HellionChat/docs/ROADMAP.md

Hellion Chat — Roadmap

Planned work after the v1.0.0 standalone cut. This list is intentionally high-level: concrete specs, size estimates and repro steps live in the internal backlog. External tracking runs via Gitea Issues with the roadmap label once an item is scheduled for a cycle.

Order reflects priority, not a guarantee. Items may shift or be dropped entirely if they turn out to be a poor fit for the plugin's privacy-first scope during brainstorming.

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Next Cycle (v1.4.8)

Hook-Layer Cycle. Receive-suppressed-tells toggle (cross-reference XIVIM #73 bubble-layer sub-task), Database Viewer full-text search via SQLite FTS5, plus preparation for the later Ad-Block cycle. Hook-layer investigation is shared across these items so they cluster naturally in one sub-patch.

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v1.4.7 — Backlog Cleanup and Mid-Features (released 2026-05-13)

Eighth sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. First user-visible feature bundle since v1.4.5. TempTell tabs can now be pinned via right-click; pinned tabs survive plugin reload and character logout, keep their conversation history (loaded on demand from the message store on rehydrate), and stay bound to the same /tell partner. A hard cap of 5 pinned tabs lives in a pool separate from the 15-tab auto-tell pool, total ceiling 20. The sidebar groups pinned tabs into their own section with a divider header, and the sidebar width itself is now configurable in Theme & Layout between 44 and 160 px. Honorific glow outlines render when the title carries a Glow colour, opt-in via Settings → Integrations → Render glow outlines (Honorific) (default off). Honorific's gradient (Color3 / GradientColourSet / Wave / Pulse) is parsed but rendered statically — a later cycle will port the full animation algorithm or land an upstream IPC PR for the resolved frame colour. Configuration.UpdateFrom now preserves the runtime CurrentChannel across the persistent-tab merge, and TabSwitched deep-clones the seeded channel instead of sharing the previous tab's UsedChannel — together they fix a Settings-Save regression where the chat input could pop back to /tell <pinned-partner> after touching settings on a Party or Linkshell tab. Internal items: IPluginLogProxy indirection over Dalamud's IPluginLog routes all ~91 Plugin.Log call sites through a testable proxy, closing the F12.1 test-isolation gap (MessageStore.Migrate0 runs in xUnit now). TempTab counter switched from Interlocked cached field to derived Tabs.Count(predicate). Migration v16 → v17 is additive (new Tab.IsPinned flag). Build-Suite floor 688 → 710 (+22 tests across Pin-lifecycle predicates, pool limits, Tab.Clone roundtrip, MessageStore Migrate0 construction, and Honorific TitleData JSON roundtrip).

v1.4.6 — Code Hygiene and Refactor (released 2026-05-12)

Seventh sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Maintenance patch — no user-visible behaviour changes; tightens the development feedback loop and pulls in two ChatTwo upstream bugfixes. scripts/preflight.sh gains a csharpier reflow check (Block E) and a markdownlint pass (Block F), so style drift and markdown violations are blocked at the pre-push gate. FontManager.AddFontWithFallback catch-filter now spans InvalidOperationException and ArgumentException on top of the existing IO triad, with the exception type name in the warning log so the diagnostic path can see which atlas-toolkit throw triggered the fallback. BrandingLinks and IntegrationLinks run a [ModuleInitializer] URL validation pass on plugin load; a typo in a future URL rotation now throws at startup instead of failing silently when a user clicks the broken button. Cherry-picked from ChatTwo upstream f35b7d3: Chat.SetChannel no longer leaks the native Utf8String when the linkshell check rejects the channel (rename to IsChannelOrExistingLinkshell plus wrap-not-return), and Tab.Clone now deep-clones UsedChannel and TellTarget (the previous reference copy let PopOut and Temp tabs mutate each other's channel state). The ChatLogWindow active-tab underline pill scales with ImGuiHelpers.GlobalScale and rounds to physical pixels for crisp rendering above 100 % DPI. Internal items: HellionStyle ChildBgAlpha extracted to a testable helper, Plugin.SaveConfig clones only the temp-tab subset in the snapshot path, SettingsOverview caches the draw-list per frame, Dalamud.Utility.Util static surface routed through an IPlatformUtil indirection (MessageStore's IsWine probe is now testable in isolation). No schema bump, no migration.

v1.4.5 — UX and Robustness (released 2026-05-12)

Sixth sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. User-visible robustness polish plus two doc/test polish items from the audit backlog. Chat-log draw failures now surface as a one-shot notification instead of failing silently. The first-run wizard splits accept from close: OnClose no longer silently sets FirstRunCompleted, and a new footer "Later — keep defaults" button is the explicit path to dismiss without picking a profile. InputHistoryService clears on plugin dispose so the previous session's typed commands don't bleed into the next load. FontManager falls back to the system font path if the embedded Hellion font resource is missing (broken-csproj / dev-build only). The status bar hides the version slot when the chat window is too narrow to fit all five slots without overlap. Plus Plugin.cs:167-168 gains an explicit session-only Auto-Tell-Tab invariant comment with a TempTabCounter.InitFromList pin in the Build-Suite. No schema bump, no migration.

