vectorcraft/ROADMAP.md

VectorCraft Roadmap

VectorCraft is a clean-room, open-source, pure-Rust reimplementation of the Adobe Illustrator workflow. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux and the web (WASM), and agents can drive it fully over a JSON control channel and MCP.

This file tracks how far we are and what's left. Time estimates are wall-clock hours of continuous Claude Opus 5.5 agent work (including builds and the CI gate), given both for one agent and for 4–6 parallel agents on disjoint crates. They are counted from the remaining work (see Parity estimate), calibrated against measured throughput, and updated as work lands.

Last updated: 2026-10-08 (after M4.14–M4.98, M8.1–M8.20, M14.4–M14.7, the MCP prompts, resource templates, completions and logging, the 2026-10-07 issue fixes, the Layers panel rework and the 2026-10-08 community contributions: Pen and shape-tool modifiers, path editing, Layers, Artboards, Swatches/Brushes and dialogs, Japanese composition and PDF text, Hebrew/Arabic type, interface languages (Spanish among them), the font menu, saved selections, MCP and EPS, the missing-font export warning (#319), open paths in the Shape Builder (#374), PDF/.ai import keeping strokes live and hidden and nested layers (#372), per-corner Live Corners (#381), SVG type opening at the size it draws at (#396), the Wayland clipboard with copied-file paste (#398), ruler guides that can be selected, moved and deleted (#414), two batches of Preferences options that were stored but unused (#394), skeleton reads with document.find for large documents over MCP (#416) and anchors dragged with Direct Selection snapping to points, segments and smart guides, clipped SVG layers opening as clipping layers (#420), PDF/.ai layers read on pages of tens of millions of operators (#419), Document Color Mode putting RGB greys on the black plate on request and converting pattern tiles (#421) and movable dialogs with Offset Path's Joins dropdown (#423) and numeric fields scrubbed by dragging their label (#400), stroke weight presets in the stroke unit (#426), the Appearance panel's Opacity popup (#430), type on a path brackets, flip and Type on a Path Options that keep the type in place (#429), Layers rows dragged with a ghost and dropped on the trash or New Layer (#435), tool flyouts opening on a right or corner press (#436), tool flyouts torn off into floating toolbars (#437), the Shape Builder's erase mode deleting edges too (#439), installed fonts registered outside the font folders and fonts installed while the app runs listed in the font menus (#443), alike circular corners on rectangles that aren't square (#442), tool cursors as OS cursors so the pointer no longer trails over the canvas (#444), artboards copied and pasted with their art (#446), guides dragged out of the rulers snapping to the art's side midpoints and the artboards, artboard guides (#451), the toolbar's double arrow and Window › Toolbars › Double Column switching between one and two columns in any window height (#455), the Smart Guides display options and Snapping Tolerance (#394), Font Size and Leading combo boxes with preset lists in the Character and Properties panels and the Control bar (#458), screenshots pasted from the clipboard on macOS, Windows and the web (#457), the Properties panel's Fill and Stroke matching the Control bar's, Illustrator's Window menu panel keys (Shift+F7 for Align…) and Alt-wheel zoom whatever the wheel preference (Discord feedback); see Honest assessment).

Where we are

Dimension	Status
Infrastructure (engine, command registry, history, render, formats, MCP, web, packaging, tests)	~90%
Look & feel vs Illustrator 2026 default workspace (measured)	~75–80%
Feature surface vs full Illustrator (weighted, see below)	~75% on the rubric · 69–75% honest range (self-graded, see Honest assessment)
Parity including interaction fidelity and hardening ("a power user can't tell the difference, but faster")	~40–55%
Time to feature parity (every menu item, tool, panel, effect and dialog functional)	~210–330 h one agent · ~55–95 h with 4–6 agents
Time to full parity (feature parity + interaction-fidelity pass + hardening)	~320–500 h one agent · ~80–145 h with 4–6 agents

Honest assessment (2026-10-05)

In one line: about two-thirds to three-quarters of Illustrator's features exist and work, and for everyday vector illustration (drawing, paths, paint and appearance, SVG/PDF/print) VectorCraft is close to usable. Measured against "a power user can't tell the difference", it is closer to 40–55%. What stands between here and "anyone can switch" is a handful of large subsystems plus a fidelity pass, not a long tail of small fixes.

How much to trust the numbers: area scores are graded by the agents that built the features, from behaviour docs (plan/illustrator/) and tests, not by side-by-side use of Illustrator. Treat them as upper bounds. Look & feel is the only dimension measured against the reference app. Performance budgets haven't been re-run on an idle machine since 2026-10-01.

By dimension

Dimension	Estimate	Evidence and what's missing
Breadth: menus, tools and panels exist	~90%	13 menu items still stubbed; every tool implemented except Touch Type; 51 panel modules
Depth: each feature behaves like Illustrator	~69–75%	Strong: paint, appearance and colour (M3), Pathfinder and booleans, selection, drawing, files (M4). Weak: advanced type (~45%), brushes and symbols (in progress), raster effects (~20%)
Large missing subsystems	0–20%	3D & Materials (0%), Photoshop-style raster effects and the Effect Gallery (~1 of ~56 filters), SVG Filters, CJK composition (vertical type with kinsoku, tate-chu-yoko and the font's vertical metrics; ruby, mojikumi and proportional vertical metrics open), Variables (data merge), scripting
Interaction fidelity: modifiers, cursors, small behaviours	~30–40%	The dedicated pass hasn't started, and there has been no side-by-side session with Illustrator yet. A power user notices this first
Look & feel	~75–80%	Measured against Illustrator 2026 screenshots (2026-10-02); the panels added since haven't been re-measured
File interop	~85%	SVG/SVGZ, PDF and PDF-compatible .ai, EPS, DXF, EMF/WMF, raster formats, PSD export, Place and Links, Package, Print, clipboard flavours. Native .ai private data is out of scope by design; DWG has no open spec
Bundled content: brush, symbol, style and swatch libraries	~30%	Ours are original and generated in code, and far fewer than Illustrator ships; brush and symbol libraries are still missing
Performance	unverified	Multithreaded, off-thread rendering and caches are in place. The last budget run (2026-10-01, loaded machine) measured 290 ms for a 50k-path fit against a 16 ms budget. Re-run vectorcraft-cli perf on an idle machine
Robustness	good, new	~2,840 tests, property tests, no panics in shipped code (lints, the guard safety net, import fuzzing), Data Recovery. Missing: a corpus of real-world files, Windows/Linux/browser QA
Platforms and 1.0 polish	~60%	The macOS app and the web build work, and Finder opens every readable format with the macOS app (#295, #354); hybrid-graphics laptops render on the power-saving GPU by default (#306); web drops land in the document they were dropped on (#359); a web page that loses its WebGPU device or WebGL context restarts its graphics with the same documents (#369); on Linux/Wayland the clipboard reads the compositor's own (data-control) and copied image files paste, but files can't be dropped on the window under Wayland until eframe moves to winit 0.31 (#398; the Wayland side is verified by compilation only); Windows/Linux packaging and accessibility are pending; an experimental, unsupported Windows 7 x64 OpenGL build exists (community-contributed, not verified by maintainers)
Agent automation	beyond Illustrator	Every command, gesture and dialog is drivable over MCP, the CLI and the control channel
Scrubby numeric fields	beyond Illustrator	As in Photoshop, dragging a numeric field's label (W:, Opacity:, the Character panel's icons) left or right steps its value live; one undo step per drag, Escape cancels (#400)

Where we're lacking (in priority order)

Ordered by how much each gap blocks someone from switching. Sizes are one-agent hours from the parity table.

