Roadmap

What has shipped, in which release, and what is proposed next.

Last reviewed 2026-09-16 during preparation of v2.18.0. The selected implementation is complete; release validation and independent review remain release gates. Update this page when a listed issue closes, and move a release’s items into Shipped as part of the post-release step.

Issue numbers. A bare #N on this page is a vibe-view issue (project 35). The pre-split monorepo tracker, project 19, numbered its issues independently; its numbers appear only as “project 19 #N”.

Future releases are proposed, not scheduled. Each unreleased minor below carries its registered codename, and its proposed scope follows that theme. A registered name commits to nothing about when, or whether, that release is cut. The scope under each future version is a proposal for the maintainer, who decides it at cut time.

Where things stand

Latest release	v2.17.1 Lorensen’s Loon, 2026-09-15, tag and release on de0a040
Release in preparation	v2.18.0 Richardson’s Robin: biomolecule polish and the four correctness fixes below
Documentation site	serves 2.17.1; index and three guide pages match the tagged commit’s CI artifacts (checked 2026-09-15)
Desktop update feed	serves 2.10.0 (checked 2026-09-13), see Desktop distribution
Open issues	15: four correctness defects, one enhancement, three infrastructure, five cross-repository asks, and the still-open delivery/publication records #20 and #28

Shipped

What v2.15.2 already contained

All Avogadro-parity feature work was built in the private monorepo, before the first public commit. Its full evidence and reasoning is in the frozen parity roadmap.

Milestone	Scope	State at v2.15.2
M1 vq cockpit	Job Manager, submit from the viewer, live monitor with log tail, queue overview	Complete
M2 file watching	Content-fingerprint watcher, per-section diff, hot reload that keeps the camera	Complete
M3 live optimization	MSINDO relaxation while editing, MACE engine, frozen atoms	Complete
M4 live results	Streaming checkpoint QVFs, run-status chip, Watch live	Complete
M5 biomolecules	Residues and chains, secondary structure, flat ribbons with sheet arrows, residue selection, colour by chain, secondary structure, residue type and B factor, camera-facing labels	Complete
M6 formats (F)	[ase] extra, 16 import extensions, twelve export formats round-tripped	Complete
M6 builder (E)	SMILES to 3D, Miller slab spacing, periodic bond images, supercell lattice	Partial, see Not yet placed
M6 platform (G)	Electron build targets, Python SDK page, served-viewer accessibility baseline	Partial, see Continuous tracks

Since the split

The first post-split releases made vibe-view a standalone product through repairs, a documentation site, release machinery and artwork. v2.17.0 adds TREXIO geometry and molecular-orbital interoperability. The product and split-audit workstreams preserved in private operations record the earlier work.

Release	Date	Codename	What shipped	Issues
v2.15.3	2026-09-09	Roothaan’s Roadrunner	First gated tag. QVF drift guard, skip audit, [queue] extra, VTK 9.7 test fix; documentation site and its CI; codename catalogue; release branch and procedure	#1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #11, #12, #13, #14
v2.16.0	2026-09-09	Sayle’s Starling	Product manual with real viewer figures; wordmark, favicon and the seven-image codename series; release extra; trame<4 bound; QTAIM and spectrum-panel fixes	#9, #13, #20
v2.16.1	2026-09-10	inherits	The vibe-qc availability probe degrades instead of raising	#18
v2.16.2	2026-09-12	inherits	Missing-RDKit tests run in every environment; patch checklist; contributor guidance	#20
v2.17.0	2026-09-13	Lorensen’s Loon	TREXIO geometry and molecular Gaussian orbitals; packaging-metadata checks; standalone agent guides	#23
v2.17.1	2026-09-15	inherits	Complex coefficients and Gamma-point lattice tails for MOs; scene replacement that avoids stale viewports; command-palette Escape handling during presentation	—

Correctness fixes selected for v2.18.0

Three correctness defects, found against 2.16.1 while the manuscript figures were regenerated, and one warning from vibe-qc’s contract run. All four are implemented in the candidate. Issue closure follows independent review.

Issue	Defect	Candidate behaviour
#24	slice drops section fields and root metadata	Preserve original metadata and kept bytes; prune removed viewer hints and validate before replacing output
#25	Combined bands/DOS uses one Fermi shift for both panels	Shift bands by their own reference; preserve the DOS grid; separate axes when the bands’ reference is absent
#27	Scene rebuilds discard the light-background choice	Keep the explicit background through rebuilds and reloads
#21	Headless export creates an unawaited reset coroutine	Schedule a callback only when an event loop is running

These changes touch src/ and create_app; the consumer’s VIBE_VIEW_TAG coordination is part of release validation.

Housekeeping: #20 is still open although everything it asked for shipped in v2.16.0 and v2.16.2.

Minor releases and remaining proposals

The “not yet” items below come from the parity roadmap, which stopped being updated on 2026-08-25. Check each one against the code before scoping a release around it.

v2.17.0: Lorensen’s Loon, TREXIO orbitals

The maintainer selected TREXIO interoperability for this release. HDF5 files and text datasets now supply geometry and real molecular Gaussian s/p/d/f orbitals to the existing isosurface workflow. The importer preserves units, normalization, AO ordering and available spin/energy/occupation metadata; the format guide describes its limits.

The earlier volume-rendering proposal below remains future work; it is not part of the TREXIO release.

Today: marching-cubes isosurfaces for densities, orbitals and ESP; additional isosurfaces per volume; clip planes; volume cross-fade.

Proposed:

• Translucent isosurfaces that do not stall the browser client. The hang was traced to vtk.js depth peeling, and orbitals default to opaque as a workaround (design refresh, Robustness).

