Roadmap

Tessa is intentionally small. The roadmap is ordered by what makes it usable as a daily Japanese desktop, then by polish.

Toolchain transition (completed in 0.2.5)

0.2.4 was the final planned .deb release built against Zig 0.16 and wlroots 0.19. The 0.2.5 source tree now targets Zig 0.17, wlroots 0.20, and scenefx 0.5:

• Replace @cImport with the external translate-c package and explicit compositor, panel, and CLI header modules.
• Adapt to wlroots 0.20 signal renames, output timestamp changes, and the generated wayland-protocols enum headers.
• Rebuild scenefx blur as dedicated wlr_scene_blur nodes for clients, layers, and IME popups, with transparency masks.
• Update the Zig build system for 0.17 and replace removed standard-library APIs.
• Update Arch packaging to the official zig and wlroots0.20 packages.
• Run the full headless suite on the new toolchain in both plain and scenefx builds (Arch Linux, Zig 0.17.0 / wlroots 0.20.2 / scenefx 0.5), including portal ScreenCast, tray, notifications, and interaction.
• Run a real DRM/libinput session on the new toolchain before the next source release.
• Update CI and the compatibility matrix alongside packaging.

0.2.4 remains the 0.16/0.19 maintenance point. New work targets 0.17/0.20 and must keep packaging, docs, and the compatibility matrix in sync.

External shell compatibility

Migration users can keep a familiar bar or launcher while Tessa Panel remains the default.

• Layer-shell bars/launchers (Waybar, Wofi, Quickshell), exclusive zones, popup unconstraining, EXCLUSIVE/ON_DEMAND keyboard focus, and safe layer teardown on output removal.
• ext-workspace-v1 groups with nine workspaces per output and an activate request; Waybar ext/workspaces and Quickshell WindowManager work.
• Foreign-toplevel output enter/leave tracking for taskbars.
• Optional Quickshell feature protocols: keyboard-shortcuts-inhibit-v1 and wlr-gamma-control-v1.

Rendering and game features

Close the compositor gap for games and fullscreen video while keeping the default desktop safe.

• Per-output frame-time, presented/zero-copy/vsync/missed, scanout, and tearing counters, with tessa-ctl perf --watch and tessa-ctl rendering.
• Direct scanout for full-output fullscreen clients, hiding the background, lower layer surfaces, other visible clients, and the candidate’s blur node while a single render-list entry is possible.
• Opt-in wp-tearing-control-v1 with per-window rules, a driver test-commit, and a normal-flip fallback.
• Gated linux-drm-syncobj-v1 explicit sync when renderer/backend timelines and a backend DRM fd are available.
• Investigate HDR/color management: wlroots 0.20 exposes color-management v1 and output color transforms, but Tessa’s GLES2/scenefx path and the absence of tone mapping require a Vulkan-renderer design first.
• HDR output and tone mapping on a Vulkan renderer.
• Record a GPU/driver validation matrix (Intel i915, AMD, NVIDIA, vmwgfx) for scanout, tearing, and explicit sync.

Layout expansion

Close the layout gap with Niri and MangoWC without changing the default experience. The original four modes and four-mode Super+T cycle remain the default.

• Scrolling layout: a Niri-style horizontal column strip with multiple windows per column, proportional or fixed column widths, width presets, maximization, focus centering, consume/expel, and groups as tabbed columns.
• Animated viewport following (animation_view_ms) and per-workspace/output default-column-width and center-focused-column tuning.
• Monocle layout and a Deck-style stacking layout (master area plus overlapping stack cards).
• Dynamic insertion reorder (reorder, swap), directional moves, and window moves inside scrolling columns.
• Mouse placement: Super+left-drag reorders tiled windows with a drop-target highlight; in scrolling it inserts columns. Super+wheel scrolls the viewport.
• VIEW/COL state lines, JSON fields, and tessa-ctl wrappers for columns, consume/expel, swap, and reorder.
• Validate Scrolling, drag reorder, and wheel scrolling in a real DRM/libinput session, including fractional scaling and touchpad gestures.

Extension and shell foundation

Keep the process-based extension model while giving extensions identity, ordering, and visible state.

