, the other 21 languages with RTL mirroring, a larger original template gallery, and local AI features (owner decision on models). Itemized with hours in gaps.md.

Milestones

From the local execution plan (plan/execution-plan.md, gitignored). Status as of 2026-10-10.

#	Milestone	Status	Open
M0	Skeleton and vertical slice	done
M1	Editing core	done
M2	PPTX import/export	done for generated decks	real-deck corpus, round-trip losses
M3	Shapes complete	mostly	edit points, Format Shape pane depth, bevel/3-D
M4	Design	mostly	Notes/Handout masters, variants, Designer
M5	Pictures and media	mostly	SVG/EMF, remove background, compress, icons, WMA/WMV
M6	Transitions and animations	mostly	Animation Pane timeline, remaining effects, transition sounds
M7	Slide show	mostly	second-display placement, laser, record
M8	Tables and charts	partly	chart data grid, elements, chartex types, draw table
M9	SmartArt, equations, WordArt	partly	SmartArt text pane and layouts, equations (PR #55), text warps
M10	Views	done	grid options, New Window
M11	Output	partly	vector PDF, SVG, GIF, MP4, print
M12	Review	partly	dictionaries, AutoCorrect, find/replace dialog, compare
M13	Automation and CLI parity	done
M14	1.0 polish and release	partly	i18n, native menu bar, signed releases done (v0.4.0)

History: the 2026-10-07 alpha checklist

Before the craftrules stages existed, DeckCraft defined "alpha" as: install a signed build on macOS, Windows or Linux, make a real deck from scratch or from a PowerPoint file, present it with transitions, animations and media, save back to .pptx/PDF without losing work, and hit no crashes on common paths. On 2026-10-07 it was ~80% there with these blockers:

Blocker (2026-10-07)	Status 2026-10-10
First real release run: signing, notarization, installers verified on each OS	Signed releases v0.1.0–v0.4.0 published; installers not hand-checked on each OS; Windows startup crashes on some GPUs (#40, #59)
PPTX fidelity on a corpus of real decks	Still open; now beta item 2
Presenter view and Animation Pane polish	Still open; beta items 9 and 10
Soak and fuzz the editor	Still open; beta item 1
UI fidelity pass on the most-used ribbon groups and dialogs; first run	Partly (start-screen fixes #20, #49); beta item 11
Mascot app icon, README screenshots, user docs	App icon (with a scalable SVG, #29) and README screenshots in place; user docs open

By the standard's definitions DeckCraft is alpha (~55% ready); these blockers now feed the beta plan above.

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-10	minor	Added the alpha gate (six core workflows): all pass, two with partial depth; stage stays alpha
2026-10-10	major	Created: current focus, ranked beta plan with hours, milestones M0–M14 with status, the old alpha checklist as history