Future work: the transparency change still needs scoping.

v2.18.0: Richardson’s Robin, biomolecules

Selected scope, implemented in the candidate: polish of M5, whose initial biomolecule support shipped in v2.15.2, plus the correctness fixes above.

• Isolate or hide selected residues without connecting hidden ribbon spans.

• Select residues by clicking the viewport.

• Share chain, secondary-structure, residue and B-factor palettes across ribbons, atoms and bonds.

• Retain PDB HELIX/SHEET ranges and distinguish supplied alpha, pi and 3₁₀ helices and beta bridges. The CA-only geometric assignment stays H/E/C.

• Draw crisp strand edges and independently shaded end caps; include the final residue in a chain-terminal strand assignment.

• Show dashed geometric hydrogen-bond contacts using explicit H and N/O candidates in the supplied coordinates.

The biomolecule guide documents the display controls and scientific limits. No new core dependency or QVF schema change is needed.

v2.19.0: Phong’s Pheasant, materials and lighting

Today: material presets, Publication, Presentation and Analysis representation presets, toon shading, OSPRay ray tracing, and light and dark themes.

Proposed:

• Publication mode: white background, thick outlines, no gizmos, one click.

• A theme and accent pass.

Constraint: ambient occlusion and fog are VTK render passes, and render passes never reach the vtk.js client (test_ambient_occlusion_is_server_side_only). Silhouette outlines depend on the view, so an outline computed on the server goes stale when the client rotates. Any of these effects therefore needs client-side work.

v2.20.0: Levoy’s Lemur, transfer functions and volume rendering

Today: nothing. vibe-view extracts isosurfaces and has no direct volume rendering or transfer-function code.

Proposed:

• Direct volume rendering of QVF volume sections, with an editable colour and opacity transfer function.

Measure first. Rendering stays on Trame and PyVista (decision 6). Cartoon rendering got a payload and interaction benchmark before it was built, and volume rendering on a vtk.js client needs the same.

v3.0.0: Levinthal’s Lynx, the interactive viewer

The codename is held for a major version about the interactive viewer itself. Nothing yet decides what would make that release a breaking change.

Proposed: work that needs the browser client, not geometry rebuilt on the server:

• Continuous label billboarding with client-side followers. Today labels re-face the camera only when an interaction ends.

• A client-side frame-rate measurement, taken inside the page.

• A plugin API. The Python SDK is documented, but there is no plugin surface (Python API).

Not yet placed

No registered codename covers these:

• An energy-window control for the band, DOS and combined panels, honouring a viewer_defaults hint: #26.

• A general surface cell for Miller slabs, spanned by two in-plane lattice vectors. Orientations that are not c-normal currently raise an error.

• Metal-metal bonds in clusters and organometallics, which the bonding heuristic cannot see.

• More fragments and templates; thumbnails in the structure library.

• Unit toggles everywhere (Ha/eV, Å/bohr).

• A trajectory and vibration scrubber with thumbnails.

• A vq job handle in QVF provenance (provenance.vq), which needs the producer’s agreement.

Continuous tracks

Accessibility

The served-viewer baseline landed before the split, in project 19 #179–#182, #314, #321, #323, #326, #328, #331, #332 and #341. Still open: systematic contrast, focus order and visibility, complete keyboard reachability, reduced-motion behaviour, and how often high-frequency status messages are announced.

Release and CI infrastructure

Issue	What
#22	The release push reruns the full candidate gate, and the CI rules contradict the documented policy
#8	ruff and mypy are configured but not enforced. Re-measure rather than quote a count, and choose the lint job’s scope first
#19	The Sphinx toolchain is pinned inline in CI and re-pins four core dependencies
none	Lift trame<4 once trame-vtk and trame-vuetify accept trame-client>=4
none	The lifecycle scripts’ --help text still describes the monorepo layout

Desktop distribution

Maintainer-gated. The update feed serves 2.10.0 while the source is at 2.17.1. Publishing it needs the maintainer’s SSH deploy key (electron/PUBLISHING.md). Linux and Windows artifacts need build hosts, because electron-builder cannot cross-build them from macOS. Code signing stays deferred: there is no Apple Developer ID.

Cross-repository asks

Issue	Owner	Ask
#4	vibe-qc	17 producer/consumer tests in five files run in neither repository
#15	vibe-qc	.deploy_ssh guard messages run as shell commands
#16	qvf	Publish the frozen v2 schema, and fix the v1 schema’s symlink description
#17	vibe-queue	Settle the distribution name, vq or vibe-queue
#10	vibe-qc-agentic-loop	bugctl still hardcodes project 19

Decisions carried forward

The decisions locked with the maintainer on 2026-07-02 (parity roadmap §0) still hold, with one exception:

• Compute: vq first, with a local vibe-qc subprocess for small jobs.

• Live optimization: vibe-qc semi-empirical methods in a background subprocess.

• Running jobs: streaming checkpoint QVFs with hot reload.

• Format breadth: a hand-written core, with ASE optional for the rest.

• Rendering: stay on Trame and PyVista.

• Cross-repository work: formal asks to the owning repository.

• Delivery (superseded): decision 7 is replaced by the release process. Work lands on main and is proved by a release-candidate/* pipeline before a tag, and release only fast-forwards to tags.

History

• The Avogadro parity roadmap was frozen on 2026-09-13. It records M1–M6 as they stood at the split, with the evidence behind each item. Its issue numbers belong to project 19, and some of its links point into the pre-split layout.

• ROADMAP_V2.md, at the repository root, is the original v1.1–v2.0 proposal. Its version numbers never matched a release, and its codenames appear nowhere in this repository’s code or catalogue.