• Central API registry (src/api.zig) for line, JSON-RPC, state/config, layout, effect, and extension protocol versions.
• Config-declared supervised extensions with API versions, token scopes, requires/after dependency sorting, pidfd restart backoff, lifecycle events, tessa-ctl extensions, and JSON state.
• Panel module ownership (panel_modules) for background, bar, launcher, popovers, notifications, toasts, tray, media, and audio, including notification-owner gating and supervisor restart on mask changes.
• Extensions popover with runtime enable/disable.
• Extension API v1 stabilization: fail-closed HELLO, token rotation and revocation, ready timeout, dependency readiness/order, JSON diagnostics, and a conformance test plus stability contract.
• Effect-helper protocol v2: key=value partial overrides, tint, per-window animation durations/curves, and v1 compatibility.
• animation_view_curve, last-applied effect caching, and effect_applies/effect_skips/blur_nodes counters.
• Long-lived background shader frame stream with uniforms.
• Per-window GPU shaders through a custom renderer design.
• Schema-driven per-extension settings forms and persistent runtime toggles.
• Sandboxing, signatures, and a marketplace/update mechanism.

0.1.x — make the foundation trustworthy

• Run on DRM + libinput on the target machine and fix layout/input issues. Verified on Arch Linux with a real eDP-1 DRM session, keyboard/mouse, IME, XWayland clients, and the built-in bar. Per-device touchpad tuning and VRR/adaptive-sync remain tracked as hardware-specific follow-ups.
• Automated headless coverage for bar workspace clicks, window-chip right-click close, floating drag/resize, click-to-focus, and launcher typing (tests/interaction.sh, using wlr-virtual-pointer-v1).
• Fullscreen, xdg client popups, clipboard, and multi-window focus are covered by tests/interaction.sh, tests/popups.sh, and tests/clipboard.sh. Physical keyboard/mouse behavior is covered by the Arch DRM validation above.
• Fix transient client repaint gaps after float/resize. Interactive grabs now re-arrange and publish final geometry on release; visual validation during the drag still needs a real display.
• Add a small integration test that starts the headless compositor and asserts state/IPC and extension hooks (tests/smoke.sh).
• Decide the license (MIT).
• Arch PKGBUILD and Debian packaging definitions, with the wlroots version explicitly pinned by the build and package dependencies.
• CI-built signed packages and release artifacts.

0.2 — input and apps

• zwp_text_input_v3 + input-method-v2 support (Fcitx5/Mozc), including input-popup placement and launcher IME input.
• XWayland through xwayland-satellite, with automatic display selection, DISPLAY export, xdg-decoration, and a fallback keyboard for headless startup.
• Layer-shell popup rendering (menus from third-party layer clients).
• Keyboard layout, variant, model, options, and repeat settings in config.
• Touchpad gestures: workspace swipe and launcher swipe, with adjustable finger count and thresholds; other gestures are forwarded to clients.
• Touch input (seat touch capability, scene hit-testing, panel touch UI) and tablet-v2 tools/pads (pen pressure, tilt, rotation, buttons, pad rings and strips). Physical touch/tablet hardware validation is still needed.
• Relative pointer (relative-pointer-v1).
• Pointer constraints (pointer-constraints-v1), including activation on focus, locked and confined pointer motion, and cursor hints.
• Primary selection (wlr_primary_selection_v1).
• XIM integration for X11 applications: exports XMODIFIERS, waits for the X display, and can start a configured XIM server.

