Roadmap

Superseded as the build order on 2026-07-22. Work now proceeds feature by feature as vertical slices, driven by the feature:* labels and the table in CLAUDE.md. This document is kept for its reasoning about what each capability is worth and what has to be true before it ships, which the feature order still relies on. Where the two disagree about sequence, CLAUDE.md wins.

Milestones ordered so each one is independently useful. No milestone exists purely as scaffolding for the next.

M0. Spike, one week

Prove the two assumptions everything else rests on.

• Informers across three kubeconfig contexts in one process, with lazy connect and idle disconnect.
• Grouping engine over a real cluster, producing an app list a human recognizes.

Exit criteria: kubeside prints a correct app list for three contexts, in under 1.5s from first connection, in a terminal. No UI.

Kill criterion: if grouping produces results developers do not recognize as their apps, the whole product thesis is wrong and the spike ends here.

M1. Apps and logs

The first release worth installing. Serves Ana.

• Screen 1: app list, single environment, health per the spec's derivation table
• Screen 4: whole-workload log streaming, merged, filter, follow, permalink
• Container filter with mesh sidecars hidden by default
• Log availability edges marked: rotation, one restart back, deleted pods
• Metrics source interface with metrics-server and none
• Design system tokens, both themes
• Command palette
• macOS and Linux binaries, Homebrew tap

Exit criteria: Ana reads logs for a three-replica deployment without opening a second tab.

M2. Time

The differentiator. Serves Marina.

• History reconstruction from ReplicaSets, ControllerRevisions, Helm release secrets, pod lastState, and events
• Live event ingestion and change detection over informer deltas
• Screen 2: app detail with the timeline
• Horizon markers: session start, and where reconstruction ran out, with cause
• Actor attribution from managedFields
• Time-range selection binding logs to the timeline window
• Session ring buffers with a byte cap and oldest-first eviction

No storage layer. kubeside writes nothing to disk, which removes SQLite, schema migrations, retention policy, and the whole system-of-record question from the project. Decision recorded 2026-07-22 in 04-multi-cluster.md.

Exit criteria: opening kubeside cold against a cluster it has never seen produces a populated timeline covering the last ten rollouts, with its knowledge boundary visibly marked.

M3. Environments

Serves Rafael and Bruno. The multi-cluster work in 04-multi-cluster.md.

• Environment model, inference from context names, config file
• Promotion view with drift detection and digest comparison
• Per-environment RBAC resolution
• Prod guardrails: color, write policy, typed confirmation, break-glass
• Watch tiering and per-context circuit breakers

Exit criteria: "is the fix in prod" answers in one glance, and no single control mutates more than one environment.

M4. Configuration

Completes the four screens. Serves Ana and Rafael.

• Screen 3: resolved configuration with provenance per row, one tab per container
• Secret masking with per-key permission gating and reveal logging
• Diff against a previous revision, scoped to what ReplicaSets preserve, with unrecoverable cells labeled
• Cross-environment config diff with expected, drift, and missing classification
• Port-forward: start, stop, and list per app, environment color on every forward. Pulled into v1 because the daily loop ends with "now let me hit the service", and its absence is the first thing an evaluating developer notices.

Exit criteria: "works in stg, fails in prod" resolves without reading YAML.

M5. v1.0

Polish and the credibility work.

• Windows binary
• Playwright suite with screenshot diff gate
• Degraded-mode tests: unreachable cluster, expired credential, no metrics, no cluster-scope permission
• Exec through xterm.js, permission-gated
• Documentation site
• Launch: Show HN, r/kubernetes, CNCF Slack

Beyond v1

Not committed. Listed so the ordering conversation happens once.

• --serve in-cluster mode with OIDC and a Helm chart
• Prometheus metrics source
• Argo CD and Flux awareness, showing desired versus live state
• Git SHA resolution from image labels for the promotion view
• Plugin system, and only if a concrete second-party need appears first

Permanently out

Node view. PersistentVolume and StorageClass browsing. RBAC editing. CRD browsing. Helm chart management. Cost reporting. Alerting. Each belongs to an anti-persona in 02-personas.md.