v1.4.4 — Threading and IPC Safety Polish (released 2026-05-12)

Fifth sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. AutoTellTabsService.ActiveTempTabCount switches from a lock-protected LINQ Count to an Interlocked counter kept in sync from inside the existing mutation paths; Initialize() seeds from the persisted Tabs list and SaveConfig's snapshot-restore path calls a new ResyncTempTabCounter() after the mid-step RemoveAll. HonorificService carries per-method threading banners and TryUnsubscribe's log level moves from Debug to Warning. AutoTranslate.PreloadCache is marked IsBackground = true so plugin unload no longer waits for it. Configuration.IsAllowedForStorage logs once per unknown ChatType via a NonSerialized HashSet, and PrivacyPersistUnknownChannels default flips to true for new installs. No schema bump, no migration.

v1.4.3 — Plugin-Load Async-Init + Repo-Cutover (released 2026-05-08)

Fourth and largest sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Plugin migrated to Dalamud's IAsyncDalamudPlugin API: the constructor handles only bootstrap essentials (config load, language init, conflict detection); migrations, service allocations, window construction and hook subscription move to LoadAsync. Schema gate replaces the v9 → v16 migration chain; configs on schema v16+ load directly, older configs trigger an "install v1.4.2 first" error. AutoTranslate.PreloadCache moved off the load path. FontManager.BuildFonts runs sync at the start of LoadAsync; Dalamud rebuilds the font atlas on its own pipeline. Custom-repo URL cut over to gitea.hellion-forge.cloud; the GitHub repo remains as a frozen v1.4.2 snapshot. Plugin load time sits at ~3.7 s median (5 reloads), comparable to v1.4.2 — the async migration is a foundation for v1.4.4 lazy-init optimisations rather than an immediate user-perceived win.

v1.4.2 — ChatLog Frame-Hot-Path (released 2026-05-08)

Third sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Per-frame allocations eliminated from the ChatLogWindow render path and the settings status bar. Card-mode border loop in DrawMessages hoists five invariants into a pre-loop hoist; AutoTellTabTint gets a per-tab cache via TabTintCache (separate validation keys per cache, no cross-invalidation); status bar moves the cache-gate check before the aggregation and replaces LINQ Sum+Count with a single-pass foreach.

v1.4.1 — Theme Engine Performance (released 2026-05-08)

Second sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. ABGR cache pre-computed on theme records; HellionStyle.PushGlobal reads from the cache instead of converting per slot per frame. ~13 % render-time recovery in smoke tests (plan estimate of 2–6 % was conservative; real result ~10–15 %). Custom-theme hot-reload survives transient file locks via last-known-good snapshot. Plus: Synthwave Sunset as the tenth built-in, author credits consolidated under Hellion Forge, Mint Grove + Forge Merchantman credited to Carla Beleandis as a community thanks.

v1.4.0 — Critical Lifecycle Fixes (released 2026-05-07)

First sub-patch of the v1.4.x Polish Sweep series. Seven P0 findings from audit passes 3 and 4 resolved: async-void loads, missing IsBackground flags, GC.Collect in Dispose, deferred-save race and pre-v13 backup lookup for WindowOpacity. No schema bumps, no user-facing behaviour changes other than reload and shutdown running noticeably cleaner.

v1.3.0 — Plugin Integrations: Honorific (released 2026-05-07)

First cycle of the plugin integrations roadmap. Honorific custom titles displayed in the chat header with auto-detect and silent fallback. New Integrations settings tab. Pattern-setter for the five following cycles (Context Menu, NotificationMaster, RP Status Block, ExtraChat, XIVIM).

Spec: Plugin Integrations Overview

v1.2.3 — Theme Expansion (released 2026-05-06)

Four new built-in themes: Night Blue, Indigo Violet, Forge Merchantman, Hellion Spectrum (Deuteran/Protan-safe). No engine changes. See docs/CHANGELOG.md.

(v1.2.2 was burned because the repo.json manifest was not bumped in sync on the first push — re-released as v1.2.3 with full manifest synchronisation.)

v1.2.1 — Settings Cleanup (released 2026-05-06)

Settings re-sorted thematically (9 cards), 4 dead settings removed, auto-migration v15 → v16 without data loss.

v1.2.0 — Layout Refresh (released 2026-05-05)

Top tabs refresh, sidebar tab icons, bottom status bar, card rows as default message render, auto-tell tab hashing.

v1.1.0 — Theme Foundation (released 2026-05-05)

Theme engine with five built-in themes, settings card grid, custom themes via JSON, theme authoring docs. Plugin icon updated to Hellion Forge hammer. See docs/CHANGELOG.md for details.