1. Interaction fidelity: go tool by tool and panel by panel against plan/illustrator/05-tools.md, 06-panels.md and 09-shortcuts.md, covering modifier keys, cursors, the Properties panel per context and isolation mode. Do it side by side with Illustrator where the owner allows. 60–90 h.
2. Photoshop-style raster effects and the Effect Gallery: about 55 filters (Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Pixelate, Sketch, Stylize, Texture, Video) on the raster pipeline that drop shadows already use, applied at Document Raster Effects Settings resolution. Parallelizes well across agents. 28–42 h.
3. 3D and Materials: Extrude & Bevel, Revolve, Inflate and Rotate with lighting and materials, using a software renderer in its own crate (layering allows it below L6), with output in SVG/PDF as rasters or projected vectors. The largest single gap. 50–80 h.
4. Advanced type: CJK composition for vertical type (ruby, mojikumi, proportional vertical metrics, manual tate-chu-yoko), Optical Margin Alignment, the composer/hyphenation options, tab leaders, a spell-check dictionary (open licence), Touch Type and Snap to Glyph. Vertical point, area and path type have initial support. 35–48 h across type core and advanced.
5. Brushes, symbols and libraries: brush options depth; original brush, symbol and graphic-style libraries generated in code (never Adobe's); dynamic symbols; Start Global Edit; brushes driven by pen tilt, bearing and barrel rotation (6D art pens, #372), which needs tablet input beyond pressure on every platform. 20–32 h.
6. Automation: Variables (data merge), a scripting surface over the command registry, batch. 8–12 h.
7. Views and windows: multiple windows and arrange, Consolidate All Windows, video rulers. 15–25 h.
8. Hardening at scale: a corpus of real-world SVG/PDF/EPS files, idle-machine perf budgets, Windows, Linux and browser QA, accessibility, packaging. 50–80 h.

Where we're going

• Next: start the interaction-fidelity pass (1) in parallel with the raster-effects package (2). Both are broad, so they split well across agents, and they move the "can't tell the difference" number most.
• Then: 3D (3) and advanced type (4), each a focused milestone with its own plan in plan/ before coding.
• Alongside: keep closing the stubbed menu items. Run vectorcraft-cli perf on an idle machine, and fix any budget it misses before 1.0.
• 1.0: feature parity plus the fidelity pass, hardening (8) and packaging for all three desktop OSes and the web.

For agents: pick work from the list above (or the milestone rows below), and write a task plan before coding. When a task lands, update this section, the parity table and "Shipped so far" in the same PR. Keep the scores honest: grade by behaviour against plan/illustrator/, not by whether a menu item exists.

