Nomarchy/agent/BACKLOG.md

Backlog — the prioritized task queue

The forward-looking half of the old docs/ROADMAP.md, reworked as a queue agents can execute. Detailed design notes and decision records stay in docs/ROADMAP.md (referenced as "ROADMAP § "); this file is what's next, in what order.

Rules:

• Agents take the topmost actionable item (see LOOP.md). Finished items are deleted here — the journal + git log are the record; durable design notes get a ✓-entry in docs/ROADMAP.md if worth keeping.
• Item numbers are stable IDs — never renumbered or reused. A gap in the sequence means shipped (or dropped) work; new items take the next free number regardless of tier.
• Tags: [blocked:hw] needs real hardware (see HARDWARE-QUEUE.md) · [human] needs Bernardo · [stuck] two failed attempts, needs help · [big] must be split before starting.
• Agents may append to PROPOSED and Decisions freely; only Bernardo moves items out of PROPOSED into the tiers.

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NOW

Items 21–26: real-hardware QA findings from the Latitude 5410 (Bernardo, 2026-07-04) — bugs found on metal outrank the queue.

25. swaync text unreadable on summer-day (light-theme contrast)

Reported: on summer-day, notification/control-centre text is invisible (contrast). Root cause (traced 2026-07-04): swaync.nix renders .body as @subtext on alpha(@base, 0.95) — but in summer-day (and flexoki-light) subtext equals/≈ base because those palettes use surface as a dark contrast surface and subtext as text-on-surface, not "dimmer text" (catppuccin-latte-style). summer-day also has surface == text (#5c6a72), so .widget-title > button (@surface bg, @text fg) is self-colored too. Fix direction: swaync.nix should pair roles that contrast by construction — muted (dim-text role in every palette) for body text on @base, and button fg that contrasts @surface (subtext is arguably the right role there) — or normalize the palette semantics across the light themes; audit the other @subtext/@surface consumers (waybar css, rofi) for the same mispairing before choosing. Verify: V1 + a contrast assert over all themes (text≠bg for each swaync pairing); V2 themed-VM screenshot with a notify-send; V3 re-check on the Latitude.

22. Network menu shows nameless/weird entries

Reported: networkmanager_dmenu lists entries with no names (likely hidden-SSID APs rendered as blank rows, possibly other adapters/ duplicate BSSIDs). Investigate its config.ini surface for filtering, or patch the list source; blank rows in a themed picker read as breakage. Verify: V1 (config renders) — behavior needs Wi-Fi hardware → V3 on the Latitude.

24. "Back" audit — every list menu ends in ↩ Back

Reported: some submenu items/tools still lack a Back option. The "Back everywhere" pass covered the hand-rolled dmenu lists at the time; audit what's been added since (VPN, Display, power-profile, printers…) and the external/plugin modules (networkmanager_dmenu, rofi-pulse-select, rofi-calc/emoji modi) — hand-rolled lists get the shared back helper; external modi that can't take an injected row get documented as such (and Esc always works). Verify: V1 + a grep-the-generated-script audit listing which menus have/lack Back; V3 spot-check.

6. Full docs review & restructure

ROADMAP § Full docs review. The roadmap/backlog split is done (this file); remaining: reconcile every README option table against the live nomarchy.* surface; drift pass over docs/OVERRIDES.md, docs/TESTING.md, templates/downstream/README.md; read the install/first-run story end to end; add a short recovery runbook (desktop won't start → boot an older generation / nomarchy-snapshots / greetd journal — the pieces exist, the story isn't written). Site-vs-markdown is a Decision (below). Verify: V0 + a mechanical option-surface diff (eval the options, compare to the tables — consider making that a permanent check).

NEXT

8. Complete-workstation viewers + default applications

New. The template ships mpv but no PDF viewer and no image viewer, and nothing sets xdg-mime defaults — so "open a PDF/photo" falls to whatever GTK guesses (GIMP for images). Two halves: (a) add a themed, lightweight PDF viewer + image viewer to the template's active home.packages (candidates: zathura or GNOME Papers; imv or loupe — prefer what Stylix themes well); (b) a mime-defaults module setting xdg.mimeApps associations (browser/PDF/image/video/text, mkDefault) — real config, so unlike bare packages this is module territory, but it must degrade gracefully when the user deletes a package from the suite. Verify: V1 + assert the rendered mimeapps.list; V3 queue an open-a-file smoke.