0.3 — shell and desktop integration

• Bars on every output; per-output active workspace.
• Process-based extension API: tessa-ctl, structured event stream, config hooks, and startup commands.
• Custom bar status segments with optional click commands.
• Config includes and custom launcher entries.
• Battery and network indicators.
• MPRIS media chip and controls.
• Tray / StatusNotifier integration: watcher/host, item icons, status, activation, and a keyboard tray popover. DBusMenu menus are still pending.
• Audio volume controls through wpctl, pactl, or amixer, with a bar indicator, popover, and configurable command overrides.
• Calendar/clock popup.
• Power menu with configurable lock/suspend/reboot/shutdown commands.
• Session lock (ext-session-lock-v1).
• Idle inhibit, idle notifications, and output-power management (external swayidle/wlopm).
• Screenshot UI: region/full-output capture through wlr-screencopy, saved as PNG.
• xdg-desktop-portal integration and PipeWire screen sharing: screencopy, linux-dmabuf, output capture sources, image-copy capture, foreign-toplevel lists, and a packaged tessa.portal selector for xdg-desktop-portal-wlr. End-to-end monitor ScreenCast is tested; window capture depends on the portal backend’s protocol support.
• Notification daemon: org.freedesktop.Notifications toasts with replacement, close, expiry, action buttons, default activation, image-data/icon-name icons, Pango markup, and routing to the focused output.
• Clipboard history for text, using wlr-data-control-v1 (memory only).

0.4 — visual and layout depth

• Window open and workspace transition animations, with animations, animation_ms, and reduce_motion settings.
• Window close animations and scale/fade easing snapshots for compositor-initiated closes.
• Rounded corners and backdrop blur through the default scenefx 0.5 renderer (GLES2; -Dscenefx=false keeps the plain wlroots scene).
• Window drop shadows using layered scene geometry (shadows = true).
• Theme/config for bar height, margins, fonts, and palette.
• Configurable wallpaper gradients (bg_top/bg_bottom) and an art toggle (wallpaper_art).
• Grid and equal-column layouts, with per-workspace layout profiles and runtime layout cycling.
• Mosaic minimum-size fallback and keyboard floating resize.
• Persist runtime per-workspace layouts and propagate config reloads to existing outputs.
• Output mode/position/scale management via wlr-output-management-v1 (wlr-randr).
• HiDPI-aware panel buffer scaling for integer output scales.
• Persist output mode, position, scale, and transform across restarts.
• Fractional desktop scaling through wp_fractional_scale_v1, including runtime scale changes. XWayland scaling uses xwayland-satellite’s fractional-scale support.
• Multi-monitor workspace pinning with workspace_pin, including cross-output window moves.

0.5 — deep customization

• Declarative window rules (app-id/title/output patterns; float, fullscreen, workspace, size, and position actions).
• Rule re-evaluation on config reload.
• Layout tuning: master count, mosaic ratio/minimum, fixed grid columns.
• Active/inactive border colors.
• tessa-ctl config for effective configuration and parsed-rule inspection.
• Per-workspace layout, gap, and master-ratio rules.
• Per-output layout/gap rules (output-rule, optional ws=), with output+workspace precedence over workspace rules.
• A long-lived external layout-helper protocol with a timeout, restart, and built-in fallback.
• Configurable animation/effect hooks (animation-start, animation-done, close-animation-start, close-animation-done).
• Config validation with file/line diagnostics, tessa-ctl config-check, and transactional reload (failed reloads keep the previous config).
• JSON state/config output with documented schema: 1.

0.6 — customization depth

• Regex/boolean window-rule expressions and per-rule decoration colors.
• Named input modes with mode-specific bindings and enter-mode.
• Leader-key/chord sequences and per-mode timeouts.
• Per-output theme rules and named workspace/output profiles.
• Layout-helper v2: per-output instances, asynchronous/coalesced updates, focus/urgent metadata, and protocol version negotiation.
• Config-defined event-to-action rules for policy automation.
• Theme role system and configurable, reduced-motion-aware animations.
• JSON-RPC/event stream with request ids and capability negotiation.
• Interactive config editor/check with diff preview.

0.7 — customization parity

The target is to make the core Hyprland/Niri customization surface expressible from one validated Tessa config, with live reload and without embedding a JavaScript or plugin VM. Both 0.6 items (layout-helper v2 and the interactive config editor/diff preview) are complete; 0.7 builds on them.