Shipped so far

• Architecture: 19+ crates with enforced layering (cargo xtask layers). Every action is a command (~400 engine + ~50 UI). Undo is unlimited via structural sharing. command.batch runs several commands as one transaction.
• Automation:
  • Actions panel (record/playback, persisted), generic parameter dialogs for every "…" command.
  • JSON-lines control channel with real egui pointer and keyboard injection.
  • MCP server with 25 tools (drawing, text, effects, Pathfinder, transforms, graphs, text wrap, export, screenshots, any command), attached to the running app or headless. Tool descriptions and replies agree with the engine: format lists come from its format table, save_file says it keeps the document's own format, inspect_document reports the paint type's characters show, and selection exports report the encoder's warnings.
  • MCP protocol: five prompts (prompts/list / prompts/get: poster, icon set, recolour, trace-and-style, export set), completion/complete for prompt arguments and template variables read from the live catalogues (formats, effect ids, command ids, trace presets, swatch and object ids), four resource templates (vectorcraft://object/{id}, //command/{id}, //effect/{id}, //swatch/{name}) so an agent reads one thing instead of the whole document, and logging/setLevel with notifications/message. window.panel ids are case-insensitive (display labels work too), vectorcraft://object/{id} reads through document.node {summary: true} (the same reply bytes from one lookup instead of summarizing the whole document: a leaf read on a 2,000-object document drops from ~20 ms to ~0.06 ms), large containers slice with document.node {depth?, childLimit?} (truncated levels report childCount), document.inspect and the inspect_document tool slice the same way so a depth-0 read is the layer skeleton (~9.7 KB instead of ~2 MB on a 2,000-object document), document.find locates nodes by name/kind/text with ancestor paths, and the CLI sweeps the protocol surface over stdio against the compiled binary. docs/mcp.md has a Protocol section covering the capability table and what is deliberately absent (subscriptions, progress, cancellation, sampling, elicitation, Streamable HTTP — all of which need the transport to interleave reads).
  • Headless CLI (vectorcraft-cli run, convert, info, bench, perf, mcp).
  • Actions panel that records and plays back commands.
• UI: Illustrator 2026 layout restyled to measured values:
  • Medium Dark theme, categorized and Advanced toolbars (a tool group's flyout opens on a right press, a long press or a press on its corner triangle), 35 pt document tabs, 33 pt panel tabs.
  • Hint bar, contextual task bar, 19 dock panels with ≡ menus.
  • Tool flyouts tear off: dragging or clicking the tear-off bar on a flyout's right side (or releasing the long press over it) floats its group as a strip of tool buttons, moved by the same bar and put back in the toolbar by the × at its top (window.floatTools). While a group floats, the presses that would open its flyout raise the strip instead. Floating strips are kept with the preferences and in user workspaces. Not done: turning a strip vertical, docking it.
  • The dock's double arrow collapses Properties, Layers and Libraries to icons at the top of the icon column, popping out like the other icon panels, and expands them again (window.collapseDock, kept with the preferences and in saved workspaces). The icon column's own arrow (expanding the icon panels into a full column) is not done.
  • Localised UI: menus (in-window and native), panels, dialogs, toolbar and Preferences read from per-language catalogs (crates/ui-egui/src/i18n, see docs/development.md); Traditional Chinese (Taiwan), Simplified Chinese (mainland), Japanese and Spanish ship complete, and Czech and Brazilian Portuguese cover every menu label (and more), with system-locale detection on macOS, Windows, Linux and the web (the browser's languages, or ?lang=), a VectorCraft ▸ Language menu and a Language preference. Names are never translated (fonts and their styles, layers, artboards, saved presets, user libraries, custom workspaces, recent files, plug-ins).
  • Native macOS menu bar, vector tool cursors, a ⌘K command palette, middle-button panning with any tool.
  • macOS: Finder opens every format File › Open reads with VectorCraft (double-click, Open With, a drop on the Dock icon, open -a), at launch or while it runs; the release and cargo xtask bundle apps share one Info.plist that declares those document types, owning only VectorCraft's own formats.
  • A canvas context menu: right-click selects the object under the pointer and lists what applies to the selection (Undo/Redo, clipboard, group, isolation, join, Remove Anchor Points when anchors are selected, masks, compound paths, guides, Transform, Arrange, Select, Export Selection), or the view commands on empty canvas.
  • Save / Don't Save / Cancel before closing or quitting with unsaved documents (tabs, Close, Close All, Quit, window close).
  • Four brightness themes, persistent preferences.
  • Preferences that act (#394, in part): Show Tool Tips, Double Click To Isolate, Zoom with Mouse Wheel (the wheel zooms about the pointer, Shift-wheel scrolls up and down, Cmd/Ctrl-wheel sideways; Alt/Option-wheel and a trackpad pinch zoom about the pointer either way), Use Precise Cursors; Selection & Anchor Display › Tolerance (objects, anchors and handles), Object Selection by Path Only, Command Click to Select Objects Behind (cycling down the stack), Zoom to Selection, anchor Size, Highlight anchors on mouse over; Type › Number of Recent Fonts (up to 15); Guides & Grid › guide and grid Color and Style (lines or dots) and Grids In Back. Then Snap to Point (its distance, for moves, drawn points and reference points), Move Locked and Hidden Artwork with Artboard, Enable Rubber Band for the Pen and Curvature tools, Handles style, Show handles when multiple anchors are selected, Hide Corner Widget for angles greater than; General › Transform Pattern Tiles (the transforms' and dialogs' Transform Patterns) and Select Same Tint %; Type › Size/Leading, Tracking and Baseline Shift increments (type.step, Cmd+Shift+. and Cmd+Shift+, for the size, the Type tool's Alt+arrows), Enable Missing Glyph Protection and Fill New Type Objects With Placeholder Text. Then Smart Guides › Color, Alignment Guides, Anchor/Path Labels, Measurement Labels, Transform Tools, Object Highlighting (with Smart Guides on) and Snapping Tolerance (4 px by default, for every smart guide snap). They reach agents too (prefs.set, then pointer_gesture or press_key; ui.wheel on the control channel). About 38 stored options still do nothing yet (the rest of #394: Auto Size New Area Type, Show Font Names in English, Highlight Alternate Glyphs, Construction and Spacing Guides, performance, devices…).
  • Dialogs move by dragging their heading (the band down from the top edge, as a title bar), stay on screen and keep where they were moved for the session; the form dialogs' choices are dropdowns (Offset Path's Joins, Average's and Shear's and Reflect's axis), and Offset Path lists Offset, Joins, Miter Limit and previews (#423).
  • Dialogs open with their first field focused and its value selected: type a value and press Enter (Move, Rotate, Scale…). Number fields in panels and dialogs step with Up/Down (Shift: ten, Ctrl/Cmd: a tenth of their unit), applied at once.
  • Scrubby labels (#400, beyond Illustrator, as in Photoshop): dragging a numeric field's label left or right (the ↔ cursor shows over it) steps the value one unit every 2 points (Shift: ten, Ctrl/Cmd: a tenth; counts stay whole), in the field's unit and within its limits, applied live as the art follows; the whole drag is one undo step and Escape puts the value back. A click on the label focuses the field; the text box itself never scrubs, and a field with no label doesn't. Text labels before a field (Transform, Properties, Control bar, Stroke, Transparency, form rows in dialogs) and the Character and Paragraph panels' icons act as labels. Preferences › General › Scrub Numeric Fields by Dragging (on by default) turns it off.
  • Tab shows and hides the panels (in the Type tool it types a tab) without moving the keyboard focus onto a field, so the next shortcut or letter still works; in dialogs and panel fields it moves between fields.
  • Cmd/Ctrl+A follows the keyboard: in a panel, dialog or search field it selects the field's text, while the Type tool edits it selects all of that text (also select.all over MCP), and only otherwise every object. On macOS the menu bar's Select All, Cut, Copy and Paste (keys or clicks) act on a focused field too. Not yet: Select All across threaded frames (one frame's text is selected).
  • On Windows and Linux the app bar is the window's title bar (its own minimize, maximize and close buttons, drag to move, edges to resize), with the dragon app icon as the brand mark; dialogs and menus size to their content. As on a native menu bar, once one menu is open, moving the pointer onto another title opens that one.
• Tools:
  • Selection: Selection, Direct/Group Selection, Magic Wand, Lasso. Dragging a path segment with Direct Selection bends it when it's curved (its anchors stay) and moves its two anchors when it's straight, one undo step; the fill, Shift or Alt still pick the whole path (Alt-drag copies it).
  • Saved selections: Select ▸ Save Selection… asks for a name and keeps the selection in the document (saved with the file, undoable, up to 25); each one is listed at the bottom of the Select menu and a click selects its objects again; Edit Selection… lists them to rename or delete, applied together on OK. A file's saved selections are capped and checked against its objects when it opens. Not yet: Update Selection and the Layers panel's saved-selection menu.
