docs: refresh ROADMAP structure and competitive landscape#68
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The previous ROADMAP had drifted: about 60% of the content was struck-through (done) items duplicating CHANGELOG history, and the "Competitive features" table hadn't been refreshed since AI Gateway was filed as "planned" — it's been shipped for two PRs now. ### Restructure Old top-level: Current Focus → Up Next → Plugin Backlog (P0/P1/P2/P3) → Feature Backlog (by concern) → Tech Debt → Open Questions → Out of Scope → Competitive Features to Monitor. New top-level: Now → Next → Later (grouped by concern) → Someday / maybe → Blocked → Open Questions → Non-goals → Competitive Watch. Time-horizoned instead of category-first. ### What was cut - All struck-through `~~done~~` rows across every section — they live in CHANGELOG. - "AI & LLM (ADR-0024)" subsection — every item is shipped. - "Compile-Time Safety Gaps" table — all but one row shipped; absorbed into Tech Debt. - "Current Focus" section of all-done items — repurposed as Now. ### Competitive watch refresh (2026-04-20) Researched Kong (3.8, 3.9, 3.14), APISIX (3.15, 3.16), Portkey (March 2026 open-source expansion), LiteLLM (v1.81.x MCP gateway + guardrails), Cloudflare AI Gateway (Universal Endpoint + prompt caching), Zuplo (OpenAPI Overlay + MCP-from-spec), Envoy Gateway (GRPCRoute GA), Tyk (integrated dev portal + Pump analytics), Istio (Ambient GA in 1.24 + Gateway API Inference Extension at KubeCon EU 2026), and Kubernetes Gateway API Inference Extension. Rebalanced the section so AI is one of seven categories (protocol, traffic, auth, observability/DX, spec-driven gateways, K8s/service mesh, AI/LLM) — Barbacane is primarily an API gateway, not an AI gateway. Each row lists competitor + Barbacane's status (shipped, Later, Someday, or non-goal). ### New Someday/maybe items (tagged `[competitive]`) Items competitors ship that we might respond to: - Semantic cache / semantic routing (Kong 3.8, Portkey) - Hard-budget spend enforcement (Portkey, LiteLLM) - OpenAPI Overlay support (Zuplo) - Auto-generated developer portal from compiled spec (Kong, Tyk, Apigee, Zuplo) Result: 247 lines → 250 lines, but the content is all signal — forward priorities and competitive intelligence rather than half a file of struck-through history.
Resolve ROADMAP.md by keeping the new "Now / Next / Later" structure from this branch — completed items from main (transformation plugins, AI gateway middlewares, security plugins docs) belong in CHANGELOG, not in a forward-looking roadmap. Also refreshes README to surface the AI gateway and MCP server as flagship capabilities, regroups the plugin table by concern, and adds an inline x-barbacane-* config example.
Verified against every plugin's config-schema.json and docs/reference/extensions.md: - x-barbacane-dispatch uses 'name:', not 'plugin:' - ai-proxy.targets is an object map keyed by target name, not a list - provider fallback is a separate top-level 'fallback:' list - ai-cost-tracker prices use 'prompt'/'completion', not 'input'/'output' - jwt-auth.jwks_url is unimplemented; example uses issuer/audience - ai-token-limit partition_key uses 'header:x-auth-sub' since jwt-auth writes the subject to a header, not a context key
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Summary
The ROADMAP had drifted:
This PR restructures the file around time horizons and refreshes the competitive landscape using 2026-04-20 research.
Structure change
Before: Current Focus → Up Next → Plugin Backlog (P0/P1/P2/P3) → Feature Backlog → Tech Debt → Open Questions → Out of Scope → Competitive table
After: Now → Next → Later (grouped by concern) → Someday / maybe → Blocked → Open Questions → Non-goals → Competitive Watch
Time-horizoned instead of category-first, so readers see the pipeline before the catalog.
What was cut
~~done~~row across all sections — that history belongs in CHANGELOG.Competitive watch refresh
Rebalanced so AI is one of seven categories, not the centerpiece — Barbacane is primarily an API gateway. Each row lists competitor + Barbacane's status (shipped / Later / Someday / non-goal).
Sources consulted (all 2026 releases verified via WebSearch 2026-04-20):
New Someday / maybe items (tagged
[competitive])Features competitors ship that we might respond to:
Verified against code/docs that MCP OAuth 2.1 + PKCE (covered by existing
oidc-auth), MCP identity forwarding (N/A — we generate MCP from our own spec, not proxy external servers), and circuit breaker (partially covered byai-proxyfallback) are not Someday items — they're already addressed or architecturally different.Test plan
wc -l ROADMAP.md— 250 lines (was 247, but all-signal — no strike-through history).Risk
None — documentation only. Does not touch code or CI config.