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

• [milestone] Module-qualified class names + type-driven method dispatch — retire the MethodNameCollision workaround (crates/ailang-core/src/workspace.rs:472) that today keeps bare class names viable by enforcing workspace-global method-name uniqueness. Replaces name-driven method resolution (ModuleGlobals::class_methods: IndexMap<String, ClassMethodEntry>, crates/ailang-check/src/lib.rs:983; consumed by mono::rewrite_class_method_calls, crates/ailang-check/src/mono.rs:657) with type-driven dispatch — look up eq candidates by argument type, pick the unique class instance, fail closed on ambiguity. Once shipped, two libraries can each declare class Eq with their own eq. Carries its own DESIGN spec: inference rules, ambiguity diagnostics, and the canonical-form extension for class-reference fields (InstanceDef.class, SuperclassRef.class, Constraint.class) that the canonical-type-names milestone explicitly out-of-scoped.

  • context: docs/specs/2026-05-10-canonical-type-names.md "Out of scope: Class names" — the workaround is named there so it stays visible until this milestone retires it.

• [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] 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.