Roadmap

Where Stow is, what's left to reach — and pass — ArcZip Pro's feature set, and what hasn't been
tested yet. Feature-by-feature status lives in PARITY.md; the design rules every item
must follow are in DESIGN.md.

Last updated 2026-10-20, after wave 1 landed on main (156 automated tests passing).

Where we are

Works today (wave 1): real archives open, browse, preview and extract through a sandboxed 7-Zip
engine; real thumbnails, Space-bar Quick Look, hover previews, column view, back/forward, path bar,
path search with a background index, nested archives, legacy filename encodings; packing to ZIP, 7Z
and TAR variants with levels, encryption, split volumes and Windows-safe names; Finder Quick Look
for 34 archive types, Finder menu, Services, default-app settings, launch at login; disk images
without mounting; app/font/PKG installs with signature checks; Extract All options, conflict
handling and batch extraction; password prompt with retry.

Not yet: everything in the tables below. Stow has no signed build and no release yet — it
has to be built from source.

Goal

Every ArcZip Pro capability, free and open source, with a design that is calmer and clearer:
plain-words Checkup on every archive, the Pack sentence instead of option dialogs, one right next
step instead of menus, Liquid Glass used for floating controls only, and no animation on anything
done a hundred times a day.

Wave 2 — the remaining ArcZip Pro features

Each item is sized for one focused session, on its own branch, merged through an integration branch
with the full test suite and light/dark screenshot review (as wave 1 was).

E. Editing archives

• Add, delete, replace and rename items in ZIP / 7Z / TAR; Save; undo/redo for every edit.
• Edits are staged; the original is replaced only by an atomic swap after a successful write, with
  rollback on failure.
• Detect the archive changing on disk while edits are pending → Reload or Save a Copy.
• Rename the archive itself (including SMB/NAS shares); keep the browsing position after saving.
• Read-only formats (RAR, DMG, ISO, packages) say so and offer "Extract and repack as ZIP/7Z".
• Done when: round-trip tests for every editable format, including cancel mid-save and a
  simulated write failure leave the original byte-identical.

F. Glance — the compact window (ArcZip "Mini")

• Opens near the pointer (clamped to the screen), browse and extract in a small window.
• Pin on top; switch Glance ↔ full window keeping folder, selection and history.
• Setting: open in Glance by default from Finder and Quick Look.
• Liquid Glass material with a solid fallback for Reduce Transparency.
• Done when: snapshots at every screen edge, both themes; switching preserves state (tests).

G. Tray in the menu bar (ArcZip "File Box")

• Menu-bar icon; Tray appears while something is dragged and hides after a configurable idle time;
  pin open.
• Folder browsing, previews, multi-select, drag out.
• Actions: Pack, Extract, Collect into a Folder (then rename), Share, Reveal, Send to the main window.
• Border-colour setting.
• Done when: every action works on real files; drag-in/out tested by hand (see Tests not yet run).

H. Settings, onboarding, updates, translation

• A Settings window hosting the panes that already exist as standalone views (Extraction,
  Installing, File Types, Integration) plus: General (appearance, default view, CPU cores),
  Packing defaults (audience, level, volume size), Hover previews on/off, Glance, Tray, Passwords
  (show by default, for Chinese/Japanese input methods), Advanced (temporary-file usage and
  clean-up, reset all preferences), open-source licence viewer.
• First-run onboarding: what Stow does, file associations, Finder extension, Tray — skippable,
  re-openable from Help.
• Updates with Sparkle (appcast on GitHub Releases); installs wait until running tasks finish.
• Simplified Chinese localization via String Catalogs, with a layout check of every screen.
• Done when: every setting key has a control; screenshots of every pane in both languages and
  themes.

Wave 3 — smaller gaps and going further

Design polish (applies across waves)

Release engineering

Unimplemented features (summary)

Everything marked ⬜ or 🎨 in PARITY.md:

• Editing existing archives (add/delete/replace/rename, save, undo, change detection, rename archive)
• Glance compact window (near pointer, pin, switch with state, open-by-default)
• Tray in the menu bar (auto-show, idle hide, pin, collect-into-folder, share, send to window, border colour)
• Settings window and every Settings control (General, Packing defaults, volume size, CPU cores,
  hover toggle, password display, temp-file clean-up, reset, licence viewer)
• Onboarding, Sparkle updates, Simplified Chinese
• Next Steps customisation and alternative-actions list
• iCloud placeholders, Open Recent, search across nested archives, extension ≠ format warning
• Reading files from other apps' containers, error codes for support
• DMG creation; TAR.ZST creation (blocked upstream)
• App icon; signed, notarized, universal release

Tests not yet conducted

Automated tests cover the engine, packing, extraction, placement/conflicts, signatures, hand-off
tokens, associations logic, browsing, search, encodings and passwords (156 tests). The following
have not been done and must be before a 1.0: