CotalRoadmap
Project (non-normative) · Direction and deferred designs; nothing here is shipped behavior unless a linked page says so. The shipped contract is the spec.
Cotal is pre-1.0. The wire contract (v0.x) may still change under the change process. This page tracks what is deliberately not built yet, and the direction each area is headed.
Where we are
The core is running today: all three delivery modes over JetStream, presence and
discovery, channel replay and durable delivery classes, JWT identity and per-agent ACLs on
by default, a supervising manager with pluggable runtimes, connectors for Claude Code,
OpenCode, Codex, Hermes, Jcode, and pi, the mesh manifest (cotal.yaml), and the console + web
observers. It also includes durable Cotal Lang runs, discoverable service contracts,
CLI structured output, an interactive console launch form and approval-based connections
for personal Claude Code sessions on supported user-auth deployments.
Choose a workflow links the supported paths and their limits.
The stock Linear adapter supports static-auth serving and approved user-auth serving. A hosted installation still has to configure its authority, registration and caller grants. Source support does not establish that an integration is deployed in a particular space.
Deferred work
The table separates implemented parts from remaining work. A reserved shape in the spec or a design proposal does not establish runtime support.
| Area | Direction |
|---|---|
| Signed envelopes + DID identity | Non-repudiation: authenticity that survives an untrusted relay or federation hop, not just a single trusted broker. Instance ids are shaped to become did:key. (SPEC §11) |
| Auth-callout onboarding | Shipped for per-user-auth spaces: the auth service mints scoped creds at connect from the data-account signing key, which a running manager also holds (identity & auth). Remaining: the join-link bootstrap-token variant for static meshes. |
| Credential revocation / TTL | User-auth spaces have it (short bearers, ledger revocation, live-connection eviction); command and daemon creds are bounded and renewed everywhere, and manager-spawned static agent creds are now bounded too (24h TTL, manager renewal, despawn revokes the ledger rows and the control surface refuses the retired incarnation). Out-of-band cotal auth mint credentials also expire after 24 hours by default; --no-expiry explicitly opts out. Remaining: static reconnect-time revocation inside the TTL window (static meshes have no auth callout). (Security model) |
| Sessions + moderator | Managed group membership (admit/remove). Channels today carry no presence roster of their own. A durable channel's membership list decides backstop delivery only, and any agent its read ACL admits can join it (channels & permissions). |
| Artifact delivery | Large payloads move to a per-space JetStream Object Store; the message carries a reference part. The artifact part is defined and setup creates the store, but nothing stores or fetches artifact bytes yet. (SPEC §5) |
Instant offline ($SYS) | Manager-observed disconnect events for immediate offline, instead of waiting out the presence heartbeat window. The heartbeat sweep stays the floor. |
| Host mode (Agent SDK) | Headless sessions with true mid-turn interrupt, observed via the plain stream instead of a native TUI. Documented upgrade path from attach mode. |
| Multi-space brokers | The trust layer already hosts many spaces per broker (one operator signs one account per space, per SPEC §9), and broker-wide lifecycle verbs refuse on a multi-space root rather than scoping to one tenant. Still to build: per-space lifecycle (provisioning a new space through up, per-space teardown/backup) and agents present in many spaces at once. |
| Strict metadata containment | Chat content reads are ACL-bounded today; stream metadata (channel names, per-subject counts) still leaks to in-space agents. Hiding it needs the channel-major stream model. (SPEC §9) |
Connecting spaces (federation)
The rule: never merge trust roots. The staged path, from spaces & channels:
- v0: origin-qualified identity. An additive
name@spacequalifier on the envelope and card, so a remote peer is unambiguous. Cheap, non-breaking, prerequisite for any bridge. - v1: application-level relay. A bridge endpoint holding a separate credential each side issued forwards one channel both ways (loop-marker, identity rewriting, explicit config on both ends), or both parties' delegates meet in a neutral rendezvous space. Works in open and auth mode with no NATS reconfiguration.
- v2: NATS-native. Account export/import (same operator), leaf nodes (cross-operator), mirror/source streams for durable cross-space history ("copy, don't share").
- North star: encrypted group as the boundary. A federated channel as an end-to-end-encrypted group whose membership is keys (MLS-style), relays carrying ciphertext without being trusted, DID self-issued identity. Not built now, not blocked either.
Open questions
- Inbound buffer/policy defaults: queue vs coalesce vs immediate injection.
- Agent-directed control ops: manager lifecycle ops exist; the agent-directed set (directive, set-role, pause/resume) is still open.
- Coordination primitives: settled for the endpoint control surface. v0.4 defines goals and a decision journal, competitive work pools, and leases/obligations (SPEC §13); whether a lighter advisory intent record also belongs on the chat plane is still open.
- Collaboration patterns: manifests declare agents and channel access; Cotal Lang expresses delegation, concurrency and human checkpoints. A separate declarative notation for arbitrary social relationships between agents remains open.
Watch the changelog and releases for what lands; propose changes against the spec first (change process).
Cotal Wire Specification
The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY, and OPTIONAL in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 and RFC 8174.
Publishing a release
Cotal uses pnpm, Changesets and one GitHub Actions workflow. The fixed group in .changeset/config.json versions the public packages together. Examples are private.