roadmap-core

The roadmap graph: status derivation, dependency and relation edges, arc state, validation, and the markdown renderers behind roadmap/ROADMAP.md and ARCS.md.

Stdlib-only and dependency-free, which is the point rather than a nicety. Three properties depend on it:

1. scripts/roadmap.py loads roadmap_core/graph.py by path, so a coding agent in a checkout can read the backlog with no install, no DB, no admin token and no network.
2. The Lucille backend imports the same module, so a status derived by the API and a status rendered into the committed markdown cannot disagree — one implementation, two callers. That divergence is a failure this repo has been bitten by before.
3. It is the extraction seam. The roadmap is being prepared to run as its own product whose default store is a single SQLite file with nothing to provision; a package that pulled in a web framework or an ORM could not be adopted by another repo without adopting Lucille with it.

Storage

store.py is the schema — one SQLite file, CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS on first open, no migration step. stores.py is what you talk to:

Both satisfy the same Store protocol, so a caller never branches on which it holds. ApiStore is constructed with the host's own caller and holds no token, no URL and no urllib import — auth stays entirely a host concern, and test_stores.py asserts that rather than trusting it.

from roadmap_core.stores import LocalStore

with LocalStore("roadmap/roadmap.db") as store:   # created if absent
    store.upsert_item({"key": "a-thing", "title": "A thing"})
    store.claim("a-thing", by="claude/some-branch")

From the CLI, --source local on push, claim, release and status, or ROADMAP_SOURCE=local once. ROADMAP_STORE sets the path.

Adopting it in another project

Measured end to end by tests/test_adoption.py, which runs the CLI as a subprocess against a scratch project with nothing on the path but this package — no backend, no FastAPI, no SQLAlchemy, no Postgres, no server, no token.

pip install "roadmap-core[files]"   # [files] adds PyYAML, which authoring needs
mkdir -p roadmap/items
export ROADMAP_SOURCE=local

That is the whole install. roadmap is a console script that comes with the package — there is nothing to copy. (It used to say curl -o scripts/roadmap.py <this repo>/scripts/roadmap.py, and this repo is private, so the package was installable, importable and useless to anyone outside it.)

Then the ordinary loop, which needs nothing else:

cat > roadmap/items/first-thing.yaml <<'YAML'
id: first-thing
title: The first thing to do
status: ready
evidence: |
  Why this is worth doing, and how you will know it worked.
YAML

roadmap push            # files -> store
roadmap ready           # what is startable
roadmap claim first-thing
roadmap release first-thing

The store is one SQLite file at roadmap/roadmap.db. There is nothing to provision and no migration to run: it is created on first open.

When something is off, ask

roadmap doctor          # is this project's setup actually working?
roadmap --version       # which roadmap-core is this?

doctor exits non-zero when something is genuinely broken and names the remedy. Run it first, because the way this setup fails is by looking fine: the read commands answer from the store, and a store nobody has pushed to is empty, so validate says "ok — 0 item(s), no problems" and ready says the backlog is finished. Both are green, confident and wrong. Same for a command run from outside the project: every path still resolves, and push reports "no item files to push", which reads as an empty backlog rather than as a wrong directory.

Those are the two failures tests/test_adoption.py was written after, and both are one line of doctor output:

FAIL  store       roadmap/roadmap.db holds 0 items while roadmap/items/ holds 7.
                  Every read command will report an empty backlog and call it ok.
                  Seed it: `roadmap push`

Who owns a claim depends on which store you have. On the SQLite floor the file is authoritative: CI rebuilds the store from roadmap/items/*.yaml every run, so push takes a file's claim when it CREATES the item — otherwise a held item renders as ready and sync --check fails for as long as anybody is working. Against a served store the file is a projection of a store that outlives the checkout, so a claim in a file is never pushed: a stale clone would recreate one the store had already released. Either way push ignores it on UPDATE, because the store is the live record of who holds what.

