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pyro-mcp/docs/roadmap/llm-chat-ergonomics.md
Thales Maciel 788fc4fad4
Add second-pass chat UX milestones 
Extend the chat-ergonomics roadmap with the remaining UX work highlighted by the readiness review.

Document a second pass focused on removing shell glue from canonical CLI handoff flows, making the recommended chat-host profile more obvious without changing 3.x compatibility defaults, and polishing human-mode content reads for cleaner transcripts and copy-paste behavior.

Keep these milestones explicitly workspace-first and scoped to product UX, with CLI-only shortcuts allowed where the SDK and MCP surfaces already provide the structured behavior natively.
2026-03-13 10:44:44 -03:00

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LLM Chat Ergonomics Roadmap

This roadmap picks up after the completed workspace GA plan and focuses on one goal:

make the core agent-workspace use cases feel trivial from a chat-driven LLM interface.

Current baseline is 3.6.0:

  • the stable workspace contract exists across CLI, SDK, and MCP
  • one-shot pyro run still exists as the narrow entrypoint
  • workspaces already support seeding, sync push, exec, export, diff, snapshots, reset, services, PTY shells, secrets, network policy, and published ports
  • stopped-workspace disk tools now exist, but remain explicitly secondary

What "Trivial In Chat" Means

The roadmap is done only when a chat-driven LLM can cover the main use cases without awkward shell choreography or hidden host-side glue:

  • cold-start repo validation
  • repro plus fix loops
  • parallel isolated workspaces for multiple issues or PRs
  • unsafe or untrusted code inspection
  • review and evaluation workflows

More concretely, the model should not need to:

  • patch files through shell-escaped printf or heredoc tricks
  • rely on opaque workspace IDs without a discovery surface
  • consume raw terminal control sequences as normal shell output
  • choose from an unnecessarily large tool surface when a smaller profile would work

The remaining UX friction for a technically strong new user is now narrower:

  • the best chat-host profile is recommended in docs, but not yet obvious enough from the default live mcp serve path
  • canonical CLI walkthroughs still need small amounts of shell glue such as python -c extraction of workspace_id and $(cat fix.patch) expansion
  • human-mode file reads are functional, but still need final transcript polish for copy-paste and chat logs

Locked Decisions

  • keep the workspace product identity central; do not drift toward CI, queue, or runner abstractions
  • keep disk tools secondary and do not make them the main chat-facing surface
  • prefer narrow tool profiles and structured outputs over more raw shell calls
  • capability milestones should update CLI, SDK, and MCP together
  • CLI-only ergonomics are allowed when the SDK and MCP surfaces already have the structured behavior natively
  • every milestone below must also update docs, help text, runnable examples, and at least one real smoke scenario

Milestones

  1. 3.2.0 Model-Native Workspace File Ops - Done
  2. 3.3.0 Workspace Naming And Discovery - Done
  3. 3.4.0 Tool Profiles And Canonical Chat Flows - Done
  4. 3.5.0 Chat-Friendly Shell Output - Done
  5. 3.6.0 Use-Case Recipes And Smoke Packs - Done
  6. 3.7.0 Handoff Shortcuts And File Input Sources - Planned
  7. 3.8.0 Chat-Host Onramp And Recommended Defaults - Planned
  8. 3.9.0 Content-Only Reads And Human Output Polish - Planned

Completed so far:

  • 3.2.0 added model-native workspace file * and workspace patch apply so chat-driven agents can inspect and edit /workspace without shell-escaped file mutation flows.
  • 3.3.0 added workspace names, key/value labels, workspace list, workspace update, and last_activity_at tracking so humans and chat-driven agents can rediscover and resume the right workspace without external notes.
  • 3.4.0 added stable MCP/server tool profiles with vm-run, workspace-core, and workspace-full, plus canonical profile-based OpenAI and MCP examples so chat hosts can start narrow and widen only when needed.
  • 3.5.0 added chat-friendly shell reads with plain-text rendering and idle batching so PTY sessions are readable enough to feed directly back into a chat model.
  • 3.6.0 added recipe docs and real guest-backed smoke packs for the five core workspace use cases so the stable product is now demonstrated as repeatable end-to-end stories instead of only isolated feature surfaces.

Planned next:

  • 3.7.0 removes the remaining shell glue from canonical CLI flows with shortcut flags for identifier handoff and file-backed text inputs.
  • 3.8.0 makes the recommended chat-host entrypoint obvious from the top-level docs, help text, and shipped MCP examples without changing the 3.x compatibility default.
  • 3.9.0 makes human-mode file reads cleaner in terminals and chat logs, with explicit content-only reads where summaries would otherwise get in the way.

Expected Outcome

After this roadmap, the product should still look like an agent workspace, not like a CI runner with more isolation.

The intended model-facing shape is:

  • one-shot work starts with vm_run
  • persistent work moves to a small workspace-first contract
  • file edits are structured and model-native
  • workspace discovery is human and model-friendly
  • shells are readable in chat
  • CLI handoff paths do not depend on ad hoc shell parsing
  • the recommended chat-host profile is obvious from the first MCP example
  • human-mode content reads are copy-paste safe
  • the five core use cases are documented and smoke-tested end to end