  • Drawing: Pen, Curvature, anchor tools, Pencil, Paintbrush, Blob Brush, Smooth, Path Eraser, Join. Direction handles dragged with Direct Selection or the Anchor Point tool snap to smart guides, and Shift keeps them at 45° steps from their anchor.
  • Shapes: all shape tools (including Flare) and the line, arc, spiral and grid tools. Space held while dragging out a shape, line, arc, spiral or grid moves it at its current size. While a grid is dragged out, Up/Down change its rows (concentric dividers) and Left/Right its columns (radial dividers).
  • Cutting: Eraser, Scissors, Knife, Mirror & Cut, Line Cut and Rectangle Cut (real geometry, compound paths keep their holes).
  • Transform: Rotate, Reflect, Scale, Shear (click or Alt-click snaps the reference point to anchors and centres; Alt-click opens the tool's dialog, and a drag with Alt down at the release, from the press or pressed mid-drag, transforms a copy), Reshape, Free Transform (free and perspective distort and shear, switched by the keys held during a handle drag).
  • Live Corners: drag a live rectangle's corner widgets (Selection or Direct Selection) to round all corners, with a radius readout; with Direct Selection, select corner anchors to show and round just those corners (#381). Each corner keeps its own radius and kind (Round, Inverted Round, Chamfer): Alt-click a widget to cycle the kind, double-click it for the Corners dialog, and the Properties and Transform radius fields set the selected corners (object.setLiveShape {corners, radius, kind}). Corners stay circular when the rectangle is scaled unevenly or along its own sides when rotated (the radius keeps its size, or scales by the mean scale with Scale Corners on); only a shear distorts them. On a rectangle that isn't square every corner is the same circle: a radius past half the shorter side stops there for all of them, the widgets sit on the corners as drawn and turn the edited corners red at that limit, CSS export writes the drawn radii, and rectangles saved stretched by older versions get circular corners when their corners are next set (#442).
  • Pen: Alt pressed in the middle of dragging out an anchor splits its handles and keeps the curve already shaped into it (only the outgoing handle follows the pointer); Space held while dragging out an anchor moves it, handles and all. Clicking the last anchor of the path being drawn retracts its outgoing handle (convert cursor), and dragging from it pulls out a new one on its own. Auto Add/Delete: over a selected path, a click on a segment adds an anchor and a click on an anchor deletes it (add and delete cursors); Shift held, or Preferences › General › Disable Auto Add/Delete, starts a new path instead.
  • Graphs: Column, Stacked Column, Bar, Stacked Bar, Line, Area, Scatter, Pie and Radar graph tools with Graph Data and Graph Type.
  • Other: Eyedropper, Gradient annotator, Artboard (Alt-drag duplicates an artboard, and its art with Move/Copy Artwork with Artboard on; Copy, Cut and Paste take the artboard with its art, Paste right of the last artboard, Paste in Place where it was, into this or another document, #446), Measure, Type, Hand, Zoom, Rotate View.
  • Editing type: double-clicking type with a selection tool switches to the Type tool with the caret where it was clicked.
  • Temporary tools: Cmd with any other tool drags with the selection tool used last (Selection, Direct Selection or Group Selection). Held Space pans and Cmd+Space zooms (Cmd+Alt+Space out) whatever the tool.
  • Panel drag and drop: art dragged off the canvas onto the Symbols panel becomes a symbol, onto the Swatches panel a pattern swatch and onto the Brushes panel an Art brush; a symbol dragged onto the canvas places an instance where it is dropped, and a brush dragged onto a path is applied to it.
  • Tool double-clicks: double-clicking a tool's button opens its options: Hand fits the artboard in the window, Zoom shows 100 %, Rotate, Scale, Reflect and Shear open their Object › Transform dialogs, the Selection, Direct Selection and Group Selection tools the Move dialog (Enter opens these seven tools' dialogs too), Gradient, Eyedropper, Blend and the Liquify tools their panels or options, and the Pencil, Paintbrush, Smooth, Blob Brush and Eraser tools their Tool Options (Fidelity, fill, the tolerances, the brush size).
• Layers panel: every layer, sublayer, group and object is a clickable row at any depth: a click highlights it and makes its layer current (new art goes there), Shift-click a range, Ctrl/Cmd-click toggles. Sublayers are no longer treated as objects: clicks, marquees, Select All and the Select menu take the art inside them, and each sublayer selects in its own colour. Selection squares on rows with selected art (click selects a row's art, Shift adds or removes; dragging the square moves the selection to another row, Alt copies), the eye and lock on every row with drag-down-the-column (one undo step), Ctrl/Cmd-click an eye for per-layer Outline, Alt-click an eye or lock to hide or lock the other layers (again: show or unlock them all), triangles with Alt to open or close everything inside, drag and drop rows above, below or into layers and groups with a drop line (Alt copies) and a dimmed copy of the row under the pointer (dropped on the trash rows are deleted, on New Layer duplicated, as in Illustrator), inline rename, Delete key on highlighted rows. Buttons and the full panel menu: New Layer/Sublayer (Alt: options, Ctrl: on top), Duplicate, Delete, Options for Selection, clipping mask, isolation, Locate Object, Merge Selected, Flatten Artwork, Collect in New Layer, Release to Layers (Sequence and Build), Reverse Order, Template, Hide/Outline/Lock Others and Show/Preview/Unlock All, Paste Remembers Layers, Panel Options (row size, thumbnails per kind, Show Layers Only). Layer Options: name, colour (presets, each with a chip of its colour, or custom), Template, Lock, Show, Print, Preview (outline drawing and clicking) and Dim Images to %. Every operation is a command (layer.move, layer.highlight, layer.merge…) with validation against cycles and invalid nesting.
• Drawing aids: Smart Guides and snapping (moving, with the Selection, Group Selection or Direct Selection tool, and resizing by the bounding-box handles: the dragged edges align with the other objects; anchors dragged with Direct Selection: the one pressed on lands on other anchors, its own path's that stay put among them, on path segments or in line with them, the others following, Shift keeps 45° steps, and with Smart Guides off Snap to Point pulls it onto anchors; the Artboard tool snaps artboards, and their bleed, to other artboards, bleeds and art, the grid or whole pixels while moving, copying and resizing them, and the Transform panel shows and edits the active artboard's X/Y/W/H), guides dragged out of the rulers (#451: they snap as moved guides do, Shift to the ruler's ticks; with the Artboard tool they are artboard guides, which run across their artboard only and move, copy and delete with it, guide.add {artboard}) that the Selection, Direct Selection and Group Selection tools then pick and drag (#414: the selected guides highlight and move together, Alt copies them, Shift snaps the dragged one to the ticks, otherwise it snaps to pixels, the grid or the edges, centres (so the sides' midpoints) and anchors of the art and the artboards, or with Smart Guides off Snap to Point pulls it onto anchors; the arrow keys nudge them, Delete deletes them, dragging one back onto its ruler deletes it, Lock Guides and Hide Guides leave them alone; guide.list, guide.select, guide.move and guide.remove reach agents), and Draw Normal / Behind / Inside modes.
• Views: the status bar's artboard navigator (first, previous, next, last; view.goToArtboard) goes to an artboard and fits it, and Fit Artboard in Window and Actual Size show the navigator's artboard. The Artboards panel highlights that active artboard: clicking a row makes it active (the Artboard tool's too, while it is chosen) as does clicking an artboard with the Artboard tool, double-clicking its number also fits it in the window and double-clicking its name renames it. Duplicate Artboards, or a row dragged onto New Artboard, copies the artboard with its art (#446).
• Geometry and effects:
  • Pathfinder (10 exact curve booleans), Offset, Outline Stroke, Simplify, Clean Up, Split Into Grid, Divide Objects Below. Object › Path › Remove Anchor Points (path.removeAnchors) removes the direct-selected anchors without opening their paths (the Delete key still deletes them with their segments): the neighbours keep their handle directions and their facing handles are refitted so one cubic follows the two old segments, and straight sides stay straight. The Delete Anchor Point tool uses the same refit. The Control bar, the contextual task bar, the Properties quick actions and the canvas context menu offer it when anchors are selected.
  • Live effects with previewing dialogs: Distort & Transform, Path, Convert to Shape, 15 Warp styles, Round Corners, Scribble, Effect → Pathfinder (all 10 operations, live on groups; several loose objects are grouped first, in one undo step), Color Adjustments (Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation, Shift to Color, Temperature/Tint, on vectors, live type and embedded images), and raster drop shadow, glows and feather. SVG and PDF export keep live effects (geometry baked; SVG raster effects as filters).