Not guessable from the field's name, which is why it is written down here.

Two things that are conventions rather than choices, both found by doing this rather than by reading the code:

• Your project root is the nearest ancestor holding roadmap/items or .git, so the commands work from anywhere inside it. Set ROADMAP_REPO_ROOT to pin it. Deliberately not bare roadmap/: that is a directory the tool creates, so keying on it let one command run in the wrong place mint the marker that made that place look like a project forever after.
• Authoring is writing a YAML file, not calling an API. push is what moves it into the store; there is no roadmap new. That is deliberate: filing an item belongs in a diff somebody reviews.

ROADMAP_SOURCE=local selects the SQLite store. Without it the CLI expects the API store, which is how Lucille runs it — see roadmap_core.stores.

Agents (MCP)

roadmap-mcp serves the same graph to a coding agent as MCP tools over stdio — ready, list, show, validate, claim, release, set_status. Point a client at it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "roadmap": {
      "command": "roadmap-mcp",
      "env": { "ROADMAP_SOURCE": "local" }
    }
  }
}

There is no extra to install and no SDK underneath. mcp_server.py speaks the JSON-RPC protocol in stdlib, so it is present wherever the package is — which is the same reason the rest of this package is dependency-free, applied to one more caller. An extra would be one an adopter can forget, for a server that needs nothing.

Reads default to the files, so an agent in a fresh clone can ask what to work on with no store, no server and no token. Writes need a store to arbitrate them: set ROADMAP_SOURCE=local as above, or the write tools expect the API store. There is deliberately no files write target — a claim nothing adjudicated is not a claim, and two agents could each hold the same item.

A write tells the agent to commit something, and it means it. claim, release and set_status project into roadmap/items/<key>.yaml, and on the floor that projection is the durable record — an unmerged one is a claim no other checkout can see. The tool result carries the CLI's own words for this under notes.

CI

Copy templates/roadmap.yml to .github/workflows/roadmap.yml. That is the whole CI story for the floor:

push      # files -> store, rebuilt fresh each run
validate  # schema, dangling dependencies, cycles
sync --check   # is the committed ROADMAP.md still what the graph renders?

No schedule, no credentials, no bot identity, no commit back to the default branch, no self-hosted runner. tests/test_adoption.py reads the commands out of that file and runs them, so a template that has drifted from the CLI fails rather than reading as tested.

The third line is the one that earns the workflow. ROADMAP.md is generated but committed — that is what lets an agent read the backlog with no install and no network — and a generated file nobody regenerates is a file that lies.

Do not commit roadmap/roadmap.db. It is derived: push rebuilds it from the YAML on first open, and a binary file in git conflicts on every claim. The files are the record; the store is the transaction that decides who gets one.

Upgrading to a served store

The floor's simplicity comes from one property: the store is inside the checkout, so there is no second copy to drift from. Move the store to a server — so that claims are visible across machines the moment they are taken, rather than when a branch merges — and four things come back, none of which the template can supply for you:

ApiStore is constructed with your own caller, so the auth stays yours (see the table under Storage). Lucille's .github/workflows/roadmap-sync.yml is the worked example of all four, and the reason it is not shipped as a template: almost every line of it is a consequence of Lucille's own deployment, and handing an adopter that machinery for a problem they do not have reads as required rather than as one option.

What is NOT here

HTTP, auth, and the CLI. The graph is pure functions over plain dicts keyed by key, so the same code serves DB rows, API payloads and parsed YAML with no adapter. Lucille's own persistence stays in backend/app/crud/roadmap.py over SQLAlchemy; the two definitions of the same three tables are held together by backend/tests/test_roadmap_store_parity.py, which asserts both the columns and the row dicts the two readers produce.

The package's tests live in tests/ here and import nothing outside the stdlib. .github/workflows/roadmap-core-tests.yml runs them in a job that fails if app, fastapi, sqlalchemy or yaml can be imported at all — the isolation is asserted, not assumed.