• Automatic config reload through inotify, with debounce and transactional validation. A failed edit keeps the previous configuration.
• Motion v2 curves: named cubic-bezier definitions, per-kind curves, configurable open/workspace offsets, and close scale/fade.
• Motion v2 extensions: normalized spring curves (spring = name, damping, frequency) and per-window animation enable, duration, and curve overrides.
• Window and layer rule v3: per-window opacity, rounding, blur, shadow, and border width; layer-shell rules; reactive decorative re-evaluation on title/app-id changes. Structural actions remain map/reload-time.
• Named workspaces: global non-numeric names used by bar pills, bindings, IPC commands, and window-rule workspace=, with deferred resolution.
• Scratchpad overlay: per-output hidden floating windows assigned by rule or command, toggled from bindings/IPC, with focus and visibility handling.
• Special named workspaces beyond the scratchpad overlay.
• Window groups: tabbed groups of tiled windows on a workspace, tab cycling through Super+Tab, group add/remove, and IPC control. Groups are runtime state and are not persisted.
• Input/output policy: per-device touchpad/mouse rules (tap, natural scrolling, acceleration, scroll method, button map), monitor rules by make/model/serial, VRR/adaptive-sync policy, and cursor theme/size. Verified through config/JSON tests; physical touchpad and VRR behavior remains part of the hardware validation pass.
• Wallpaper image sources: PNG backgrounds with cover/contain/stretch fit, live reload, and fallback to the generated gradient/art.
• Shell v2 remainder: composable bar modules/layout, per-surface font and color roles, wallpaper shader sources, and layer-rule-aware popovers and toasts.
• Shell extension surface: directory theme packages with hot reload, declarative widget popovers attached to external status entries, and priority-based built-in bar overflow with a clickable hidden-module list.
• Shader/effect hooks through the long-lived process protocol; no in-process plugin VM.
• Performance guardrails: headless benchmarks and a frame-time budget for blur, rounded corners, and animations on the target laptop. tests/performance.sh measures animation-only and full-effect workloads; the target-laptop budget remains part of the hardware validation pass.

The success criterion is that a typical Hyprland/Niri theme and workflow can be reproduced from one Tessa config, changed without logging out, and extended through the process API. The goal is coherent expressiveness and validation, not feature-for-feature plugin parity.

1.0 — stability

• Config validation with useful errors and transactional reload, plus offline preflight (tessa --check-config [file]).
• JSON state/config snapshots with schema version 1.
• IPC line-protocol version negotiation and JSON-RPC request ids. HELLO negotiates line protocol 1; legacy command-only clients remain compatible.
• Fuzzing and sanitizer boundary runs of config and IPC parsers. tests/fuzz-parsers.sh mutates config files and the live line/IPC parser; tests/fuzz-asan.sh repeats the pass with the system ASan runtime preloaded. Zig has no compiler-level ASan instrumentation in this setup, so this is an allocator/interceptor pass over the Debug-safety build.
• Crash recovery for the panel. One supervisor per output uses pidfd exit detection and bounded exponential backoff; deliberate shutdown and output removal do not restart it (tests/panel-recovery.sh).
• Strict helper timeout guarantees: layout helper 100 ms and effect helper 200 ms by default, hard-failing to built-in/rule fallbacks (tests/helper-timeouts.sh).
• Documentation with a full user guide and theme guide.
• Reproducible packages and a release process.

Reliability-first design for visual parity

Visual parity with Hyprland/Niri/MangoWC/ShojiWM is a direction, not a reason to weaken the core:

• Every visual feature must remain optional and declarative. Scene effects, animation curves, layer rules, and process helpers have built-in fallbacks.
• External helpers are time-bounded and never block the Wayland event loop. The 100 ms layout and 200 ms effect contracts are regression-tested.
• Config changes are preflightable offline and transactionally reloaded; a bad edit cannot replace the running config.
• The panel is supervised, so shell/visual work cannot take down the bar for the session.
• New effects must keep the headless performance and fuzz suites green. Visual parity work should add tests in the same style as niri-visual-tests, not only screenshots.

Non-goals

• Embedding a TypeScript/JS config runtime or a native plugin VM. Tessa’s answer to ShojiWM-style composition is declarative rules plus process protocols, so extensions do not load code into the compositor.
• Chasing every Hyprland effect/plugin. Tessa should stay a coherent, quiet desktop rather than a bag of effects.
• A built-in terminal. Kitty/foot are better terminals than a rushed one, and the user explicitly allowed using one.