Roadmap and status

Alvo is pre-v0.1. Everything this site documents runs today and is tested on every change. The standalone image is published from main as ghcr.io/burgyn/alvo:edge, with no release tag yet; no NuGet package is published, so an embedded host references the projects from a clone. This page says what that means for you. The live plan is docs/PLAN.md on GitHub; where the two disagree, it wins.

Where we are

The plan moves in phases, each a GitHub milestone, one at a time:

Phase	What it delivered or delivers	Status
Skeleton	something to build on	done
Quality before code	every test and review gate, set up on empty projects	done
Schema foundation	the descriptor’s JSON Schema, and one entity model with room for a second, dynamic driver	done
Vertical slice	descriptor to tables to a generated REST API, with validation	done
Demo from the start	runnable examples and the end-to-end suites that drive them	done
Admin mode	the dashboard, the rule and hook editors, the schema assistant	in progress
v0.1	the documentation you are reading, the logo, and the release	next
Further components	the rest of the backend-as-a-service surface, by value, including dynamic entities	planned

The release phase also carries the debt on what already ships: known defects, gaps between engines, and the health of the test gates. A release does not go out with a known hole.

What may change before v0.1

• The parts of the descriptor format that are warned or refused. A block this build parses and does not run, such as automation, functions or dynamicEntities, will start doing what it declares when its feature lands; a refused key stops being refused. The list is Capabilities in this build. Today’s honoured behaviour is not what this item is about.
• The Management API’s routes and bodies. It has no OpenAPI document of its own yet; its reference here is generated from the running route table. Expect it to be described, and possibly reshaped, before it is frozen.
• The base URI of the problem types. A refusal’s type is https://alvo.dev/errors/<slug>, and that address does not resolve today. The base may move; the slug after it does not (Problem types explains the mapping).
• The schema’s URL. A descriptor’s $schema and the schema’s own $id, https://alvo.dev/schema/v1/project.json, do not resolve either. This site serves a copy at https://alvo.burgyn.online/schema/v1/project.json; the canonical address may still change.
• The environment-variable names of the container, which become a breaking change once a release tag of the image is published (#233).

What is stable

• The descriptor format version, apiVersion: alvo.dev/v1. The schema’s own rule: within v1 the format only grows; a breaking change becomes alvo.dev/v2.
• The problem-type slugs, the fifteen in Problem types. They are the contract a client branches on, and detail is not.

The Data API’s URL grammar follows PostgREST on purpose, and its known deviations are documented (Data API conventions), but no source declares it frozen before v0.1.

What v0.1 means

v0.1 is the first release: publishing the MMLib.Alvo.* packages on NuGet and a versioned tag of the standalone image, with this documentation. Until then, Quick start runs the image’s edge tag, built from main, and Embed in ASP.NET Core references the projects or a local package feed. Install commands for the published packages appear only in tabs marked available from v0.1.

Known issues

Open defects the documentation pages point to.

Issue	What happens
#103	An entity added through the Management API or the dashboard gets no Data API route until the host restarts.
#340	The standalone host exits with code 139 on an invalid descriptor, instead of the clean refusal and exit code 78.
#343	A dry run of a destructive change is refused like a real apply.
#344	Small inconsistencies: an unverified author on Management API revisions, different statuses for writes to derived fields.
#345	A before-hook may mutate a rollup or computed field, which the apply should refuse.
#350	Filter negation is spelled not.field=op.value, not PostgREST’s field=not.op.value.
#351	A write to a child row recomputes the parent’s rollups without advancing the parent’s ETag, so an If-Match or If-None-Match taken before it still matches.
#354	A request that races a runtime apply can be judged by the old policy and read with the new schema, so a field the apply just made hidden can be returned once.
#355	A write that reaches a database NOT NULL constraint the API did not check first answers 500 instead of a structured refusal.

What comes after

After v0.1, components are added one at a time, ordered by value, each with its contract tests first. The plan names these candidates; none has a date:

• Automation: rules that react to events, with signed webhook deliveries and redelivery.
• Custom functions: scripts and a runtime to execute them, beyond the C# functions an embedded host registers today.
• Full authentication: sign-in providers beyond local passwords, and issuing and revoking API keys (#36).
• Teams and permissions on top of roles, and richer caller context in rules.
• Realtime change notifications and file storage.
• Dynamic entities: record types your own users define at runtime, in one shared store.
• An audit log of data changes, beside today’s history of configuration changes.

Not every candidate becomes its own package: the core stays one package unless a feature brings a heavy dependency, is a real swap point, or ships differently.