• Type: Text Wrap, Type on a Path effects (Rainbow/Skew/3D Ribbon/Stair Step/Gravity) and Options (Flip, Align to Path, Spacing; OK keeps the type where it is), type on a path's start, centre and end brackets (Selection and Direct Selection drag them to set where the type runs, slide it along its path and, across the path, flip it: #429), Character and Paragraph Styles (override-preserving redefine), Area Type Options (rows/columns/inset/first baseline), threaded text across any closed shapes, Fit Headline. Area type resizes like Illustrator's type areas: a bounding-box handle drag (Selection tool) or Area Type Options Width/Height size the frame and the text reflows at its size (threads too); Direct Selection drags a frame corner or edge (text.reshapeArea). Point type still scales. Variable fonts list every named instance as a style of their family (Figtree Light to Black and their italics, Bahnschrift, Segoe UI Variable), and the instance chosen is shaped, drawn, outlined and measured at its axis settings; PDF and SVG embed it as that instance. Variation axis sliders are not done. Hebrew and Arabic are laid out right to left with the Unicode bidirectional algorithm (embedded Latin and numbers keep their direction, lines put in visual order after wrapping) in point, area and path type, with caret, selection and arrow keys in visual order; each paragraph's direction comes from its first strong character unless Paragraph Direction sets it (Paragraph panel with Show Indic Options, text.setFormat {direction}), and new type aligns to the start of its direction. SVG export outlines right-to-left text. Font Size and Leading are combo boxes in the Character and Properties panels (Font Size in the Control bar too, beside the Character link, font family and style): type, step with ↑/↓ or the spinner, scrub the label, or pick a preset (6–72 pt, shown in the type unit; Leading also Auto), each pick one undo step; Kerning and Tracking list -100…200; a size, leading, kerning or tracking the selected text doesn't share shows blank (#458).
• Interface languages, vertical type: VectorCraft ▸ Language (or Preferences ▸ User Interface) picks Automatic (the system locale) or a registered language, persisted as interfaceLanguage. Translations come from per-language catalogs (i18n/*.tsv): Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Spanish (neutral international Spanish, for every es-* locale) cover the whole interface, Czech and Brazilian Portuguese every menu label, Brazilian Portuguese the shell's tl! literals too (tested); Spanish also translates status-bar and error messages as they are shown (@msg templates, every message literal tested; the messages themselves stay English for agents); untranslated text stays English. Japanese and Chinese glyphs come from the craft-fonts build input (release builds) or the installed fonts, Czech and Spanish ones from the bundled UI fonts. The web app follows the browser's languages (or ?lang=). The Basic toolbar's Type button holds Vertical Type in its flyout. Vertical Type, Vertical Area Type and Vertical Type on a Path create vertical text (columns right to left, upright CJK glyphs and marks with vert alternates, Latin and longer numbers on their side, two- and three-digit numbers set as tate-chu-yoko in one em of the column (kept whole when justified), upright glyphs centred on the column (tracked or justified too), point type's anchor on the first column's centre line); kinsoku (the strict set) applies to horizontal and vertical Japanese, and justified Japanese lines spread their room between characters (not inside Latin words); Paragraph panel › Mojikumi Set (shown with Preferences › Type › Show East Asian Options, text.setFormat {mojikumi}): None or Line-end Punctuation Half Width (new type's default, as in Illustrator; older documents and imported text keep None) shares one half-em space between consecutive punctuation, sets a closing mark ending a line half width and an opening bracket starting a wrapped line flush with its start, and puts a quarter em between Japanese and Latin letters or digits; Paragraph panel menu › Top-to-Top / Bottom-to-Bottom Leading measures leading from em box top to top (area type's first line touches the frame) or from baseline to baseline; Character panel menu › Character Alignment (with the East Asian options; text.setFormat or text.setRangeStyle {charAlign}) lines characters smaller than the largest on their line up on the Roman baseline or the em box top/right, centre or bottom/left (ICF top and bottom not yet); Type ▸ Type Orientation switches existing text; caret, selection, hit testing and arrow keys follow the writing direction. Vertical text exports to PDF as real text and to SVG as outlines.
• Transparency: opacity masks (clip/invert/disable/link), exported as SVG <mask> and PDF soft masks.
• Advanced art: live Blends (steps/distance/smooth colour, editable spine, anchor-targeted Blend tool, faithful interpolation, knockout), Envelope Distort (warp/mesh/top object, Reset, full Envelope Options, mesh handles, Edit Contents; type, images, symbols, gradients, patterns and appearance distorted everywhere), Liquify tools with options and pen pressure, Puppet Warp with rotating pins, Perspective Grid with presets, movable planes and projected type (choosing a perspective tool shows the grid; Hide Grid hides it with the tool still chosen), Gradient Mesh, Shape Builder (stroke-only open paths and lines cut the regions they cross and enclose regions of their own; filled open paths count as closed; erase mode while Alt/Option is held: a minus pointer, red highlights of what will go, a click or drag deletes the regions touched, the pieces of open lines and the edges (outline pieces between the points where paths meet, opening their paths there) it passes over, one undo step, shapeBuilder.merge {erase} and shapeBuilder.regions edges over MCP), Live Paint (every path an edge, open lines included), Image Trace (12 presets), pattern swatches with pattern editing mode, live Repeat (radial/grid/mirror).
• Paint and appearance (M3):
  • Swatches: names follow the colour model and are unique; Swatch Options (process/spot, Global, Gray/RGB/HSB/CMYK/Web, live preview); editing a global or spot swatch recolours every linked fill, stroke and text run in one undo step; multi-select and delete with confirmation; New Swatch and New Color Group dialogs (a group from the selected artwork's colours); swatches in colour groups convert, separate and count like any other. The Swatches panel selects ranges and whole groups, has a find field, and drags swatches to reorder, regroup or paint art; Add Used Colors, Select All Unused, Merge, Ungroup and Sort by Kind; a CMYK document keeps applied colours in CMYK. Swatch libraries: nine generated colour libraries and five gradient libraries in a library panel, saved and loaded as .vcswatches, .gpl or CSS. Tints of global and spot colours ("Name 40%") stay linked and separate as a percentage of their plate. Spot colours can be defined in Lab (Spot Colors options). A built-in [Registration] swatch prints on every plate.
  • Colour: a Color Picker (colour field, H/S/B/R/G/B channel slider, HSB/RGB/Lab/CMYK fields, hex, web-only snapping, out-of-gamut correction); the Color panel follows each colour's own model and Alt-click paints the other proxy; proxies look through groups and show "?" for mixed paint; Invert, Complement, Apply Last Color (,) and Apply Last Gradient (.) keep the colour model; every paint command feeds the recent colours. The Color Guide has 21 harmony rules, Steps and Variation options and Limit to Library. Adjust Color Balance (its Global mode shifts tints) and Saturate preview live; Edit Colors and Recolor also reach meshes, images and patterns. Recolor Artwork has colour reduction, five recolour methods, presets, Limit to Library, a colour-wheel Edit tab and Edit Color Group; a local Color Themes panel saves five-colour themes. Fill/Stroke chips open swatch and mixer popovers (the Properties panel has the Control bar's Fill and Stroke chips, Stroke link and weight spinner, with nothing selected too), panels have Illustrator's Window menu keys (Align Shift+F7, Transform Shift+F8, Pathfinder Cmd+Shift+F9, Layers F7, Character Cmd+T…; every panel can be given one in Edit › Keyboard Shortcuts), and Eyedropper Options pick up and apply chosen attributes (Alt and Shift+Alt, image pixels). Fills and strokes can overprint (Attributes panel, Overprint Black options), and CMYK documents blend in inks on screen, in PDF and when flattening. Document Color Mode converts the art, symbols, pattern tiles and swatches through the colour settings: Gray stays Gray, RGB greys separate into four-colour greys and a rich black as Illustrator does, or go on the black plate only with grays: "black" (also for document.open {colorMode}).
  • Gradients: lossless, validated gradient params; gradients follow rotate, reflect, shear, non-uniform scale and distortions; the Gradient tool edits the fill or stroke of the active proxy, type included; an interactive on-canvas annotator (move, length/angle, rotate, add/move/delete/duplicate stops, midpoints, a stop popover, Delete and arrow keys). The Gradient panel has the Fill/Stroke proxy, a gradient-swatch dropdown with Save to Swatches, midpoint locations, Alt-drag to copy or swap stops, swatch drops on the ramp and a stop eyedropper; copied appearances and graphic styles place gradients on each target's own bounds; gradient handles snap and honour Constrain Angle. Gradient stops stay linked to global and spot swatches. Freeform gradients (points and lines) are edited on the canvas; radial gradients have an extent ellipse, an aspect handle and an off-centre focal point (SVG fx/fy, PDF two-point radials). A stroke's gradient runs within, along or across it. Object ▸ Expand turns gradients into N objects or a gradient mesh.
