owlry/ROADMAP.md

Owlry Roadmap

Feature ideas and future development plans. For the v2 rewrite story (where 14 packages and the dynamic plugin system went), see docs/RESTRUCTURE-V2.md.

Locked-in for an upcoming 2.x release

Lua-driven configuration — shipped in 2.1

~/.config/owlry/owlry.lua is the canonical config from 2.1 onwards (TOML stays supported as a back-compat fallback until 3.0). Real Lua 5.4 via vendored mlua. The full surface is documented in docs/lua-api.md:

• owlry.set / owlry.providers / owlry.tabs / owlry.theme / owlry.profiles for declarative config
• owlry.provider {} for user-defined providers (Hyprland-style configs-as-code)
• owlry.util.{shell, shell_lines, read_file, glob, env, hostname} host helpers inside provider callbacks
• Hot reload on save via the notify crate — broken edits surface as desktop notifications and keep the previous state live
• owlry migrate-config [--force] — deterministic TOML → Lua migration
• owlry config validate — categorised report (errors exit 1, warnings exit 2)

owlry.set { theme = "owl", width = 850 }
owlry.providers { "app", "cmd", "power", "systemd" }
owlry.tabs { "app", "cmd", "uuctl" }

owlry.provider {
  id = "hs", prefix = ":hs", tab_label = "Shutdown",
  items = function() return { { name = "Lock", command = "hyprlock" } } end,
}

2.2 follow-ups: dynamic (per-keystroke) Lua providers via dynamic = true; owlry.bind for runtime keybindings; owlry.util.http_get.

Widget providers return

Weather, MPRIS media controls, and pomodoro timer were deferred from 2.0 while the widget-row UI is redesigned. They'll come back as a feature group once the placement model is settled. (D20 in the v2 plan.)

Bookmarks return

Firefox + Chromium bookmarks were deferred from 2.0 — the rusqlite dep used to read Firefox's places.sqlite made the AUR chroot build brittle (libsqlite3-sys's bundled feature kept slipping out of the resolved feature graph). Returns when we wire up a pure-Rust path: Chromium's bookmarks file is already JSON, and Firefox exposes JSON backups under ~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/bookmarkbackups/. No SQLite required.

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High Value, Low Effort

Frecency pruning

Add max_entries and max_age_days config options. Prune old entries on startup to prevent frecency.json from growing unbounded.

:recent prefix

Show last N launched items. Data already exists in frecency.json — just needs a provider to surface it.

Clipboard images

cliphist supports images. Extend the clipboard provider to show image thumbnails in results.

Dynamic providers in owlry doctor

Today doctor lists static providers only. Surface the dynamic ones (calc, conv, websearch, filesearch) too.

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Medium Effort, High Value

Actions on any result

Generalize the submenu system beyond systemd. Every result type gets contextual actions:

Provider	Actions
Applications	Open, Open in terminal, Show .desktop location
Files	Open, Open folder, Copy path, Delete
SSH	Connect, Copy hostname, Edit config
Bookmarks	Open, Copy URL, Open incognito
Clipboard	Paste, Delete from history

This is the difference between a launcher and a command palette. The Provider::submenu_actions() trait method (added in 2.0 for the systemd provider) is the foundation.

Result action capture

Calculator shows = 5+3 → 8. Allow pressing Tab or Ctrl+C to copy the result to clipboard instead of launching. Useful for calculator output, file paths, URLs.

Split the 1000+ LOC files

providers/mod.rs, ui/main_window.rs, providers/converter/units.rs are all over a thousand lines each. Carve them into focused modules to make code review and onboarding less painful. (Phase 5 hygiene in the v2 plan.)

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Bigger Bets

Window switcher with live thumbnails

A windows provider using Wayland screencopy to show live thumbnails of open windows. Hyprland and Sway expose window lists via IPC. Could replace Alt+Tab.

Cross-device bookmark sync

Firefox and Chrome sync bookmarks across devices. Parse sync metadata to show "recently added on other devices".

Natural language commands

Parse simple natural language into system commands:

"shutdown in 30 minutes" → systemd-run --user --on-active=30m systemctl poweroff
"remind me in 1 hour"    → notify-send scheduled via at/systemd timer
"volume 50%"             → wpctl set-volume @DEFAULT_AUDIO_SINK@ 0.5

Local pattern matching, no cloud required.

Drop the daemon

After Lua config lands and we profile startup honestly: if the daemon's keep-providers-warm justification doesn't hold up against an mmap'd cache, collapse to a single-process model. Eliminates the socket protocol, IPC types, and most of client.rs + server.rs. (D17 deferred this decision past 2.0.)

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Technical Debt

expr-solver-lib evaluation

The calculator's expr-solver-lib dep is small and old. If it stagnates further or becomes unsupported, switch to evalexpr v13+ which is actively maintained.

Submenu protocol redesign

The SUBMENU:<plugin_id>:<data> string-encoded command is a workable hack. A typed IPC variant would be cleaner — keep the surface in Request::Submenu but stop overloading the command field. (Phase 5 hygiene.)

Double-daemon spawn

Pre-2.0, the systemd unit and a Hyprland exec-once = owlryd could both spawn a daemon. The 2.0 socket-activation path (owlry.socket) eliminates the need for an explicit autostart — verify nothing else still launches the daemon directly. (Phase 5 hygiene.)

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Priority

If we had to pick one for the next release: Actions on any result. It transforms every provider from "search and launch" to "search and do anything". The ROI is massive and the trait foundation is already in 2.0.