# The Booth — roadmap

Design: [`docs/design/information-architecture.md`](docs/design/information-architecture.md).
Current version: `0.1.15` (the accreted service, extracted from eshpfi 2026-09-21).

## v1 target

What must be true to cut 1.0. Seven capabilities, each closing a **measured**
defect — not a wish. The measurements are in the IA doc.

| # | capability | closes | unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | **One item record** — resolved once, carried to gallery, zoom, doc, zip | captions never reach the zoom view (never sent, not lost) | U1 |
| 2 | **Marks** — `pick` / `note` / `flag`, one primitive, one read path | 5 mechanisms for 1 job; operator→session loop runs through chat | U2 |
| 3 | **Declared embed seam** — `/_booth/embed.js`, chrome mounts via DOM | 6 regexes injected into arbitrary author HTML, load-bearing for asks | U3 |
| 4 | **Derived lifetime** — open marks pin; viewing is activity | 54% of booths on the `.forever` escape hatch | U4 |
| 5 | **Self-announcing booths** — `.booth.json`, provenance on the index | job 5 had no home, so it lived on the link board as 145 dead rows | U5 |
| 6 | **Benches** — registry, identity, enforced rule, migration | 69% link-board rot; the same bench posted 5× | U6 |
| 7 | **Navigation at 270 items** — sections, rail, filters, grid keyboard | one flat wall; subfolder structure discarded at render | U7 |

Ordering is dependency-driven, not priority-driven: **U1 → U2 → {U3, U4, U5} →
U7**, with **U6 independent** of all of them (different storage, different
surface) and therefore the safest thing to land first or in parallel.

### Explicitly NOT in v1

- **Backward compatibility with the `ask` CLI verbs.** Pre-1.0, and `ask` /
  `asks` / `answer` become thin aliases over `marks` rather than a second code
  path. The 17 consuming handles get one althing note naming the change — the
  one case where telling peers is real coordination and not a broadcast.
- **A migration that deletes anything.** `links.md` is archived verbatim and
  committed before the registry is seeded from it.

## Parking lot

Deferred with a home, per the anti-creep gate. Default is park; these were
weighed against the v1 path and lost on purpose.

| item | why parked |
|---|---|
| **Compare mode** — pair-by-name A/B across subfolders | The best idea in the set, and the only one that is a *new capability* rather than a fix for a measured defect. The four-booth `pancake-v3/v4` dance still works. First thing in v1.1. |
| Virtualized / progressive grid loading | Speculative. 270 `<img loading="lazy">` may be fine. **Measure the real booth before optimising it** — if it renders inside a second, this is invented work. |
| Bench uptime history + graphs | The v1 need is "is it dead", which one flag answers. A time series is a different product. |
| Cross-booth search | No evidence of the need in the usage data. |
| Per-viewer state (who has seen what) | The Booth has one viewer. Revisit if that stops being true. |
| Auth | Standing non-goal. LAN/mesh-internal. Blur stays cosmetic and says so. |

## Post-v1, already committed

- **SVOS theme retrofit by `design-dev`.** Runs as a parallel track, not a v1
  gate: we own the information architecture (it is driven by the measurement
  above), design-dev owns the visual and interaction system. The handoff is a
  `/vor-ui` brief written against the landed v1 structure — the same shape
  `hamr-dev` and `pewpew-dev` used.

## Gate

A proposed feature is on the v1 path or it is parked. **Default: parked.** When
both are defensible, park it — same asymmetry as the patch-default in SemVer.
Applies regardless of who proposed it.