  • Strokes: one stroke-geometry module shared by the canvas, SVG, PDF and Outline Stroke; dotted lines (zero-length dashes draw dots or squares); arrowheads with hollow outlines, tip-on-end or extend-past-end alignment and one opacity for line and head. SVG and PDF export arrowheads, width profiles, brushes and aligned strokes exactly as the canvas draws them; Outline Stroke and the live Outline Stroke effect outline every stroke item as drawn (dashes, heads, profiles, alignment); dashes can be fitted to corners and path ends; width profiles carry through dashes, and their corners take the join. The Stroke panel edits type's character strokes, follows the stroke units (its weight presets are round values in that unit: 0.25 mm, 0.0625 in, 1 px, #426; fields show four decimals in mm, cm and inches, three in points), shows mixed values blank and opens from the Control bar. A width profile library, thirty more arrowheads, and Width Point Edit with multi-select and discontinuous points. Visual bounds and clicks cover the whole painted stroke. Scale Strokes & Effects, Scale Corners and Use Preview Bounds work everywhere, and new art inherits stroke options, a graphic style or the whole last appearance.
  • Appearance: the Appearance panel's selected row drives every paint, stroke, gradient and transparency edit (item on the commands); effects apply to one fill or stroke; per-item Opacity popups, whose blend-mode list and opacity slider stay open inside them (#430; the Control bar's Stroke popover too); Mixed Appearances, Layers target dots and basic-appearance rules. Effects can be reordered, moved between items and copied by dragging; Show All Hidden Attributes; clicking an effect edits it in place; the object thumbnail drags onto art; effects render on type, images, symbols, blends, envelopes, meshes and repeats, and per-item raster effects export. Groups, layers and type have their own fills, strokes and effects (Contents and Characters rows); the Layers panel's target circles target layers, groups and objects; Expand Appearance turns fills, strokes, effects and brushes into objects.
  • Masks and clipping: opacity-mask controls work while the mask is being edited; transparency commands take ids and work without a selection; clipping sets clip by compound paths, even-odd paths, text and groups on screen and in raster export, matching SVG/PDF. Alt-click shows only the mask; SVG masks keep Clip and Invert; the transparency grid is per-document state; a clipping path's own fill and stroke paint behind and over the clipped art; layers can be clipping masks.
  • Transparency: three-state Knockout Group (on, neutral, off), Opacity & Mask Define Knockout Shape, Page Isolated Blending and Page Knockout Group, on screen and in SVG/PDF. Blend modes match the standard formulas on screen, in SVG and in PDF, and non-isolated groups blend with the art below. Flatten Transparency with presets, a dialog and a Flattener Preview panel.
  • Graphic styles: styles keep opacity and blend mode, capture groups and type, apply on top with Alt, and link to the objects using them; Redefine, Break Link, Graphic Style Options, Select All Unused, Sort by Name, and Select > Same Graphic Style / Appearance Attribute. The panel has list and thumbnail views with rendered previews, merge, reorder and drag and drop, plus a Control bar Style picker; six generated style libraries save and load as .vcstyles.
  • Neutral wording: labels, MCP tool text, docs and packaging use neutral names, and cargo xtask brands (part of cargo xtask ci) fails on vendor names.
• Colour, type and file workflows: Recolor Artwork (dialog with harmonies), Edit Colors, Find & Replace, Change Case, Smart Punctuation, Guides, Lock/Hide Above, Transform Each, Rasterize.
• Fonts: a font is found by any of its names (family and style in every language of its name table, legacy family/style pairs, PostScript name), so documents from other apps open with the font they name; Find Font and text.fonts say for each font whether it was found exactly, by another name, substituted or missing, and how many glyphs are missing. PDF and .ai import brings Japanese text back as live type: CID fonts without a ToUnicode map read through the standard CMaps, vertical columns (WMode 1) as vertical type, letter spacing as tracking; a glyph is live type only when the installed font (in the closest style of its family) draws the same glyph, and text in a font that isn't installed comes in as live type shown in the fallback font until the font is installed (exports that draw it — PDF, EPS, EMF/WMF, raster, SVG outlines or embedded fonts — warn that they wrote the fallback font; textAs: outlines keeps the PDF's embedded glyphs).
• Files (M4):
  • .vectorcraft (lossless JSON, compressed, atomic saves, save down to v1), Save As with a format chooser, Save a Copy, Revert, templates, Data Recovery after a crash (browser tabs hold their copies with Web Locks too, so a background tab's copies are never taken for a crash's, and a tab repairs copies another removed when it resumes: #367), background save and export.
  • SVG/SVGZ in and out with SVG Options, Preserve Editing, symbols, filters, rich text and physical units (SVG type under a transform or viewBox scale opens at the size it draws at, the scale moved into its size, leading, baseline shift and strokes, a stretch, skew or rotation kept as its transform: #396; a top-level group with a clip path, such as a clipped Inkscape layer, opens as a layer with a clipping mask, its name kept: #420); PDF and PDF-compatible .ai in and out (layers, with hidden ones kept hidden with their art and nested ones as sublayers, on pages of up to 64 million operators, art whose layer can't be told going to a hidden, non-printing layer rather than showing or printing: #419; strokes kept live, a fill and a stroke of one outline as one object; masks, editable text with type set along a curve coming back as type on a path, each artboard's art on its own page only, an .ai's white page under its layers left out rather than coming in as art, spot colours, presets, security, marks and bleed, ICC output intents, raster effects, subset fonts, PDF/X, PDF layers, overprint, page thumbnails, fast web view, PDF 1.3). CMYK images keep their ink amounts from PDF import (and from placed CMYK TIFFs) to PDF export: a CMYK JPEG passes through unchanged, others stay CMYK (DeviceCMYK, or ICC-based CMYK in PDF/X-3/X-4) unless the Output settings convert them; the canvas shows them through the working CMYK profile (#320).
  • EPS and DXF in and out, EMF/WMF in and out; PNG (with PNG-8), JPEG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, Targa and layered PSD export. EPS import runs Illustrator's AGM/CoolType prologs (resource categories, resourceforall, clipsave/cliprestore, subarrays and substrings that share storage, the standard dictionaries in systemdict, dictstack, internaldict, executable filters, cshow, metadata skipped with flushfile), so Illustrator 30 EPS files open as vectors, and falls back to its palette TIFF preview. DXF TEXT justified Fit or Aligned spans its two points (stretched, or scaled as a whole).
  • Place and the Links panel, Package, File Info, Print with print presets, PostScript output and print tiling, slices and Save for Web, Export for Screens and Asset Export, CSS Properties, PNG/PDF/SVG/text clipboard flavours; files copied in a file manager paste as art (SVG, PDF, EMF/WMF, bitmaps) on every desktop platform, and Linux/Wayland reads the compositor's clipboard (#398); screenshots and other copied pictures paste as embedded images at the view centre everywhere, the web included (#457).
• Performance: 20k shapes + 1k texts render in 27 ms per full-retina frame (7.8 ms zoomed), 7× faster than the first version. The UI thread never blocks. The web build is 7.1 MB gzipped.
• Graphics processor: the canvas is rasterized on the CPU and the GPU only composites it, so the desktop app asks for the power-saving GPU by default (the integrated one on hybrid-graphics laptops, where presenting from the discrete GPU made the window flicker, #306). Preferences › Performance › Graphics Processor (gpuPreference) or WGPU_POWER_PREF picks the discrete one; Help › About and ui.inspect name the adapter in use. When the browser drops the page's WebGPU device or WebGL context, the web build writes recovery copies, starts again on new graphics with the same app and uploads its textures again; if it can't, it removes the stale canvas and says to reload, which offers the copies back. The desktop app writes the copies and says to restart (#369). On Windows and Linux the tools' cursors are OS cursors (bitmaps rasterized once per display scale), which the system moves itself: painted into the window, they trailed the pointer by the frames waiting to be shown, and the window now queues one frame instead of two (#444). macOS and the web still paint them (macOS sizes cursor bitmaps in points, eframe has no bitmap cursors on the web).
• Tests and robustness: ~2,840 automated tests: model-based property tests, a junk-parameter sweep over every command, import fuzzing (SVG, PDF, libraries), golden renders, and MCP end-to-end tests over stdio. Shipped code never panics (workspace lints and a rollback safety net; see docs/development.md).

