commandkit/docs/roadmap/future.md

Future work

Status: pending release and integration work, plus future capability proposals. No delivery dates are selected here.

Purpose and authority

Completed roadmaps, implementation plans, and review findings have been retired. This document preserves unfinished work and unselected ideas under the release policy. The completed PromptKit v0.18.0 adoption roadmap and implementation plan remain available in the PromptKit retirement snapshot. The completed ConfigKit adoption, reporting, dependency alignment, release-tooling, and remediation records remain available at the retirement snapshot. Earlier retired records also remain in Git history. Completed records are not assignments to restart work.

Accepted ADRs and the architecture policy govern any future implementation. The CLI reference, public GoDoc, and consumer guide own implemented behavior. Retaining an idea here does not select its syntax, API, priority, or delivery date.

Pending release and integration work

ckprompt release

The PromptKit v0.18.0 migration is complete. The ckprompt v0.3.0 candidate remains unpublished. Publication and hosted delivery remain separate operations under the release procedure. The published ckprompt v0.2.0 retains its earlier dependencies; see the consumer guide for module selection.

PromptKit v0.19.0 adoption

The PromptKit v0.19.0 roadmap owns the proposed adoption, operator CLI additions for PromptKit and ConfigKit, open decisions, and completion checklist. Scope is agreed in principle and remains subject to roadmap review. Implementation has not started. Use released upstream contracts only; do not inspect or monitor unreleased work in anticipation of adoption.

Future capability targets

Comparison extensions

Independent per-side domain selectors and opt-in comparison assertions are now included in the working roadmap. Their binding and outcome contracts remain open under roadmap OD-9 and OD-10; retaining those proposals does not change current comparison behavior.

Configuration inspection extensions

The PromptKit v0.19.0 roadmap now includes the shared operator tasks previously retained here: metadata/path discovery and explicitness, failed-load source inventory, detailed comparison, and structured diagnostics. Path discovery is a mode of config explain, and structured diagnostics belong to config validate; the suite retains six subcommands. Their exact mode flags and report shapes remain open in the roadmap. It also includes focused effective display, source-ID selection, metadata/diagnostic filters, independent comparison selectors, and assertion mode. The original four shared proposals had ConfigKit adoption identifiers OD-3 through OD-6; the new roadmap has its own decision numbering. Implementation belongs in ckconfig, with PromptKit exposing native evidence through its configuration scope. CLI syntax and report contracts remain subject to review.

Transient acquisition overrides are an explicit open scope decision in roadmap OD-11, with a recommendation for opt-in CLI support and alternatives using application-specific flags or a structured override document. Persistent configuration editing remains deferred.

Discovery, import defaults, collection identities, and field-level resolution recording remain available through application loaders. Discovery tracing, resource-context inspection, and secrets-directory bootstrap commands remain deferred. Acquired source records do not provide a complete trace of rejected discovery candidates; bootstrap and resource contexts primarily serve application loading and startup.

PromptKit inspection and selection extensions

The PromptKit v0.19.0 roadmap now owns concrete request preview, applicable request flags, namespace selection, and the shared configuration inspection extensions. Its execution flags will be public reusable ckprompt collections for standard and application-owned CLI commands, composed through existing core bindings. Roadmap OD-2 records the agreed canonical naming, scoped convenience aliases, integration installation collection, and selected text/file input forms; no core extension is required. Appended-message flags remain open for individual review. These are CLI features; general-purpose helpers for application-internal PromptKit use are outside CommandKit's ownership boundary.

• Focused backend inspection. Defer a standard backend detail command until a released PromptKit version provides a suitable public backend inspection capability. The operator task is to inspect one backend's endpoint, credential environment reference, concurrency and queue settings, provider defaults, and smoke-probe configuration without running a probe. PromptKit v0.19.0 has no dedicated backend inspection API. Do not implement this proposal by reconstructing backend selection from captured configuration. Review the released upstream capability before selecting command syntax and report fields; this feature is outside the v0.19.0 adoption scope.

• Output-contract override flags. Deferred from the current adoption. A possible future operator task is validating or previewing one prompt with a replacement output contract without editing its definition. PromptKit uses whole-contract replacement; a complete-contract file option was discussed, but no flag spelling or file format is selected. Existing configuration and application builders remain available. Revisit when the standard promptkit commands have a demonstrated need for this workflow.

Appended-message flags remain a scope choice under roadmap OD-2. Inline text and explicit file input are now selected there for single-prompt validation and preview. Native API availability alone does not select further CLI syntax or require a convenience API for application execution.

Alias completion and discovery

The delivered shell completion feature provides canonical suggestions and alias-aware interpretation. Potential future work includes suggesting command and flag alias spellings and valid continuations of alias-only prefixes. For example, completion could suggest inspect after app legacy when legacy inspect is an installed alias.

Alias discovery is outside the initial scope. This deferral does not establish a permanent canonical-only completion contract or prohibit future alias discovery. A later design should determine how alias suggestions are presented alongside canonical suggestions while ensuring inserted continuations form valid next steps. No delivery date or final API is selected here.

Reporting extensions

Error-conversion helpers such as WarnError remain deferred pending demonstrated value; applications can already use report.Warn(err.Error()). Terminal redraw and progress-bar presentation were outside the completed reporting scope and remain unselected. Whole-run buffering to make failed runs show only errors was also outside that scope. Any later extension needs a deliberate API and presentation decision rather than assuming those behaviors are already provided.

Release workflow extensions

Historical hosted-page backfilling and automated CI delivery remain separate future choices. The current local page-only delivery workflow is implemented; these extensions are not prerequisites for using it. The release procedure owns delivery, immutable content, and recovery behavior.

Additional validation options, including race testing, full vet, compilation matrices, size limits, and more forbidden-file paths, can be considered for demonstrated needs. None is selected by retaining it here, and the existing candidate checks do not become general prohibitions on development workspaces.

Other future proposals

These capabilities remain outside the delivered scope and require a concrete operator or consumer need and an appropriate ownership/behavior decision:

• JSON reports and output-file management or reloadable export.
• Shell completion extensions, including alias discovery described above and dynamic discovery of configured or remote values.
• Persistent configuration mutation. Transient CLI override scope is owned by roadmap OD-11; field metadata and provenance inspection are scoped under configuration inspection extensions.
• Credential diagnostics beyond PromptKit's native smoke checks and additional live provider probes.
• Additional component identity registration and domain artifact catalogs.
• Additional library families, including possible FeedKit integration; families can define suitable verbs without requiring comparison or configuration scopes.
• Backend selection or replacement, a plugin framework, general dependency injection, and concurrent-dispatch guarantees.

Execution, serving, and session operations remain application-owned. The request preview proposal would expose native preparation and rendering as an operator inspection command; it remains subject to roadmap review. Shared vocabulary is guidance under ADR 0006. Backend replacement remains possible behind the accepted facade, subject to the published API/CLI contracts and deliberate compatibility decisions.

Possible further efficiency work

Selected-scope memoization and selector-membership indexes were deferred pending measurements that justify their bookkeeping. Mutable backend reuse across invocations, segmented aggregate YAML delivery, provider caching, consumer-loader redesign, and a replacement backend were outside the completed performance target. Reconsider them only with concrete motivation and review of ownership, invocation state, native reports, and the affected contracts. Retained measurement records are historical evidence, not performance guarantees or release gates.

Consumer adoption

Consumer migrations remain separate from library delivery. Applications can replace duplicated standard handlers and routing, then update their CLI docs and subprocess consumers for intentional changes while retaining domain commands. No migration order or claim about individual applications' adoption is recorded here; the consumer guide and maintained examples provide integration guidance.