Items from the original v1.1.0 plan (ad-block / spam filter, receive-suppressed-tells toggle) were deferred in favour of the theme engine — both items live on in the mid-term block.

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Mid-Term (v1.4.x+)

• Plugin Integrations Roadmap (Cycles 2–6) — six plugin integrations planned; Honorific (Cycle 1) is live, followed by Context Menu, NotificationMaster, RP Status Block, ExtraChat and XIVIM in their own cycles. Spec and cycle order in Plugin Integrations Overview.
• Ad-Block / Spam Filter — hybrid concept combining a lightweight built-in filter with optional NoSoliciting IPC integration. Addresses ad-spam in public channels and tells. Deferred from the v1.1.0 plan.
• Receive-Suppressed-Tells Toggle — auto-tell tabs trigger even when a third-party plugin (e.g. XIVMessenger) globally suppresses /tell display. Same hook layer as ad-block, so they are bundled.
• Database Viewer Inline Search — full-text search in the DB viewer via SQLite FTS5. Currently only date and channel filters are available.
• TempTell Persistence — pin toggle on TempTell tabs so selected tells survive a relog. Tester request from Jingliu.
• FontManager Async Refactor — move LoadGameSymFontAsync out of the blocking plugin constructor. Fix cold-start hitching on first plugin load (low severity; plugin is functional).
• Separate Opacity Active vs. Inactive — second slider for inactive window opacity. Upstream declines this; we can decide differently here.
• Failed-Tell Notification — visible message on /tell failure (offline, restricted instance, blacklisted, world-mismatch) instead of silent failure.
• Per-Tab Sound Notification — sound toggle and optionally a custom .wav per tab, with mute-in-combat option.

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Long-Term (v1.x+)

Storage Backends (three-stage confirmation)

• MySQL/MariaDB backend for multi-device setups
• PostgreSQL backend
• AES-256 encryption for sensitive channels with a local key

Linux-Specific

• WireGuard network detection as an optional filter trigger
• libnotify integration for native Linux toasts
• XDG compliance (complex under Wine)

UX and Tab Management

• Regex Tab Routing — route plugin output spam into dedicated tabs, auto-sort tells from specific people. Clearly scoped against ad-block: routing sorts into views, blocking hides globally.
• Auto-Detect Duties — tab switch on duty start via condition flag.
• UX Bundle — vertical tab bar as a layout option, Shift+Mousewheel to scroll tab headers without activating them, global hotkey to close the active tab.
• Configure Tab Title — configurable tab title format (name / name + abbreviated world / full name / custom), overridable per tab.
• Name Display Options — analogous to FFXIV vanilla (full name, first name abbreviated, initials), per-channel override possible.
• Item & Flag Linking — outgoing: Shift-click on an item/flag sends it to the focused plugin input. Incoming: item links and map coordinates are clickable.
• Color Currently Selected Input Channel — tint the channel-selector button in the input bar with the current channel colour.
• Plugin-Disclosure Pre-Send Filter — configurable word/regex list blocks sending with a pre-send confirmation. Protects against accidentally mentioning plugins in public channels.
• Chat Clear on Name Change — on character name change, migrate or wipe local history; default is wipe for maximum privacy.
• Hide Plugin Window on NG+ Screen — extend hide logic to cover additional addon names.
• Kick from Novice Network — mentor niche; context menu entry with confirmation.
• Text-to-Speech for /tell — incoming tells via TTS, optionally per sender, with channel filter and mute-in-combat. Low priority.

Distribution and Branding

• Hand-drawn Hellion logo (currently a placeholder from the Hellion Online Media brand repo)
• GitHub Action for automatic repo.json sync after tag push
• Submission to the Dalamud main plugin repository (in addition to the custom repo)

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Bug Verifications

Carried over from the upstream issue tracker; not yet reproduced or verified in Hellion Chat 1.0.0. Will be tested against the current state when opportunity allows.

• Right-Click Whisper Error in Field Ops / Special Instances (Eureka, Bozja, Occult Crescent, DRS) — upstream #168. Reply helper appears to swallow the @World suffix.
• FPS Drops with Plugin Active — upstream #145. 10–20 % drop since upstream v1.29.19.0. v1.0.0 includes several fixes on the suspected paths; repro test against the current state is open.
• Add Blacklist from Plugin Window — upstream #140. Right-click add-to-blacklist throws "Cannot locate character with that name"; works via vanilla chat.
• DB Viewer Column Sort — State column sorts lexicographically instead of numerically (10 before 2). XIVIM #82; repro in Hellion Chat open.

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Licence Boundary

Hellion Chat is licensed under EUPL-1.2. Concept imports from AGPL-3.0 plugins (e.g. XIV Instant Messenger) are architectural inspiration only — no code was ported. Code imports from the upstream codebase are complete as of v1.4.x because Chat 2 is undergoing a fundamental rework and selective patches are no longer cleanly portable. Status and rationale in UPSTREAM_SYNC.md.