9. Update & rollback UX

New; extends the update-awareness story to the other half: what changed, and how do I get back. (a) sys-update prints a human diff of what the update changed (nvd diff between system generations, or nix store diff-closures); (b) a System → Rollback menu flow: desktop = pick a recent home-manager generations entry and activate it (the theme history is already generations); system = point at the boot-menu generation flow + nomarchy-snapshots rather than reimplementing it — destructive steps keep the typed-yes gate. Why: informative + rock-stable means undo is one menu away, not a Nix lesson. Verify: V1; V2 for the generation-activate path in a VM.

10. nomarchy-doctor — one-shot health check

New. A single command (+ System-menu entry) that checks the things that actually break user machines and prints a themed pass/fail sheet: failed systemd units (system + user), disk space (/, /boot, the nix store), state-file parses + is git-tracked, downstream flake dirty/ diverged, last rebuild generation age, snapper timeline running (when enabled). Read-only, no auto-fixing; each failure prints the one command that fixes it. Optionally later: a self-gating Waybar warning fed by the same script. Verify: V2 — a VM check with an induced failure.

11. State-file validation & friendly errors

New; "the user never has to master Nix" must include error messages. A hand-edited theme-state.json (trailing comma, wrong type, unknown theme slug) today surfaces as a raw Nix eval stack. Add (a) nomarchy- theme-sync validate + validate-before-write on every set/apply; (b) an eval-time schema assertion in theme.nix whose message says the field, the problem, and the fix in plain language. Verify: V1 + a corpus of broken-state fixtures round-tripped through validate; V2 if cheap.

12. Screen recording in the Capture submenu

New; screenshots ship, recording doesn't — a standard workstation need. Extend nomarchy-menu capture: record region/full → wl-screenrec (fallback wf-recorder), saved next to Screenshots, with a self-gating Waybar recording indicator that stops the recording on click (the only sane "stop" surface). Optional audio toggle. Parity rule applies. Verify: V1 + bash -n; V2 headless if the software-GL recipe supports it, else V3 queue.

13. Small niceties batch (one slice per iteration)

Each is a small, self-contained polish item in the existing patterns:

• Idle-inhibit (caffeine) toggle: Waybar idle_inhibitor module (blocks hypridle lock/suspend during video/presentations) in the GENERATED bar — summer-night already has one (reverse parity gap found 2026-07-04); add to summer-day too + cheatsheet mention.
• Low-battery notifications: the bar colors at 25/10% but nothing notifies; gate on power.laptop (poweralertd, or a small upower watcher consistent with how the bar reads state).
• Color picker: hyprpicker → clipboard as a Tools › entry + SUPER+CTRL bind; pairs naturally with theme work.

14. Automated upstream lock bumps (maintainer CI, slices b+c) [big]

ROADMAP § Automated upstream lock bumps — the scheduled half (the checks-on-push workflow shipped; see item 20 for the runner status): weekly job runs nix flake update (within pinned release branches) → full check suite → lands on main on green; v1 promotion stays human. Plus the fast-lane note for security bumps. Note the current runner is eval-only (no KVM) — a green bump run guards eval, not the VM suite, until item 20's stretch runner exists.

20. KVM runner → VM suite in CI [human]

The remaining stretch of the CI item — checks-on-push is live and green (run #58; runner = gitea/act_runner docker, eval tier). Register a second runner on a host with /dev/kvm + nix (host-mode label nix-kvm), then an agent uncomments the workflow's vm-checks job: the checks.* VM suite + real toplevel/HM builds on every push (also upgrades item 14's bump gate from eval-only to the full suite).

15. Display profiles — docked/undocked switching

ROADMAP § Display / monitor management, remaining: true profile switching of the same outputs (multi-layout toggles, beyond per-output hotplug rules), optionally workspace-to-monitor binding. Design first (state-file shape, menu surface) — write the plan into this entry before coding.

16. Greeter theming from the JSON

ROADMAP § Greeter. tuigreet themed from theme-state.json at system rebuild (same model as Plymouth's tint). Scope: tuigreet only (no SDDM).

17. Launch-or-focus UX scripts

ROADMAP § launch-or-focus. Hyprland dispatch scripts: a bind launches an app or focuses its existing window. Curate which apps get binds; cheatsheet entries via keybinds.nix.

