weatherreporter/docs/roadmap/future.md

Future Roadmap

This roadmap contains project work that is not implemented. Current behavior is documented outside docs/roadmap/.

Automatic Storm Monitoring

Manual Storm Report generation is implemented through weatherreporter generate storm --start TIME --end TIME. Automatic storm-event evaluation remains deferred.

Proposed direction:

1. detect candidate events deterministically from alerts, forecast discussion, weather story context, hourly thresholds, and material forecast changes;
2. evaluate candidates through Scriptorium or another narrow evaluator adapter;
3. persist storm lifecycle state;
4. generate or update Storm Reports only when a meaningful event is present;
5. suppress ordinary low-impact thunder or rain chances.

Possible lifecycle states:

• none
• monitoring
• active_report
• escalated
• deescalating
• resolved

Acceptance criteria before implementation:

• scheduled reports and manual Storm Reports remain stable;
• candidate detection has fixture coverage;
• evaluator failures are inspectable and do not create noisy report output;
• manual Storm Report generation remains available.

Future Report Types And Modules

The module-based prompt package architecture is implemented. Future work should add only modules backed by implemented upstream facts and clear report needs.

Possible future report types:

• another short-fuse planning report distinct from the implemented Hourly Report, if a separate product is needed;
• event-specific reports with stable event IDs;
• storm review or yesterday-style reports using historical observations;
• archive-focused report variants if generated report history becomes a first-class product.

Possible future modules:

• hourly_table for compact valid-period hourly facts;
• forecast_delta if a separate stanza is useful beyond current Recent Changes;
• weekend_planning if weekend-specific planning guidance needs a dedicated deterministic stanza;
• storm_window_summary if manual or automatic Storm Reports need a dedicated prompt-facing storm-window module;
• separate AFD section aliases, such as afd_key_messages, afd_short_term_text, and afd_long_term_text, if separate stanzas prove more useful than area_forecast_discussion.options.sections;
• SPC, radar, QPF, snow/rain total, or historical-observation modules once upstream sources and report requirements exist.

QPF fields such as measurable_qpf_total_in and max_hourly_qpf_in should remain omitted until a real upstream quantitative precipitation source is represented in CollectedFacts.

Future module work should preserve these boundaries:

• collect upstream facts once per report run;
• keep upstream fetching out of modules;
• keep broad reusable calculations in DerivedFacts;
• keep prompt-facing field shape inside module builders;
• use typed options for configurable module behavior;
• keep module snapshots structured and deterministic for Recent Changes.

Distributor Notification Enhancements

Distributor notification currently uploads one managed Markdown report per successful generated report through the configured HTTP upload pipeline.

These enhancements are not current behavior:

• failure_policy: warn;
• uploading metadata, module snapshots, data packages, or preflight artifacts;
• durable upload retry queues;
• distributor-specific CLI flags;
• making distributor scan the weatherreporter workspace;
• handling destination routing, Markdown-to-HTML transformation, public URLs, or nginx layout inside weatherreporter.

Any distributor enhancement should preserve the existing adapter boundary: weatherreporter selects explicit generated files and submits source bundles, while distributor owns destination routing and publication behavior.

Alternate Runtime Integrations

These ideas are not current behavior:

• native LLM client inside weatherreporter;
• database-backed state;
• public HTTP API;
• multi-location selection;
• daemon mode;
• multi-user authorization;
• plugin system;
• dynamic module loading;
• user-defined module code;
• YAML-defined module schemas;
• module-owned Weather API fetching.

Each item needs its own design note before implementation. Non-roadmap docs must not describe these as available behavior.

Cleanup Refactors

The initial cleanup pass intentionally left these refactors out because the current implementation does not yet make them worth the added abstraction.

Revisit these only when new source types, report types, operational requirements, or recurring maintenance costs make the duplication materially more expensive:

• Weather API optional-source specification/helper refactor: consider when additional Weather API sources make per-source fan-out, policy handling, and provenance wiring repetitive enough to obscure adapter behavior.
• Broad briefing weather-signal consolidation: consider when multiple module builders repeatedly derive the same weather signals and tests begin to need coordinated fixture updates.
• Generic workflow engine: defer unless generation, inspection, recovery, or future background workflows gain enough shared step semantics to justify a declared execution model.
• Cobra migration: defer while the standard-library CLI remains small, explicit, and covered by parser tests.
• Manifest, resume, or progress system: defer until operators need resumable runs, checkpoint recovery, or richer audit trails than the current durable artifacts and metadata provide.
• Global test helper package: defer while package-local helpers keep tests clear; revisit only if setup duplication starts to hide behavior.
• Logging subsystem: defer until there are recurring operator diagnostics that cannot be handled with current errors, metadata, inspection commands, and artifact output.

Any future implementation should preserve the existing public CLI, artifact paths, report identities, module boundaries, and adapter boundaries unless a separate roadmap explicitly changes them.