- UI.5: Panels can detach, join other tab groups, split, resize and redock through shared docking transactions. Custom layouts persist with workspaces, respect workspace locking, and retain collapse flags for intact native groups.
- UI.3: Shared icons, accessible icon buttons and panel tabs come from the pinned `craft-ui` library. Tab overflow stays within narrow panels; document tiling uses bounded shared geometry. Palettes and document commands remain app-owned. Existing strict-Clippy boolean/range warnings are corrected.
- UI.4: Compact toolbars keep colour and mode controls visible while tool rows scroll. Long tool-options rows scroll horizontally and reveal keyboard focus; offscreen geometry and interaction regressions cover all themes and 1×/1.5×/2× display scales.
**Stage: alpha** (ready for real work ~45%). Beta needs ~75% and reliable PSD: ~1,100–1,800 h.
## Alpha gate
The core workflows a typical Photoshop professional runs every day, checked end to end on the main
platform (macOS, 0.6.0), including saving and reopening the work. Any **no**, or a **partial**
that blocks the workflow, would make PhotoCraft pre-alpha.
| Core workflow | Works end to end? | Evidence | Hours to pass |
|---|---|---|---:|
| Photo retouch: open JPEG/raw, heal/clone/remove, adjustment layers, export JPEG, save and reopen | yes | Spot Healing, Healing, Clone, Patch, Remove tools; 16 adjustment layers; raw for DNG/CR2/NEF/ARW/RAF; JPEG export; MCP workflow tests (`automation/tests/agent_tasks.rs`). Quality complaints (#1092, #2104) and no CR3 don't stop the workflow | 0 |
| Composite: layers, masks, selections, blend modes, smart objects; save as PSD and `.pcraft` and reopen | yes | PSD round trip ≥ 169/170, 308/309, 258/256 corpus files; `.pcraft` atomic save and crash recovery. Multi-layer Smart Object conversion (#2604) and mask targeting (#2458) are partial but have workarounds | 0 |
| Cut-out: select a subject, refine the edge, mask, export PNG with transparency | partial (not blocking) | Object/Quick Selection, Select Subject (classical), Refine Edge dialog, layer masks, PNG export. Select and Mask is a dialog, not the workspace; no Refine Hair (#2671) | 0 (depth: 80–140 h, G7) |
| Design: type, shapes, layer styles, artboards; export PNG/JPEG; save and reopen | partial (not blocking) | Point/paragraph type, shapes with stroke controls, all 10 layer effects, artboards, Export As. One macOS report of a 60 s freeze on choosing the Type tool (#2518, not reproduced); no type on a path | 0 (fix #2518: 2–6 h) |
| Paint with a pen tablet: pressure brushes, layers, save and reopen | partial (not blocking) | Pressure, tilt, rotation on macOS (AppKit monitor); every Brush Settings section. Lag with big brushes (#2619) and feel gaps ([brush-parity.md](brush-parity.md)) | 0 (feel: 100–180 h, G4) |
| Exchange PSDs with Photoshop users: open a client PSD, edit, send a PSD back | partial (not blocking for alpha; blocking for beta) | Photoshop-authored oracle 133/256 render as Photoshop does; most exports open in Photoshop (smart objects verified), but some don't (#1281, #2469) | 0 for alpha; 150–250 h for beta (G1) |
**Result: passes.** Every core workflow completes end to end and the work saves and reopens in
PhotoCraft; the partial rows are depth and fidelity gaps with workarounds, not blockers. Ready for
real work is ~45%, inside the alpha band (~40–75%), but close to its floor.