18. "nomarchy" control center + first-boot welcome [big]

ROADMAP § control center. A single front-end over the common toggles on the same nomarchy-theme-sync surface, + a first-boot guided "pick your theme / essentials" flow. Needs a design pass (TUI vs GUI) → write options into Decisions before implementing. Note: items 9–11 (rollback menu, doctor, validation) are natural panels of it — design them as composable commands, not dead ends.

19. Look & Feel menu category

ROADMAP § Menu system, remaining: group Theme + night-light (+ wallpaper cycle, future appearance toggles) under a Look & Feel submenu once it earns ≥3 entries — keep the root at six.

LATER

• Wallpapers artifact split (ROADMAP § Faster switches — decided, deferred): pinned Nomarchy-wallpapers input so a state write stops re-copying 86 MB. Follow-on: pre-built theme variants if switches are still slow after.
• Installer round 2 (ROADMAP § Installer): multi-disk BTRFS RAID, impermanence, BIOS/legacy boot.
• Boot-from-snapshot: a systemd-boot equivalent of grub-btrfs.
• Night-light geo mode: lat/long auto sunset/sunrise (means wlsunset).
• Per-theme icon overrides / more icon packs (ROADMAP § Icon themes).
• MIPI/IPU software-ISP camera support (no-UVC machines).
• OCR screenshot-to-text: a Capture › entry (grim region → tesseract → clipboard) — cheap once recording (#12) reshapes the submenu.
• Auto-timezone Waybar tooltip showing the detected zone (optional).
• VPN exit-node richer display (country/city) (optional).
• NixOS release bump → v2 [human]: deliberate, hand-edited, never automated; the previous attempt was discarded (2026-06-22) over a Hyprland OOM blocker — see MEMORY.md before retrying (NOW#3 should also soften that blocker class).

PROPOSED (agent suggestions — await human triage)

Agents: append here with a one-paragraph pitch (what/why/cost). Do not implement. Bernardo moves accepted items into a tier.

• Menu parity for downstream-flake options (raised by Bernardo, 2026-07-04, from the hardware sweep): anything the docs or the hardware queue ask a user to hand-edit into the downstream flake (keyboard.layout multi-layout, power.batteryChargeLimit, updates.enable, services.printing, …) should have a menu toggle instead — the in-flake-state philosophy already gives the menu a write-into-the-flake path, and night-light / auto-timezone / auto-commit prove the pattern (incl. rebuild-on-first-enable). Pitch: (a) an audit listing every user-facing nomarchy.* option vs its menu surface; (b) menu writers for the gaps, respecting the toggle-vs-package discipline (bare template packages stay hand-edits) and menu-placement convention (right submenu, root stays short). Values beyond booleans (layout lists, charge thresholds) need a small input UI per option. Cost: audit is one iteration; the writers a few more, sliceable per option.

• Portal/Flatpak camera picker still lists the internal IR sensor (ROADMAP § Webcam follow-up). The shipped IR-hide is a WirePlumber v4l2 rule, but Flatpak/portal apps consume cameras via the libcamera path, where both sensors remain visible — a Flatpak Zoom user can still pick the black IR "camera". Options, roughly ascending cost: (a) do nothing — document it (portal camera support is still rare in practice); (b) a WirePlumber libcamera monitor rule disabling GREY-only nodes — needs verifying that libcamera monitor rules can match early enough (the v4l2 investigation found only device.api binds pre-rule, which is why surgical scoping failed before — same wall likely applies); (c) a libcamera configuration/udev quirk hiding the IR sensor at the libcamera layer itself. Cost: (b)/(c) need a T14s-style RGB+IR machine to verify → pairs with a hardware-queue session. Recommend (a) now, (b) investigated when the T14s is next available.

Decisions [human]

Open calls only Bernardo can make; agents add options/evidence but never decide.

• Formatter adoption: repo deliberately has none; nixfmt-rfc-style would flatten the aligned hand-formatting of ~33 files. Adopt or declare never?
• Docs site vs Markdown-in-repo (from the docs-review item).
• Control center form factor: TUI (gum/ratatui-style) vs GUI vs "the rofi menu is the control center, just add a first-boot flow".
• zram swap: faster under pressure and pairs with NOW#3, but it interacts with the hibernation-swapfile story (resume device/priority ordering) — adopt, adopt-with-hibernation-guard, or skip?
• Default browser: the template comments Firefox out; item #8's mime defaults need something to point text/html at — ship a browser active in the suite, or leave browserless-by-default and let mime defaults degrade?