Milestones and estimates

#	Milestone	Status	Est. remaining, one agent (h)
M0	Skeleton + vertical slice	✅ done	—
M1	Selection, transform, layers, MCP	✅ mostly done (transform reference point snaps to anchors/centres; rotated objects keep a rotated bounding box and their angle; Free Transform, Scale and Reflect along a rotated box pending)	4–6
M2	Drawing tools + smart guides	✅ mostly done (Flare, Reshape, Live Corners widget dragging and per-corner radii and kinds landed; Shaper, the remaining Pen modifier nuances)	15–20
M3	Paint & appearance (swatches, color, gradient, stroke, appearance, transparency, styles)	✅ done (M3.7–M3.98): swatches, groups, libraries, tints, Lab spots and Registration; Color Picker, Color panel, Color Guide, Color Themes, Edit Colors and Recolor Artwork; gradients that follow every transform, the annotator, linked stops, freeform gradients, focal points, gradients on strokes and Expand; stroke geometry, arrowheads, dashes fitted to corners, stroke on type, width profiles and the Width tool, Scale Strokes and preview bounds; Appearance targeting, container appearance, target circles, Expand Appearance; knockout, isolation, blend accuracy, CMYK blending, overprint, Attributes, masks and clipping, Flatten Transparency; graphic styles, links and libraries. Left: freeform and mixed spot/process gradients export as stops or process colours to SVG/PDF; confirm the Scale Strokes & Effects default	4–8
M4	Files (native, SVG, PDF, raster, Export for Screens, clipboard interop)	✅ done (M4.14–M4.98 on 2026-10-05): Save As/Save a Copy/Revert/templates, Data Recovery and background save, SVG import and export fidelity (units, text, symbols, filters, SVGZ, Preserve Editing, SVG Options), PDF import (colours, layers, masks, editable text, security) and export (presets, marks, bleed, ICC and output intent, raster effects, subset fonts, PDF/X-1a, X-3 and X-4, PDF layers, overprint, page thumbnails, fast web view, PDF 1.3), Place and Links, Package, EPS and DXF in and out, EMF/WMF, TIFF/BMP/Targa/PSD/GIF/PNG-8 export, Print and print presets, slices, Save for Web, Asset Export, clipboard flavours, File Info. Left: DWG (use DXF), PSD placement as layers, overprint read back from PDF, polish	3–6
M5	Performance	🟡 background render + caches + MT done; vectorcraft-cli bench and vectorcraft-cli perf (budget suite); file format v2 opens 3× faster (50k paths: 722 → 244 ms); raster effects (glows, shadows, blur, feather) no longer force the whole frame single-threaded (filtered offscreen per effect, verified equal to the single-threaded reference); effect-heavy demos need a clean-machine benchmark; dirty-region rendering, GPU backend spike pending	15–25
M6	Path operations (Pathfinder, Shape Builder, offset…)	✅ mostly done (Boolean precision on almost-horizontal edges fixed and the property tests made deterministic; Shape Builder gap detection, large-offset bug open)	3–6
M7	Type (point/area/path, editing, styles, OpenType, threading, glyphs)	🟡 Character/Paragraph Styles, Area Type Options (with Width/Height), type areas resized by their handles and reshaped with Direct Selection, threaded text, Fit Headline, Glyphs, OpenType panel, Find Font, installed system fonts in every font menu (fonts registered with Windows outside its font folders, the XDG and Flatpak host font folders on Linux, and fonts installed while the app runs, listed when it comes back to the front; searchable; the Character and Properties menus show each family's sample of the selected text, preview it live under the pointer or ↑/↓, filter by script and kind, list a family's styles, and star favourites; the Glyphs panel and Find Font's Replace With use the same menu without the live preview) and found by name on open/import, variable fonts' named instances as styles, CJK names in the UI, input methods (marked text in place, candidate window at the caret; Japanese IME), Text Wrap (offset, invert, both sides of an object; follows edits), Type on a Path effects and Options with draggable start/centre/end brackets (slide, flip), tab stops + Tabs panel, Hebrew/Arabic bidirectional text and Paragraph Direction done; tab leaders, spell check, vertical type pending	45–60
M8	Transform & distort (Puppet Warp, Liquify tools, Envelopes, Blends, Perspective Grid)	✅ done (M8.1–M8.20 on 2026-10-06, fidelity pass): Liquify Tool Options with one shared brush, pen pressure, hold-to-apply, a safe scope and incremental strokes; tool options that last; Puppet Warp rotation, multi-select, Control bar and a rest-shape session that follows Undo; Width tool on compound paths; Envelope dialogs with preview, Reset with Warp/Mesh, full Envelope Options, type/images/symbols/appearance/gradients/patterns distorted on canvas and in every export, warps that keep their frame, Edit Contents, mesh handles and Control bar; Blend Options, anchor-targeted Blend tool, editable spine, keys picked on the canvas, faithful interpolation and knockout; Perspective Grid with Define Grid, presets, lock/snap/rulers, widgets, the 1–4 plane switch, movable planes, Perspective Selection scale/copy/perpendicular/Transform Again, and type and symbols truly projected with Edit Text. Left: Anti-Alias and Preserve Shape output, warp-envelope point editing, brush interpolation in blends, Free Transform/Scale/Reflect along a rotated box	2–4
M9	Live effects (+ 3D & Materials)	🟡 2D effects done incl. Effect → Pathfinder and Color Adjustments; SVG Filters, Document Raster Effects Settings, 3D pending	86–135
M10	Brushes, symbols, patterns, Repeat	🟡 pattern swatches (5 tile types, Pattern Options, editing mode, SVG <pattern>/PDF export) and live Repeat (radial/grid/mirror) done; brushes/symbols in progress	23–37
M11	Artboards & views (artboard panel/tool, Trim View, middle-button pan, print tiling and the status bar's artboard navigator done; multiple windows, presentation polish)	🟡	15–25
M12	Advanced color & art (CMYK/ICC, separations, Gradient Mesh, Live Paint, Image Trace, Graphs)	🟡 Gradient Mesh, Live Paint, Image Trace (12 presets, 18 ms/1k² image), Recolor Artwork, colour management (ICC, soft proofing, separations preview), Graphs (all 9 tools, Graph Data/Type, regenerate in place) done; graph Design/Column/Marker designs pending	6–10
M13	Automation (Actions ✅ record/playback, persisted; variables, scripting, batch)	🟡	18–27
M14	1.0 polish (preferences, shortcut editor, workspaces, accessibility, packaging for all OSes)	🟡 Preferences, shortcut editor (chords with Shift and a punctuation key fire as typed), workspaces, a custom title bar on Windows/Linux with a Home button, content-sized dialogs and menus that scroll when longer than the window done; an experimental, unsupported Windows 7 x64 portable OpenGL build (not verified by maintainers); accessibility and broader Windows/Linux packaging/QA pending	18–28
—	Interaction fidelity pass (every tool's modifiers, Properties panel per context, isolation, nuance)	⬜	60–90
—	Hardening at scale (big-file corpus, fuzzing, cross-platform + browser QA)	🟡	50–80
	Total to full parity (one agent; re-derived from the Parity estimate table)		~320–500

Parity estimate

Method (2026-10-02; M3 rows re-derived 2026-10-04, file, export, print, links and UI-chrome rows after M4 on 2026-10-05): Illustrator's feature surface is split into 22 areas, weighted by how much of the app (and of real users' work) each represents. Each area is scored by depth of behaviour, not by presence of a menu item: an area is 100% only when every feature in it behaves like Illustrator. Feature parity = Σ weight × score / Σ weight. Remaining time is counted per area from what is missing, calibrated on measured throughput: in the last session one agent landed about 20 medium features (Text Wrap, Graphs, Effect → Pathfinder, export baking…) in ~16 h wall clock including builds and CI on a heavily loaded machine — about 0.8 h per medium feature; large subsystems (3D, raster filters, vertical type) are counted bottom-up. The M3 rows (colour, strokes, appearance) come from a detailed 92-task M3 plan whose review found more missing depth than the first estimate; all 92 tasks landed on 2026-10-04 and 2026-10-05 with 6–8 agents in parallel; its packages, planned at 5–11 h each, took about 1–1.5 agent-hours each, so the other rows (estimated on the older scale) are likely high.

