
Roadmap Canary addresses a blind spot in traditional CI: tests can prove that today’s software still works, but they cannot tell you when a proposed change quietly makes an already committed future capability much harder to build. A codebase can stay completely green while a refactor introduces vendor-specific coupling, removes an abstraction, or turns a previously small future change into a major architectural rewrite. Our solution treats selected future roadmap commitments as executable engineering artifacts. For each architecture-sensitive capability, the team approves a Future Contract that defines what must remain demonstrably possible, the verification commands and trusted inputs that count as evidence, and the proof budget that still qualifies as a small viable path. Roadmap Canary then captures a verified witness: a small, disposable executable proof that the capability is achievable from the current architecture without becoming production code. When a branch or pull request is analyzed, Roadmap Canary replays the witness on both the approved BASE and the proposed Change. If the witness still works, the capability remains SAFE. If it already fails on BASE, the Canary is STALE and Roadmap Canary does not blame the Change. If it passes on BASE but fails on the Change, Roadmap Canary invokes IBM Bob as a bounded Rescue engineer. Bob receives the human-approved Future Contract, repository context, and witness failure evidence, then searches for a replacement executable path inside an isolated Git worktree. Bob only proposes code. Roadmap Canary independently decides whether that proposal counts as valid evidence by running deterministic verification: existing tests, type checking, future-capability tests, protected verifier inputs anchored to BASE, and proof-budget checks such as changed files, added lines, and new dependencies. This produces clear engineering outcomes: SAFE when the known path still works; PATH CHANGED - SAFE when the old path breaks but Bob finds a new verified path within budget; ROADMAP RISK when no replacement proof is accepted within the bounded Rescue attempt; and STALE when the stored Canary can no longer be attributed to the proposed Change. The primary users are platform and architecture teams, staff and principal engineers, and engineering organizations with committed roadmaps and shared codebases. They interact through a focused workflow: choose a repository and future capability, select BASE and Change, run analysis, then inspect the replay evidence, Bob Rescue candidate, deterministic checks, proof budget, and final verdict. What makes Roadmap Canary different is that it preserves capability, not one speculative implementation. It turns one-off architectural spikes into persistent regression sentinels and moves the discovery of future architectural cost from months later, when a feature finally starts, to the change that introduced that cost.
27 Sep 2026