soundcraft/ROADMAP.md

SoundCraft roadmap

SoundCraft is a clean-room, pure-Rust digital audio workstation that aims at full parity with Avid Pro Tools, and then beyond it: faster, open, scriptable and agent-controllable. This file is the honest status: what works today, what is missing, and how far we are.

Where we are (2026-10-07)

Measure	Value	How
Menu-catalog parity (engine + UI)	462 / 512 menu items (90 %); engine alone 388 / 512 (76 %), see docs/parity.md	cargo xtask parity compares the incumbent's 512 menu leaves (names observed black-box) with our command registry; the remaining items are mostly video, Atmos, collaboration, notation and third-party services
Estimated overall feature parity	~50 %	judgement across the areas below, weighted by how much professional users rely on them
Estimated remaining effort	~170–230 wall-clock hours of Claude Opus 5.5 work (single agent; roughly 55–80 hours with 3–4 agents in parallel)	sum of the per-area estimates below

Area by area

Area	Status	Parity	Remaining (h)
Session model, save/load, undo	Done: tracks, playlists, clips, fades, clip gain, automation, markers, groups, busses; JSON .scraft + Audio Files folder; COW undo with gesture coalescing	80 %	10
Audio file I/O	WAV/BWF/RF64, AIFF/AIFC, FLAC (read/write); MP3, OGG, AAC, ALAC, CAF (read); peaks	75 %	10
Editing	Slip/Shuffle/Spot/Grid, cut/copy/paste/clear/duplicate/repeat/shift, separate/heal/trim/consolidate/strip silence, fades & crossfades, nudge, playlists, grabber/trim/selector/smart/pencil/zoom/scrubber gestures, edit groups, playlist lanes with comping, smart-tool fades	70 %	25
Mixer & routing	Faders, pan, mute/solo (SIP, implicit solo), sends pre/post, busses, aux inputs, master faders, VCAs, routing folders, 10 inserts, plugin delay compensation, clip effects	70 %	20
Automation	Breakpoint lanes for volume/pan/mute/sends/plugin params, trim automation; live Write/Touch/Latch passes; write/thin/glide/convert/coalesce commands	60 %	18
Plugins (built-in)	26 original processors + 2 instruments, AudioSuite offline processing	45 %	30
Third-party plugins (CLAP/VST3/AU)	CLAP hosting (audio, params, latency, notes) in an isolated unsafe crate; no plugin GUIs, no state save, no VST3/AU	30 %	30
MIDI	MIDI/instrument tracks, SMF import/export, MIDI editor (piano roll + velocity), event list, step input, quantize/transpose/velocity/duration ops	40 %	30
Recording	Input capture, punch in/out (selection, on the fly, pre/post-roll), loop record into playlists, input monitoring through the channel strip, autosave and recovery	60 %	12
Elastic Audio / TCE / Beat Detective	Pitch-preserving warp on Elastic tracks, TCE to timeline, conform to tempo, Beat Detective and Identify Beat windows	40 %	18
Video, surround panning, Atmos	Formats modelled; no video track, no surround panner	5 %	40
UI fidelity	Edit + Mix windows, toolbar, rulers, track headers, menus for the whole catalog, floating windows, dialogs	65 %	25
Agent control	CLI, JSON control channel, MCP server (headless + bridged), offscreen UI renders	90 % (ahead of the incumbent)	5
Release engineering	Signed macOS universal, Windows x64/x86, Linux AppImage/deb/rpm/tar/Flatpak, FreeBSD, Web/WASM on every push to release	80 %	5

Current focus

1. Play back the model-only state the engine already stores: clip effects, trim automation, MIDI real-time properties.
2. QuickPunch and input monitoring (loop record and Write/Touch/Latch automation passes have landed).
3. Pitch-preserving realtime Elastic Audio.
4. Plugin hosting (CLAP first, it is MIT-licensed and Rust-friendly).
5. Elastic Audio in realtime; Beat Detective workflow window.
6. README screenshots and the first alpha release.

Milestones

• M0–M3 (done): workspace, gates, model, IO, DSP, mix engine, command engine, Edit/Mix UI.
• M4 (done): realtime playback, metering, plugins, bounce.
• M5 (in progress): editing depth (tools, modes, playlists, fades) — most items landed.
• M6 (in progress): recording.
• M7 (in progress): MIDI editing.
• M8 (done for the first cut): CLI, control channel, MCP, agent acceptance test.
• M9: AudioSuite breadth, Elastic Audio, Beat Detective.
• M10: alpha release on all platforms.
• M11: third-party plugin hosting, video, surround.