Area	Weight	Done	Missing (main items)	One agent (h)
Selection, transform & align tools	6	85%	Free Transform/Scale/Reflect along a rotated box, Start Global Edit, transform nuances (the rotated persistent bounding box is done)	4–6
Drawing tools	7	85%	Shaper Groups (merge/punch overlapping shapes), pencil and the remaining pen modifier nuances, the freehand Tool Options' Keep selected, Alt to the Smooth tool, Blob Brush Merge Only with Selection and brush angle/roundness, Touch Type, Live Corners on plain paths and polygons (and Relative rounding)	10–15
Path operations, Pathfinder, Shape Builder, Live Paint	5	86%	Live Paint gap options, Shape Builder gap detection, options (Tool Options dialog, clicking a stroke in merge mode) and Shift-drag marquee	3–6
Colour, swatches, gradients, patterns, mesh, recolor	7	96%	freeform and mixed spot/process gradients in SVG/PDF (exported as stops or process colours), pattern fills in Expand	2–4
Strokes, brushes, width profiles	5	88%	brush options depth, brush libraries (generated in code), brushes driven by pen tilt, bearing and barrel rotation (6D art pens)	12–20
Appearance, transparency, graphic styles, masks	5	98%	raster effect reach in preview bounds (flattener presets apply in PDF, EPS and print)	1–2
Live vector effects	5	85%	Outline Object, Pathfinder Hard/Soft Mix and Trap, SVG Filters	6–10
Raster effects (Effect Gallery, Document Raster Effects Settings)	4	20%	~55 Photoshop-style filters (Artistic, Brush Strokes, Distort, Pixelate, Sketch, Stylize, Texture, Video) and the Effect Gallery; Document Raster Effects Settings and raster effects in PDF are done	28–42
3D and Materials	4	0%	Extrude & Bevel, Revolve, Inflate, Rotate, lighting, materials (software renderer)	50–80
Type core	9	79%	Middle Eastern features beyond bidi layout and Paragraph Direction (Character Direction, digit types, kashidas, the Middle Eastern composers, editable bidirectional SVG text, a split caret where directions meet); composer/hyphenation options, Optical Margin Alignment, hidden characters, Transform Again after a type-area resize (it scales the type), partial selection of type-area anchors by marquee	15–20
Type advanced	4	50%	CJK composition for vertical type (ruby, mojikumi beyond Line-end Punctuation Half Width — the other sets (and their paragraph-start bracket and indent rules), hanging punctuation, kinsoku sets and the Mojikumi Settings dialog —, proportional vertical metrics, manual tate-chu-yoko, Character Alignment on the ICF top and bottom), variable font axis sliders (named instances are styles), tab leaders, spell check (open dictionary), Touch Type, Retype; vertical point/area/path type and Type Orientation have initial support	20–28
Symbols, blends, envelopes, Repeat, perspective	5	88%	symbol libraries (original), dynamic symbols, envelope Anti-Alias/Preserve Shape output and warp point editing, brush interpolation in blends (M8 fidelity pass done)	5–8
Image Trace, graphs, image tools	3	70%	graph Design/Column/Marker, Create Object Mosaic, Crop Image polish (Vector Halftone is done)	6–10
Layers, artboards, document setup	5	82%	Layers panel: a confirmation before deleting layers that hold art, Collect for Export, row context menus, the Layer Options dialog for several rows with mixed values, Paste Remembers Layers for sublayers, drag-scrolling a long panel while dragging rows; artboard presets/rearrange polish (Document Setup, New Document and the rest of the Layers panel are done)	4–7
View & navigation	3	70%	New View/Edit Views, multiple windows/arrange, Snap to Pixel/Glyph (print tiling is done)	9–14
Guides, grids, smart guides, snapping, rulers	3	82%	global/video rulers, smart-guide preference depth, Alt swapping a ruler guide's orientation, ruler guides selected together with art (marquee, Shift-click), ruler guides as Layers rows with their own lock and hide (#451: Lock Guides locks them all; Make Guides paths are Layers rows already) (dragging existing guides is done, #414; new guides snapping to side midpoints and artboards, and artboard guides, #451)	3–5
File formats	6	85%	DWG (no open spec: DXF instead), PSD placement as layers, Illustrator EPS checked against more real files (two Illustrator 30 files open as vectors so far), the remaining fidelity polish; EPS, DXF, EMF/WMF, TIFF, BMP, Targa, PSD export, SVGZ, PDF security, PDF/X, PDF layers and presets are done	6–10
Export for Screens, Asset Export, slices, Save for Web	3	85%	polish only (all four are done)	2–4
Print, colour management, separations, flattener	3	80%	print preview fidelity (flattener presets in PDF and print, overprint in PDF and composite print, Print dialog, presets, PostScript, marks, separations, Print Tiling, print overprint/flattener/bitmap options and printer profile are done)	1–2
Automation	3	60%	Variables (data merge), scripting surface, batch	8–12
UI chrome (panels, contextual Properties, workspaces, prefs)	6	78%	Variables, SVG Interactivity, Properties per context, Consolidate All Windows, context menus beyond the canvas (Links, Asset Export, CSS Properties, Attributes and the canvas context menu are done), about 38 Preferences options stored but not yet acted on (#394: Construction and Spacing Guides, Auto Size New Area Type, Show Font Names in English, Highlight Alternate Glyphs, Show Pixel Grid, performance, devices…)	14–22
Libraries, Links, Package	2	50%	a local Libraries panel (no cloud by design); Links and Package are done	5–8
Feature parity	103	~75%		~210–330
Interaction-fidelity pass (side by side with Illustrator: every tool modifier, cursor, dialog, Properties context)				60–90
Hardening (big-file corpus, fuzzing, cross-platform and browser QA, accessibility, packaging)				50–80
Full parity		~56%		~320–500

With 4–6 agents working on disjoint crates (as the layering allows) the wall-clock time divides by roughly 3.5–4 (integration, review and shared files such as menus.rs serialize some work): ~55–95 h to feature parity, ~80–145 h to full parity.

Inventories (2026-10-07): 13 menu items still stubbed (todo(…) in crates/ui-egui/src/menus.rs); every tool implemented except Touch Type; 51 panel modules; Illustrator-style live effects ~44/54, Photoshop-style raster effects ~1/56, 3D 0/5; ~2,840 tests; ~221k lines of Rust.

Where we already beat Illustrator: exact curve booleans, off-thread multithreaded rendering, undo that never runs out, lossless SVG/PDF export of live effects with SVG filters, a documented JSON format, the same app on the web, and every command, gesture and dialog drivable by agents (MCP, CLI, control channel).

Out of scope (by design or by law)

• Native .ai private data: it's undocumented. We read the PDF-compatible part, so Illustrator-only live objects arrive as appearance.
• Adobe cloud services (Libraries sync, Adobe Fonts, Firefly/generative): these are pluggable provider APIs, not built in.
• Adobe's bundled assets (swatch/brush/symbol libraries, presets, icons): ours are original.

Where we aim to be better than Illustrator

• Speed: off-thread multithreaded rendering, instant startup, a responsive UI on huge files.
• Robustness: exact curve booleans (no "cannot perform operation"), property-tested undo/redo and file round trips.
• Openness: a documented native format, first-class SVG, and the same app in the browser.
• Automation: every command, gesture, dialog and widget is drivable by agents (JSON channel + MCP), with headless batch mode.

How to update this file

After each milestone task lands, update the status column and remaining estimates, and move items into "Shipped so far". Keep estimates honest: re-derive them from what remains, never from wishful velocity.