quicproquo/docs/src/roadmap/milestones.md

Milestone Tracker

This page tracks the project milestones for quicnprotochat, from initial transport layer through post-quantum cryptography. Each milestone produces production-ready, tested, deployable code -- see Coding Standards for what that means in practice.

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Milestone Summary

#	Name	Status	What it adds
M1	QUIC/TLS Transport	Complete	QUIC + TLS 1.3 endpoint, length-prefixed framing, Ping/Pong
M2	Authentication Service	Complete	Ed25519 identity, KeyPackage generation, AS upload/fetch
M3	Delivery Service + MLS Groups	Complete	DS relay, GroupMember create/join/add/send/recv
M4	Group CLI Subcommands	Complete	Persistent CLI (create-group, invite, join, send, recv), OPAQUE login
M5	Multi-party Groups	Complete	N > 2 members, Commit fan-out, send --all, epoch sync
M6	Persistence	Complete	SQLite/SQLCipher, migrations, durable server + client state
M7	Post-quantum	Next	PQ hybrid for MLS/HPKE (X25519 + ML-KEM-768)

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M1 -- QUIC/TLS Transport (Complete)

Goal: Two processes establish a QUIC connection over TLS 1.3 and exchange typed Cap'n Proto frames.

Deliverables:

• schemas/envelope.capnp: Envelope struct with MsgType enum (Ping/Pong at this stage)
• quicnprotochat-proto: build.rs invoking capnpc, generated type re-exports, canonical serialisation helpers
• quicnprotochat-core: Ed25519 identity keypair generation, Cap'n Proto frame codec (Tokio Encoder/Decoder)
• quicnprotochat-server: QUIC listener with TLS 1.3 (quinn/rustls), Ping to Pong handler, one tokio task per connection
• quicnprotochat-client: connects over QUIC, sends Ping, receives Pong, exits 0
• Integration test: server and client in same test binary using tokio::spawn
• docker-compose.yml running the server

Tests: codec (7 unit tests), keypair (3 unit tests), QUIC transport integration.

Branch: feat/m1-noise-transport

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M2 -- Authentication Service (Complete)

Goal: Clients register an Ed25519 identity and publish/fetch MLS KeyPackages via Cap'n Proto RPC.

Deliverables:

• schemas/auth.capnp: AuthenticationService interface (uploadKeyPackage, fetchKeyPackage)
• quicnprotochat-core: Ed25519 identity keypair generation, MLS KeyPackage generation via openmls
• quicnprotochat-server: AS RPC server with DashMap store, atomic consume-on-fetch
• quicnprotochat-client: register-state and fetch-key CLI subcommands
• Integration test: Alice uploads KeyPackage, Bob fetches it, fingerprints match

Tests: auth_service.rs integration tests (upload, fetch, consume semantics).

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M3 -- Delivery Service + MLS Groups (Complete)

Goal: Alice creates a group and adds Bob via MLS Welcome. Both exchange encrypted application messages through the Delivery Service.

Deliverables:

• Unified NodeService on port 7000 combining Authentication Service and Delivery Service into a single Cap'n Proto RPC interface
• GroupMember struct with full MLS lifecycle: create_group, add_member, join_from_welcome, send_message, receive_message
• DS relay with enqueue, fetch, and fetchWait (long-polling) operations
• demo-group subcommand exercising the complete Alice/Bob flow in one process
• Channel-aware delivery: messages routed by (channelId, recipientKey)

Tests: All passing -- codec (5+ tests), keypair (3 tests), group round-trip, group_id lifecycle, MLS integration.

Key design decisions from M3:

1. OpenMlsRustCrypto backend holds the HPKE init key in memory. The same GroupMember instance that generated the KeyPackage must process the corresponding Welcome. If the process exits in between, the init private key is lost. This is by design for M3; persistence comes at M6.

2. KeyPackage wire format: raw TLS-encoded bytes. KeyPackages are serialised using tls_serialize_detached() rather than wrapped in MlsMessageOut. This avoids an extra layer of indirection and matches what openmls expects on the receive side via KeyPackageIn::tls_deserialize_exact().

3. openmls 0.5 API gotchas. Several openmls methods changed signatures between 0.4 and 0.5 (e.g., MlsGroup::new vs MlsGroup::new_with_group_id, BasicCredential::new taking Vec<u8> directly). These differences are documented inline in quicnprotochat-core/src/group.rs.

Branch: feat/m1-noise-transport

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M4 -- Group CLI Subcommands (Complete)

Goal: Persistent, composable CLI subcommands for group operations, replacing the monolithic demo-group proof-of-concept.

Deliverables: create-group, invite, join, send, recv, chat; OPAQUE register-user and login; demo-group remains for single-command demo.

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M5 -- Multi-party Groups (Complete)

Goal: Support groups with N > 2 members, including Commit fan-out and epoch synchronisation.

Deliverables: Commit fan-out to existing members on invite; send --all; cmd_join processes all queued payloads (Welcome + Commits); three-party E2E passing. Proposal handling (Remove, Update) and Criterion benchmarks are optional follow-ups.

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M6 -- Persistence (Complete)

Goal: Server survives restart. Client state persists across sessions.

Deliverables: SQLite/SQLCipher via rusqlite, migrations/ directory and migration runner; client state file and DiskKeyStore (encrypted QPCE optional). See Future Research: SQLCipher for encrypted-at-rest options.

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M7 -- Post-quantum (Next)

Goal: Replace the MLS crypto backend with a hybrid X25519 + ML-KEM-768 KEM, providing post-quantum confidentiality for all group key material.

Deliverables:

• Custom OpenMlsCryptoProvider with hybrid KEM in quicnprotochat-core

• Hybrid shared secret derivation:

  SharedSecret = HKDF-SHA256(
    ikm  = X25519_ss || ML-KEM-768_ss,
    info = "quicnprotochat-hybrid-v1",
    len  = 32
  )
  

• All M3/M4/M5 tests pass unchanged with the new ciphersuite

• Follows the combiner approach from draft-ietf-tls-hybrid-design

The ml-kem crate is already vendored in the workspace. See Hybrid KEM for the detailed design.

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Cross-references

• Production Readiness WBS -- phased work breakdown for hardening beyond the milestone track
• Auth, Devices, and Tokens -- authentication and authorisation design that cuts across M4--M6
• 1:1 Channel Design -- DM channel schema and authz model
• Future Research -- technology options for M6+ and beyond
• Testing Strategy -- how tests are structured across milestones