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Nika follows real semver toward 1.0. The latest tagged public release is 0.90.0; this docs build follows main at . 1.0 tags when the release gates are green. Features arrive in 1.x minors. Each version is a quality milestone earned by crate admissions + hygiene vector deploys + ADR promotions.
Canonical source: ROADMAP.md on the main branch. This page summarises the milestones; the full roadmap lives in the repo alongside ADRs.

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Why real semver toward 1.0

1.0 means we stand behind it

0.90.0 is the first public release-candidate. 1.0 is the usable engine we commit to as a stable public API, not a marketing tick. Pre-1.0 the surface is still hardening; 1.0 is the line where the public API is stable and additive from there.

Quality bar stays high

Every crate admits with 12 gates. of crates meet that bar today. Admission cadence is set by the quality bar, not a calendar.

Forward-compat = additive

#[non_exhaustive] on every public type + pre-planted reservations means new features are additive. No breaking change without an Accepted ADR. See forward-compat invariants.

Public accountability

All work happens on the main branch. Every commit is Co-Authored-By Nika 🦋, atomic, bisectable. The engine is the changelog.

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Current state — main v

/ crates admitted · lib tests · hygiene vectors ( green) · ADRs. See live state for the authoritative snapshot.

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Milestones

1.0.0 ships when the gates are green. The language spec (nika: v1 envelope, Apache-2.0) is already public and stable; the engine release candidate already exposes the first-run CLI, four verbs, nika run, LSP, and MCP surfaces. 1.0 is the point where the public API is locked and additive from there.
Target state, reached additively across 1.x minors:
  • All crates admitted past 12 gates.
  • nika binary admitted (L5, <500 LOC composition root).
  • 4 verbs live: infer, exec, invoke, agent (HTTP fetch is the nika:fetch builtin under invoke).
  • providers routed through 1 unified InferRequest, capability rules enforced.
  • 7 shadow zones closed (nika serve input trust · cross-provider structured output parity · binding taint runtime · for_each per-element spotlight · L1 taint runtime · NikaError Display parity · provider parity matrix).
  • nika-catalog-sync shipping catalog freshness (triple-source cross-check: LiteLLM + models.dev + OpenRouter corroboration).
  • nika-lsp L4 admitted — full cross-task binding analysis + taint propagation warnings + DAG preview.
  • Sigstore keyless signing on release artifacts.
No date. The 42-crate architecture, complete across 1.x minors.
Target state when shipped:
  • nika-connectome L2 orchestrator admitted.
  • 9 L1 memory satellites admitted: nika-hnsw, nika-bm25, nika-rrf, nika-fsrs, nika-rdfs-reasoner, nika-temporal, nika-graph-algos, nika-autodesc-minimal, nika-autodesc-full.
  • MemoryStore + EmbeddingProvider trait impls live (reservations from v0.80 → real implementations).
  • Oxigraph as the default backend (ADR-004 Option B) — RDF/SPARQL, W3C-standard, exportable, yours.
  • Agent-v2 with memory-backed recall (FSRS spaced repetition, multi-vector HNSW, RRF hybrid search).
Separate count from the Diamond target — memory crates add on top. No date.
Target state when shipped:
  • nika-wasm-host (L3) + nika-sandbox (L3) admitted.
  • WASM plugin boundary live — community plugins run with fuel metering, Trap taxonomy, capability-scoped syscalls.
  • nika-observability suite: OTel GenAI semconv bridge (ADR-035), Prometheus / StatsD exporters, audit log with tamper-evidence.
  • nika-policy L2 shipping Shield policy engine (prompt injection classification, taint enforcement).
  • pck registry fully live — community workflow packages, signature verification, overlay precedence (User > Pck > Core).
No date. Versions stay honest real-semver tags — there is no marketing version axis.
Beyond the ecosystem tier, Nika continues incrementally:
  • Language bindings (nika-napi, nika-py) — rebuild if demand materializes (currently deferred per POST_AUDIT).
  • TUI (nika-tui) — rebuild in the “Act 3” timeframe if needed.
  • Cross-provider parity expansion as models evolve (GPT-5 family, Claude 5, Gemini 3, etc.).
  • Community catalogs (nika-catalog-cn, nika-catalog-eu) via pck admission gates.
Real semver. Additive across minors, toward 2.0.

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Deliberately excluded

These are not “someday maybe” — they are architectural non-goals. Re-opening requires a new ADR that supersedes POST_AUDIT.
  • nika-sdk — 0 consumers, speculative (POST_AUDIT 2026-04-14).
  • nika-tui — W1 speculative. Maybe Act 3, never before.
  • Proc macros in L0 — Q1 LOCKED. Manual impl + macro_rules! forever.
  • Box<dyn Error> in public API — hygiene vector 19 bans.
  • anyhow::Error in library code — ADR-005. Binary only.
  • Plugins as proc macros — the WASM boundary (ecosystem tier) is the plugin story.

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Governance

1

Every change has an ADR

Significant engineering decisions start as Proposed ADRs, discussed in PRs, Accepted or Rejected. See ADR index.
2

Every commit is atomic + Co-Authored

1 logical change = 1 commit. Co-Authored-By Nika 🦋 always (never Claude). Bisectable history is non-negotiable.
3

Every crate passes 12 gates

No late fixes. No partial admissions. See admission.
4

Forward-compat = additive

No breaking change without Accepted ADR. cargo public-api + cargo semver-checks on every PR. See FCI.

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See also

Releases

Crate-by-crate admission log + Unreleased changes.

Live state

Where the engine is today.

Constellation

Admission queue through Rounds 3-17+.

ADR index

Every decision that shapes the roadmap.