Marlin/roadmap.md

Marlin Roadmap 2025 → 2026 📜

This document outlines the official delivery plan for Marlin over the next four quarters. Every work-item below is time-boxed, testable, and traceable back to an end-user benefit.

Legend ✅ = item added/clarified in the latest planning round Δ = new sub-deliverable (wasn’t in the previous version)

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1 Bird’s-eye Table

Phase / Sprint	Timeline	Focus & Rationale	Key Deliverables (Δ = new)
Sprint α – Bedrock & Metadata Domains	2025-Q2 (now → 6 Jun)	Stabilise schema & CI; land first metadata domains with discoverability.	Δ CI: cargo test + SQL dry-run Δ Unit tests (determine_scan_root, escape_fts) Δ Coverage: e2e attr --format=json Δ Refactor: move naive_substring_search to shared util Migrations: links, collections, views CLI stubs: link, coll, view marlin demo walkthrough
Epic 1 – Scale & Reliability	2025-Q2	Keep scans fast; bullet-proof CI at 100 k files.	Δ Dirty-flag column + scan --dirty Benchmarks: full vs dirty scan (100 k) Replace per-row triggers with periodic rebuild CI edge-case tests
Epic 2 – Live Mode & Self-Pruning Backups	2025-Q2	Continuous indexing & hygiene—Marlin “just works”.	Δ marlin watch [dir] (notify/FSEvents) Δ backup --prune <N> + auto-prune post-scan Daily / PR-merge prune in CI
Phase 3 – Content FTS & Annotations	2025-Q3	Index file bodies, grep-style context, inline notes.	files.content + migration Extend files_fts (context snippets -C) annotations table + triggers CLI `annotate add	list`
Phase 4 – Versioning & Deduplication	2025-Q3	History, diffs & duplicate detection.	files.hash (SHA-256) scan --rehash refresh CLI version diff <file>
Phase 5 – Tag Aliases & Semantic Booster	2025-Q3	Tame tag sprawl; seed AI-powered suggestions.	canonical_id on tags; CLI tag alias … embeddings table + scan --embed CLI tag suggest, similarity scan, summary <file>
Phase 6 – Search DSL v2 & Smart Views	2025-Q4	Robust grammar + virtual folders.	Replace parser with nom grammar (AND, OR, () …) CLI `view save	list	exec` with aliases & paging
Phase 7 – Structured Workflows	2025-Q4	First-class task / state / reminder / event life-cycles.	✅ State engine (files.state, state_changes) CLI `state set	transitions add	log<br>✅ Task extractor (tasks table) + CLI<br>templates+ validation<br>CLIremind …, event …, timeline`
Phase 8 – Lightweight Integrations	2026-Q1	Surface Marlin in editors / terminal.	VS Code & TUI extension (tags / attrs / links / notes)
Phase 9 – Dolphin Sidebar Plugin (MVP)	2026-Q1	Read-only Qt sidebar for Linux file managers.	Qt plug-in: tags, attrs, links, annotations
Phase 10 – Full Edit UI & Multi-Device Sync	2026-Q2	In-place metadata editor & optional sync layer.	GUI editors (tags, views, tasks, reminders, events) Pick/implement sync backend (rqlite, Litestream, …)

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2 Narrative & Dependencies

1. Lock down core schema & demo (Sprint α). Developers get immediate feedback via the marlin demo command while CI ensures migrations never regress.

2. Scale & Live Mode (Epics 1-2). Dirty scanning, file-watching and auto-pruned backups guarantee snappy, hands-off operation even on six-figure corpora.

3. Richer Search (Phases 3-6). Body-content FTS + grep-style snippets lay the groundwork; nom grammar then elevates power-user queries and smart views.

4. Workflow Layers (Phase 7). State transitions, tasks and reminders turn Marlin from a passive index into an active workflow engine.

5. UX Expansions (Phases 8-10). Start lightweight (VS Code / TUI), graduate to a read-only Dolphin plug-in, then ship full editing & sync for multi-device teams.

Every outer milestone depends only on the completion of the rows above it, so shipping discipline in early sprints de-risks the headline features down the line.

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3 Next Steps

• Sprint α kickoff: break deliverables into stories, estimate, assign.
• Add roadmap as docs/ROADMAP.md (this file).
• Wire a Checklist issue on GitHub: one task per Δ bullet for instant tracking.

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Last updated · 2025-05-16