AILang/docs/roadmap.md

AILang Roadmap

Priority-ordered list of upcoming work — milestones, features, todos, and ideas. The orchestrator maintains this file. The user can request additions; the orchestrator chooses what to remove or reprioritise as work progresses.

Conventions

• One checkbox per entry. - [ ] is open; - [~] is in progress (work has started — a plan exists, a branch is open, or commits are landing); - [x] is done. A finished entry may stay briefly for context, then is removed (with a one-line mirror in docs/JOURNAL.md).
• Each entry is tagged by kind and lives under a priority bucket:
  • [milestone] — big chunk that will get a docs/specs/<milestone>.md.
  • [feature] — smaller addition inside a milestone, no full spec.
  • [todo] — concrete task that can run without a brainstorm (cleanup, doc fix, mechanical refactor, test backfill).
  • [idea] — not yet decision-ready, no commitment.
• Optional depends on: line names another entry that has to land first.
• Optional context: line points to the JOURNAL entry where the rationale lives. The roadmap is intentionally terse; rationale stays in JOURNAL.
• Priority buckets:
  • P0 — in flight. Spec or plan already exists.
  • P1 — next up. Decision made; not yet started.
  • P2 — medium-term. Decided in principle, scheduled later.
  • P3 — ideas. No commitment; may be cut.

P0 — In flight

• [milestone] Floats — introduce Float as IEEE-754 binary64 primitive type. One float type only (no f32). IEEE-conformant equality: eq : Float → Float → Bool returns false for NaN == NaN; no Eq instance (the partiality is real and surfaces through Maybe-shaped comparators rather than through a lying total instance). Ord likewise partial: compare : Float → Float → Maybe Ordering. Includes literal syntax in Form-A + Surface, codegen for arithmetic ops, conversions Int↔Float, and Show-style printing without the typeclass machinery (the typeclass wiring lands in Post-22 Prelude).
  • context: this conversation (2026-05-10) — Float status quo was "documented as a primitive but never implemented"; crates/ailang-core/src/canonical.rs:14 says "no floats".

P1 — Next

• [milestone] Post-22 Prelude — ship Show / Eq / Ord with the three total-orderable primitive instances (Int, Bool, Str); rewire print through Show.show. Float gets Show but not Eq / Ord (partial — see Floats milestone). Originally queued as 22b.4 in the typeclass milestone, kept on hold pending demand.
  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-09 ("JOURNAL queue"). Floats milestone closed 2026-05-10 — partial-Eq/Ord-for-Float story is documented in DESIGN.md §"Float semantics", so the Prelude can decide what's instanced (Show: yes, Eq/Ord: no for Float).

P2 — Medium-term

• [feature] Operator routing through Eq / Ord — ==, < etc. resolved via the typeclass instead of the built-in primitive comparators. No commitment; gated on bench re-baselining to make sure the indirection doesn't tank latency.

  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-09
  • depends on: Post-22 Prelude

• [todo] types / ctor_index overlay shape question — decide whether the env's two parallel ctor maps should collapse into one overlay, or stay split. Surfaced during the env-construction unify audit.

  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-10 ("Audit close: env-construction unify")

• [feature] 22c — typeclass corpus expansion. User-defined classes beyond the prelude four; multi-parameter classes; superclass chains; richer instance bodies. Deferred from milestone 22.

  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-09

• [todo] Boehm full retirement — remove the transitional Boehm GC path now that RC + uniqueness is the canonical memory story.

  • context: JOURNAL pre-22, "Boehm transitional"

• [feature] Closure-pair slab / pool — codegen tweak to pool the env+code closure pairs instead of one-shot heap allocs. Bench-gated.

• [todo] FnDef::synthetic flag — formalise the monomorphiser-emitted FnDefs so downstream passes can tell user-authored from synthesised at a glance. Currently inferred from symbol naming.

• [todo] 21'h iteration — final 21' carry-over (latency methodology pass). Numbering kept for continuity with the 21' arc.

• [todo] io/print_float always-emit-.0 — surface printer always emits . or e/E so re-lex routes to Float; the runtime printer (printf("%g\n", v)) doesn't, so 2.0 prints as 2 (Int-shaped). Asymmetric. Either switch the runtime path to a .0-fallback printer (matching surface) or document the %g contract in DESIGN.md §"Float semantics" so the LLM-author knows io/print_float's output is for-humans not round-trip.

  • context: docs/specs/2026-05-10-fieldtest-floats.md finding F1.

• [todo] Rustdoc warning sweep — cargo doc --no-deps reports 16 pre-existing warnings (15 in ailang-check, 1 in ailang-core: private-item links from public doc, unresolved intra-crate links). All predate the design-md-consolidation milestone; treat as a one-off sweep.

  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-10 ("Audit close: design-md-consolidation").

• [todo] Architect-iron-law standing-grep extension — the architect agent's drift review should run the four sweep invariant greps on every milestone-close so DESIGN.md cannot silently regrow history anchors / REVERTED narratives / workflow detail / stale cross-references. Path-anchored exceptions (docs/specs/2026-05-09-*) need an allowlist. Same extension should add the lockstep-checklist the Floats fieldtest exposed: for every new typecheck reject arm on a pattern shape, verify the corresponding desugar pass does not eat that shape first; for every new lowering arm in lower_app, verify is_static_callee recognises it. Both shipped silently-broken in the Floats milestone (B1 and the iter-4.2/4.4 pull-forwards) and the architect missed them.

  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-10 ("Milestone close: design-md-consolidation"); 2026-05-10 ("Fieldtest close: Floats milestone") — B1 + architect-checklist follow-up.

• [todo] design_schema_drift.rs fidelity widening — current test checks anchor presence anywhere in DESIGN.md; the audit found that [high] schema gaps in §"Data model" are invisible because anchors live in Decision 11 instead. Constrain the test to scan only §"Data model" + ParamMode block, or extract JSON-schema blocks into a machine-readable file the test consumes.

  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-10 ("Audit close").

P3 — Ideas

• [idea] Latency methodology rework — switch from per-run timing to a histogram-based approach so tail-latency regressions are visible without re-running. Queued from 21'g.
• [idea] Parser-test backfill for 22b.4a-era duplicate-clause sites (class × 3, class method × 2, instance × 3, instance method × 1). No regression pin today; only worth it if a 22b.4a-era diagnostic needs to change.
  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-10 ("Iteration 22-tidy.7")
• [idea] write_type Type::Forall arm in crates/ailang-prose/src/lib.rs silently drops constraints in inline-type rendering. Dormant — surface forms today only carry forall at fn-signature top level. Fix only if a future feature carries forall + constraints inline.
  • context: JOURNAL 2026-05-10 ("Iteration 22-tidy.6")
• [idea] Richer integration paths between RC and uniqueness — deferred from the 21' arc; revisit once the uniqueness inference covers more program shapes.