This is a prioritized, actionable backlog to guide short-term improvements. Each item includes a short description,
priority, estimated effort, suggested owner(s), and acceptance criteria. Use this as a living document — update status
and estimates as you make progress.

## How to use

- Priority: P0 (highest), P1, P2.
- Effort: S (small, <1 week), M (medium, 1–2 weeks), L (large, 2+ weeks).
- Owner: team or role that should pick it up.
- AC: acceptance criteria — what "done" looks like.

---

## 1. Populate this README & quickstart (P0, S)

- Description: Add a short README and a "Getting started" quickstart with environment setup, how to run locally, and how
  to run tests.
- Owner: Developer / Docs
- Effort: S
- Acceptance criteria:
    - README contains: purpose, prerequisites, install steps, run steps, test command.
    - Quickstart reproduces a working dev environment on a fresh machine.
    - One developer verified it following the instructions.

## 2. First-run onboarding & demo data (P0, M)

- Description: Add an interactive first-run walkthrough and an optional "Try demo" mode that populates safe sample data.
- Owner: Product / Frontend
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - First-run modal guides through top 3 core actions.
    - Demo mode populates a non-destructive dataset and can be reset.
    - Onboarding completion is tracked via an analytics event.

## 3. Instrument basic analytics & events (P0, M)

- Description: Add event instrumentation for key flows to measure adoption and drop-offs (onboarding, critical actions,
  errors).
- Owner: Engineering / Product
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - Tracking for: onboarding_start, onboarding_complete, core_action_X, error_high_priority.
    - Events include a minimal context payload (non-sensitive): user-agnostic session id, event name, timestamp.
    - Privacy opt-out toggle exists in settings.

## 4. Improve error messages & in-app help (P0, S)

- Description: Replace generic errors with actionable messages and add a Help/FAQ entry and a "Report a bug" flow that
  optionally attaches logs.
- Owner: Frontend / QA
- Effort: S
- Acceptance criteria:
    - Top 10 most common errors have specific messages and suggested next steps.
    - A simple Help view exists with links to docs and a one-click "Report issue" action that collects an anonymized log
      bundle (with consent).

## 5. Add basic structured logging & correlation IDs (P1, M)

- Description: Implement structured logs and add correlation IDs to sessions/requests to make debugging easier from logs
  and error reports.
- Owner: Backend / Infra
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - Logs emitted in JSON or consistent structured format.
    - Correlation ID generated per session/request and included in error logs and any bug reports.
    - Document how to search logs by correlation ID.

## 6. CI: run tests, linter, and basic checks on PRs (P1, M)

- Description: Add a CI pipeline that runs unit tests, a formatter/linter, and basic build checks for each PR.
- Owner: DevOps / Engineering
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - PRs are blocked from merging if tests fail or the linter/format checks fail.
    - Developers can run the same checks locally via a single script or Makefile.

## 7. Add automated end-to-end tests for critical flow(s) (P1, L)

- Description: Create a small suite of E2E tests that cover onboarding, signing in (if relevant), and the main user
  flow.
- Owner: QA / Engineering
- Effort: L
- Acceptance criteria:
    - At least 3 E2E tests added and green in CI.
    - Tests are stable and do not flake more than a predefined threshold.
    - Documentation on how to run and update tests exists.

## 8. Performance profiling and one optimization (P2, M)

- Description: Run a lightweight performance profile (CPU/memory) on the key path and implement one low-effort,
  high-impact optimization (e.g., lazy-load a heavy module or add caching).
- Owner: Engineering
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - Profile data collected and summarized (top 5 hotspots).
    - One optimization implemented with measurable improvement (e.g., 20% faster load or 30% memory reduction).
    - Benchmarks recorded in the repo.

## 9. Output templates: add predefined template flags (P1, M)

- Description: Provide CLI/UI flags to select from a set of predefined output templates (for example: json, csv, pretty,
  report, compact). Each template controls formatting, default file extension, and optional post-processing steps.
- Owner: Product / CLI / Frontend
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - Add flag (CLI): `--template <template_name>` and (UI) template selector in export dialog.
    - Supported predefined templates documented (name, description, default extension).
    - Template selection influences output format and default file extension automatically.
    - Invalid template name produces a helpful error with a list of valid templates.
    - Unit tests cover at least 3 templates and the error path.

## 10. Output templates: add custom template paste & output extension flag (P1, M)

- Description: Allow users to paste/provide a custom template (e.g., Mustache, Go template, or simple placeholder
  format) and specify output extension via flag or UI input. Support local validation and a preview before writing
  output.
- Owner: Product / CLI / Frontend
- Effort: M
- Acceptance criteria:
    - Add flag (CLI): `--custom-template-file <path>` or `--template-paste '<template_string>'`.
    - Add flag (CLI): `--out-ext <extension>` and (UI) an "Output filename/extension" input.
    - Validate custom template at input time and show errors if malformed (with line/column hints when possible).
    - Provide a preview option that renders a sample using demo data before saving.
    - When `--out-ext` is provided, output file uses that extension; otherwise, use template's default extension or
      fallback to `.txt`.
    - Security: sanitize template execution context to avoid code injection; document limitations.
    - Tests cover custom-template validation, preview rendering, and output extension resolution.

---

## Nice-to-have / Future items (P2)

- Accessibility audit and WCAG fixes (keyboard nav, aria labels).
- Feature flagging support for experimental rollouts.
- Localization prep (externalize strings).
- Observability: dashboards for errors, latency, adoption (define SLOs).

## Developer experience & contributor friendliness

- Improve README and contributing guide
    - Add quickstart, environment setup, testing and release instructions.
- Add a clear issue/tracking template
    - Bug template, feature-request template, and PR template to standardize contributions.
- Developer tooling
    - Add static analysis tools, formatters, and pre-commit hooks to keep code consistent.

## Quality of life improvements (UX polish)

- Dark mode and theme support
- Keyboard-driven shortcuts and quick actions
- Contextual undo/redo where destructive actions exist
- Consistent microcopy and confirmation flows for destructive operations

## Low-effort, high-value items to implement now

- Add a single “Contact support / report a bug” action that attaches logs and repro steps (with user consent).
- Add usage telemetry opt-in/opt-out and a privacy policy summary.
- Implement a lightweight feature-usage dashboard to see which features customers actually use.