mangotune/ROADMAP.md

ROADMAP.md

Tactical roadmap for MangoTune. Update this when UX direction, major milestones, or technical priorities change.

Last updated: 2026-03-25 - the old Studio preview binary has been replaced with a socket-driven renderer, so the remaining roadmap is mostly renderer polish, consistent hot-reload behavior, and manual validation

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Current Status

• Dashboard-first overview is in place
• Managed live preview works through real test apps and a companion preview renderer using a temporary preview config
• Common appearance tuning is now surfaced up front
• Profiles are available from the landing page
• Studio preview scene, load, and FPS-cap controls now live in the dashboard and persist between runs
• Studio preview now uses a socket-driven companion renderer instead of the older CLI-only shader preview
• Dashboard preview state now auto-refreshes instead of only updating on button presses
• Dashboard now includes one-click starter presets for minimal, competitive, balanced, and streamer-style HUD setups
• Sidebar sections now collapse by default for the deeper areas, while search still reveals everything
• Dashboard now also surfaces save state, validation summary, runtime detection, and quick actions in one place
• Sidebar section opening now collapses the others so only one section stays expanded at a time
• Dashboard now also controls preview window width/height for Studio, vkcube, and glxgears
• Main appearance/display/behavior pages have started moving onto a custom control-deck shell instead of stock preferences-page layouts
• Dashboard scrolling no longer accidentally tweaks nearby preview controls
• Profiles can now be deleted from the landing page
• The conflicts experience is now inline instead of opening a second window
• Save is now blocked safely when validation errors exist instead of letting the user fall into a deadlock path
• Raw Editor and Integrations now use the same custom control-deck language as the main settings pages
• Right-aligned HUD previews now get extra width and avoid side-docking so they are less likely to disappear off-screen

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Immediate Focus

1. Dashboard Coverage

• Expand the dashboard so it covers the most common MangoHud workflows
• Keep common metric toggles, preview controls, and visual tuning on the first screen
• Reduce how often users need to open deep schema pages
• Keep refining preset bundles so they feel like strong default starting points rather than generic samples
• Keep refining the workspace/status card so validation and save-state feedback stay obvious

2. Live Preview Reliability

• Keep improving the managed preview flow around real MangoHud processes
• Make reload/restart behavior more explicit when a change does not hot-apply cleanly
• Preserve useful preview preferences between runs
• Keep tightening the studio-renderer workflow and preview-state feedback
• Continue validating MangoHud hot-reload behavior against more real-world options and drivers
• Keep checking whether any non-studio scenes still need reload-to-restart fallback tweaks
• Keep refining preview docking/visibility behavior on different monitors and layouts, especially for right-edge HUD placements
• Keep validating that all starter presets behave correctly when the preview is docked to the side

3. Navigation Simplification

• Make the sidebar feel less intimidating
• Re-group advanced pages more clearly
• Keep full MangoHud coverage without dumping all complexity on first use
• Keep tuning which sections should be collapsed/open by default as the dashboard grows

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Next Milestones

Milestone A — Better Dashboard

• Add quick metric toggles for common FPS/GPU/CPU/memory items
• Add smarter dashboard guidance and page jump-offs
• Improve validation and dependency handling for dashboard controls
• Consider promoting more edge-aware controls like right/bottom gap handling into other relevant pages, not only the dashboard

Milestone B — Preview Studio

• Expand the new dedicated preview renderer/workflow
• Show clearer preview state: running, reloaded, restart recommended, stopped
• Refine studio tuning UX now that renderer load/scene/FPS controls are exposed from the main app
• Consider richer scene presets or staged load profiles
• Unify Studio hot-reload behavior with the temp-config + signal/socket model used by the rest of previewing

Milestone C — Custom Preview Renderer

• Evolve the new mangotune-preview Rust binary beyond the initial particle scene
• Keep it lightweight but configurable enough to create realistic MangoHud load
• Target dark/bright/high-motion/readability scenes
• Default to an uncapped renderer or a very high cap, with a safe default around 500 FPS if needed

Milestone D — Full UX Polish

• Revisit the remaining settings pages and bring them closer to the new visual direction
• Reduce generic libadwaita-preferences feel
• Add more helpful inline guidance for advanced features and config-layer behavior
• Keep tightening copy, spacing, and visual hierarchy across the remaining advanced workflows
• Replace manual MangoHud keybind text entry with real key-chord capture UX in the Keybindings page
• Re-verify docs/MANGOHUD_OPTION_BEHAVIOR.md against upstream whenever MangoHud releases change option semantics

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Longer-Term Ideas

• Scene presets tuned for different classes of hardware
• Better Wayland-friendly preview/window management behavior
• Optional import/export/share flow for profile bundles
• More guided onboarding for first-time MangoHud users

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Risks / Constraints

• A truly embedded real-time preview inside GTK may remain compositor- and platform-sensitive
• MangoHud hot reload behavior may vary by option, so restart paths must remain first-class
• The app still needs to preserve access to the full MangoHud option surface even while simplifying the main workflow

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Change Log

• 2026-03-22 Initial roadmap created after dashboard-first redesign and managed preview foundation
• 2026-03-22 Added the mangotune-preview companion renderer and shifted preview work toward deeper renderer integration
• 2026-03-22 Added dashboard-level studio renderer tuning with persisted scene, load, and FPS-cap preferences
• 2026-03-22 Switched preview launching to track real processes directly and added in-window studio controls plus more distinct scene designs
• 2026-03-22 Added automatic preview-status refresh in the dashboard and safer reload-to-restart fallback behavior
• 2026-03-22 Added one-click starter presets to the dashboard for common overlay styles
• 2026-03-22 Collapsed deeper sidebar sections by default to reduce intimidation without removing discoverability
• 2026-03-22 Added a dashboard workspace-status card with validation summary, save state, runtime info, and quick actions
• 2026-03-22 Made studio preview reload restart safely instead of sending it down a brittle signal path and turned the sidebar into a one-open-at-a-time accordion
• 2026-03-22 Added dashboard preview-size controls, clamped preview docking inside the screen, and started moving deep settings pages onto a custom control-deck shell
• 2026-03-22 Fixed the preset/save deadlock path, added dashboard profile deletion plus smarter width/offset controls, and made layer conflicts an inline page
• 2026-03-22 Brought Raw Editor and Integrations onto the same redesigned shell and fixed Steam launch generation to react live to method changes
• 2026-03-23 Added a right-aligned preview safety path that widens the preview and skips side-docking when the HUD is anchored on the right
• 2026-03-25 Added real hotkey capture UX as a roadmap item instead of treating typed MangoHud syntax as the final keybinding experience
• 2026-03-25 Replaced the old Studio preview binary with a socket-driven mangotune-preview renderer that takes dashboard defaults from env and reload commands over a Unix socket