> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mzizi.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Direction and roadmap

> Where the owner has said Mzizi is going, how that relates to the charter's phases, and where the real plans live. Direction, not shipped work.

<Warning>
  **Everything on this page is direction, not shipped work.** Phase 0 is still open, and the
  charter says nothing after it starts until the benchmark gives a real number. The
  [pilots](/pilots) so far have not shown an advantage.
</Warning>

## The owner's direction, 29 September 2026

* **Mzizi builds the whole stack.** It is meant to build the backend as well as the UI, and
  Mzizi's own backend infrastructure is meant to be built with it.
* **The frontend takes one of two shapes.** Either Astro, with Mzizi UI
  ([Mzizi Roots](/roots/overview)) underneath, or pure Rust end to end.
* **Everything built carries a contract.** Components, language functions and backend
  handlers. Today, contracts exist for components only: `mz contract` evaluates a
  component's `contract` block against its own declarations (RFC-0006).
* **A new kill criterion.** Mzizi against the best existing language for each kind of
  task, aiming to rank with the top languages. Not measured yet.
* **Results are always published**, whichever way they fall, in
  [`benchmarks/results/`](https://github.com/mzizi-dev/mzizi/tree/main/benchmarks/results).
  Held-out task texts are published when a task set is retired; their scores are published
  immediately.
* **The benchmark widens.** It will extend to TypeScript and React, Python, Go and C++, on
  frontend and backend tasks. Today it compares Mzizi with Dioxus and Leptos on UI
  components ([the benchmark](/benchmark)).

The RFCs for the wider benchmark and for contracts everywhere are being written in
[`design/`](https://github.com/mzizi-dev/mzizi/tree/main/design) in `mzizi-dev/mzizi`. This
page will not describe them until they exist there.

## How that fits the charter

The [charter](/charter) (v0.2) already widened Mzizi from web UI to general-purpose software
for the agentic world, and merged rendering and edge deployment into one full-stack Phase 1.
The direction above sharpens that scope and raises the bar for Phase 0. It does not remove
the gate:

> If this doesn't show a measurable advantage, nothing downstream matters — don't build
> Phase 1 until Phase 0 has a real number attached to it.

| Phase | What it delivers | State |
| - | - | - |
| 0 | A compiler and syntax prototype, and a benchmark against the best language per task | **Open.** Two pilots run |
| 1 | A full-stack application, UI and server from the same source, on Cloudflare | Not started, gated on 0 |
| 2 | Candle integration for ML inference | Not started |
| 3 | Native mobile, interop first | Not started |
| 4 | Distribution adapters, Astro among them | Not started |
| 5 | Hardware and embedded | Named, not designed |

## What has to happen next

The second pilot listed the fixes to make before a run that tests the kill criterion:
relative paths in diagnostics, hints for React idioms, removing a duplicated fact from the
variant table, a task set that can fail, and fresh unpublished tasks. See
[the pilot results](/pilots#what-has-to-change-before-the-real-run) for where each stands.

[RFC-0007](https://github.com/mzizi-dev/mzizi/blob/main/design/RFC-0007-gap-register.md) is
the gap register: what the charter's scope needs that the language and compiler lack, and
the order to build it in. RFC-0008 took on the first five gaps of its first tier: name and
type resolution, `list(T)`, `record`, `option(T)` and `for each`.

## Where the plans live

[`design/ROADMAP.md`](https://github.com/mzizi-dev/mzizi/blob/main/design/ROADMAP.md) in
`mzizi-dev/mzizi` is the index of every plan in the project. It holds pointers and gates,
not work items: plans live next to the code they plan. The separate `mzizi-roadmap`
repository is archived and points there.