| M5 GPU compositor | 🟡 | wgpu compositor drives the canvas, layer effects, vector masks, artboards, pattern fills and every clip case included (≤1/255 vs CPU); Multichannel documents fall back to the CPU |
| M6 Paint + select | 🟡 | brush engine, all selection tools, multi-layer selection, snapping + smart guides, free transform + warp; stylus pressure on Windows (WM_POINTER via winit), the web (Pointer Events, with tilt/twist), macOS (AppKit event monitor: pressure, tilt, rotation, eraser end) and Linux X11 (XInput2 raw valuators); on Linux Wayland a pen opens the window through Xwayland (native tablet-v2 still open, #79) |
| M9 Text, vector, styles | 🟡 | type engine + Warp Text, shapes / pen / paths, all 10 effects on CPU and GPU (parity ≤1/255, 30/31 corpus effect files on the GPU) |
| M11 Automation + formats | 🟡 | MCP (headless + live bridge), batch, Image Processor, prefs over MCP; DoD test passes (10 agent tasks over MCP, `automation/tests/agent_tasks.rs`); since 2026-10-07 the CLI rejects unknown flags and answers `<subcommand> --help`, batch runs report same-name outputs instead of overwriting them, MCP `command_batch` steps can start background jobs, and headless saves never flatten over the opened file; JP2 / DICOM / DPX / C2PA pending |
| 0.7 "files you can trust" | Current focus 1 plus JPEG Options, AVIF read, Photoshop PDF read | 200–320 h |
| 0.8 "fast enough" | Current focus 2; GPU tiling past the texture limit (#49); complex layout documents | 200–350 h |
| 0.9 "feels like Photoshop" | Current focus 4 and 5; transform context menu; floating panels; Color panel | 300–500 h |
| Beta | All of the above, type depth, Select and Mask / Content-Aware Fill workspaces, Hindi/Arabic/Vietnamese + RTL, bug backlog under 100 | 1,100–1,800 h total |
| Later, needs owner decisions | AI backend (#41), plug-in hosting (.8BF / UXP), scripting compatibility | 550–1,050 h |
| **M1** | Foundation | geom, color (formats, blend math for all 27 modes, sRGB/linear), raster (sparse COW tiles, U8/U16/F32), doc (full type model incl. CMYK/Lab/adjust/smart), ops (history) | Property tests (proptest) on tile COW and history; blend-mode reference tests against published formulas |
| **M3** | Viewer app | codecs (png/jpeg/tiff/webp/gif/bmp/tga/pnm/qoi/exr/hdr, all read+write), CPU compositor, egui shell (menu from registry, canvas pan/zoom, layers panel, history), open/save, native + web build | Opens PNG/JPEG/PSD, shows layers, toggles visibility, undo/redo, saves PNG/PSD; web build loads a file from the browser |
| **M4** | Native format + engine | `.pcraft` bundle, command registry with schemas, jobs/cancellation, snapshots via arc-swap, CLI (`convert`, `run`, `inspect`) | CLI parity tests: every GUI command also runs headless |
| **M5** | GPU compositor | wgpu planner backend, tile residency, parity tests vs CPU (all blend modes), viewport on GPU, mips | GPU vs CPU ≤1/255; pan/zoom 60 fps on a 100 MP / 20-layer document |
| **M7** | Adjust + filters | 16 adjustment layers, first 30 filters, schema-generated dialogs + live preview, actions record/replay | Golden tests at 8/16/32f; action replay determinism |
| **M8** | PSD v2 | adjustment layers, fill layers, lfx2 effects (descriptor parser), text (EngineData) preserve+render, smart objects, vector masks | Composite-oracle pass rate ≥90% on corpus |
| **M9** | Text, vector, styles | parley text layers, shapes/pen/paths, all 10 layer effects on GPU | Visual goldens; PSD text round-trip |
| **M10** | Smart features | `ml` (ort native / ort-web on the web), Select Subject/Object/Sky, Remove BG, Remove tool, content-aware fill, healing, AI denoise, RAW develop | Quality benchmarks on a public dataset; timing budgets |
| 2026-10-10 | minor | Alpha gate table (core-workflow gate from the progress-docs standard): passes, stage stays alpha |
| 2026-10-10 | major | Progress-docs standard: honest assessment and dated measurements moved to `target-app-parity.md`, Affinity notes to `file-format-parity.md`; new Current focus and estimates; `parity.md` renamed `parity-checklist.md` |
| 2026-10-08 | minor | Tools, Affinity import and performance measurements added |
| 2026-10-05 | major | Honest parity assessment added |
