a63d2fcb1e
The old ADR documented the specific panel choice (GDEY0579T93 + DESPI-c579) as if it were a freshly weighed option, but the hardware was already on hand — the real architectural decision was choosing the medium (e-ink over FSTN graphical / Sharp Memory LCD / OLED-TFT). Rewrite the ADR around the medium with the panel as instantiation, note the Freewrite Alpha (2023) data point as honest expectation-setting, and propagate the anchor / narrative changes through qfd.md, v0.1-mvp-product.md, and README.md.
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Quality Function Deployment
Translates what the device must be (user-facing requirements) into what it
must do (engineering functions) and what we must build (components).
Surfaces the few targets that dominate the design and the conflicts between
them. Every decision cell points back to adr.md.
Scope: v0.1 MVP — see
v0.1-mvp-product.md for user-facing scope and
v0.1-mvp-technical.md for implementation —
with the v0.2–v1.0 trajectory (README,
roadmap) in mind so we don't paint into a corner. Terminology
(e.g. Tracked, Local, Save, Publish) follows the project
glossary at ../CONTEXT.md.
Format inspired by the classic House of Quality, kept compact. Strength weights: 9 strong, 3 medium, 1 weak, blank none.
1. Customer requirements (the WHATs)
What a user (= me) values about the device, with importance weights on a 1–10 scale. Source columns point at the doc the requirement comes from.
| ID | Requirement | Weight | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| W1 | Sub-second visible response to typing | 10 | product → Write, README → UX |
| W2 | Ctrl-G reliably Publishes to the remote |
9 | product → Publish, ADR-010, CONTEXT → Publish |
| W3 | Pulling power never corrupts the file | 10 | product → Recover, acceptance |
| W4 | One-shot provisioning, never repeated mid-session | 7 | product → Provisioning, roadmap → v0.9 |
| W5 | Quick boot to a writing cursor | 6 | product → acceptance (≤ 5 s) |
| W6 | Long sessions without crash / lag / drift | 9 | product → acceptance (1 h soak) |
| W7 | Distraction-free, single-purpose surface | 8 | README → vision |
| W8 | E-ink-honest UI (no blink, no animation, no flash spam) | 7 | README → UX |
| W9 | Refactorable across nine downstream releases | 8 | roadmap |
| W10 | Hackable / DIY-shaped BOM and code | 5 | README → vision |
| W11 | Multi-day battery life (v0.8 onward) | 4 | roadmap → v0.8 |
| W12 | Local-only file scope coexists with git scope (v0.5+) | 5 | README → scopes, roadmap → v0.5 |
2. Engineering functions (the HOWs)
Measurable characteristics. Targets are v0.1 unless noted. Direction column shows what "better" looks like (↑ higher, ↓ lower, → fixed).
| ID | Function | Dir | v0.1 target | v1.0 target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | Keypress → glyph latency | ↓ | ≤ 200 ms | ≤ 150 ms |
| H2 | Partial-refresh region area per keystroke | ↓ | ≤ 1 text line (~22 px h) | same |
| H3 | Full-refresh cadence (clears ghosting) | → | 1 per 20 partials | tuned by panel temp |
| H4 | Cold boot → cursor ready | ↓ | ≤ 5 s | ≤ 3 s |
| H5 | Continuous-typing endurance (no drop, no leak) | ↑ | ≥ 1 h | ≥ 8 h |
| H6 | Ctrl-G push success rate on healthy Wi-Fi |
↑ | ≥ 95 % | ≥ 99 % |
| H7 | Push end-to-end (one-file commit) | ↓ | ≤ 30 s | ≤ 10 s |
| H8 | Save survives power loss after status confirms | → | 100 % | 100 % |
| H9 | PSRAM heap headroom during push | ↑ | ≥ 1 MB free at peak | same |
| H10 | Firmware binary size | ↓ | ≤ 2 MB | ≤ 1.5 MB |
| H11 | Stack budget across all tasks | ↓ | ≤ 80 KB (sum) | same |
| H12 | Wi-Fi reconnect on transient outage | ↓ | ≤ 30 s | ≤ 10 s |
| H13 | Idle / typing / push current draw | ↓ | measured only | sized for >2 days |
| H14 | Module count / public-API surface (refactor proxy) | → | ≤ 8 modules | same |
| H15 | Build time (clean, release) | ↓ | ≤ 10 min | ≤ 7 min |
3. House of Quality — WHATs × HOWs
Reading: row × column cell is how strongly the function (H) advances the
requirement (W). Importance at the bottom is Σ(weight × strength) — the
weighted vote on which functions deserve the most engineering attention.
| H1 lat | H2 area | H3 cad | H4 boot | H5 soak | H6 push% | H7 push s | H8 dura | H9 heap | H10 bin | H11 stk | H12 wifi | H13 mA | H14 mod | H15 build | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W1 (10) | 9 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| W2 (9) | 9 | 3 | 9 | 9 | |||||||||||
| W3 (10) | 9 | ||||||||||||||
| W4 (7) | 3 | 3 | 1 | ||||||||||||
| W5 (6) | 9 | 3 | |||||||||||||
| W6 (9) | 3 | 3 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 3 | 3 | |||||||
| W7 (8) | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | ||||||||||
| W8 (7) | 1 | 9 | 9 | ||||||||||||
| W9 (8) | 1 | 1 | 9 | 3 | |||||||||||
| W10 (5) | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | |||||||||||
| W11 (4) | 9 | ||||||||||||||
| W12 (5) | 1 | 3 | 3 | ||||||||||||
| Σ | 138 | 174 | 126 | 54 | 108 | 132 | 27 | 147 | 162 | 38 | 41 | 120 | 74 | 115 | 29 |
Top engineering priorities (from importance)
- H2 — partial-refresh region area (174). Bound how many pixels the panel has to flip per keypress; ADR-003 is the hardware-side answer.
- H9 — PSRAM heap during push (162). gitoxide pack + rope + TLS all share the same arena; ADR-001 and ADR-004 trade binary size for ecosystem so this becomes the watched metric.
- H8 — save durability (147). Atomic-rename + fsync; FAT's weakness is acknowledged in ADR-007 and mitigated, not designed around.
- H1 — keypress latency (138). The single most user-visible number; ADR-002 and ADR-003 are co-conspirators.
- H6 — push success rate (132). ADR-004 (gitoxide) and ADR-005 (PAT over HTTPS) own this jointly; spike 7 is the kill-switch.
- H3 — full-refresh cadence (126). The ghosting/flash tradeoff; lives in the render layer.
The bottom three (H7 push time, H15 build time, H10 binary size) are real costs but ones we knowingly took on (ADR-001) and are not in the critical path of user experience.
4. Roof — function-vs-function tradeoffs
The roof shows where pushing one function pushes another the wrong way.
++ strong reinforcement, + mild, – mild conflict,
– – strong conflict.
| H1 | H2 | H3 | H4 | H5 | H6 | H7 | H8 | H9 | H10 | H11 | H12 | H13 | H14 | H15 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | — | ++ | – | + | – | ||||||||||
| H2 | — | ++ | + | ||||||||||||
| H3 | — | + | |||||||||||||
| H4 | — | – | |||||||||||||
| H5 | — | + | + | – – | |||||||||||
| H6 | — | + | – – | ++ | |||||||||||
| H7 | — | – | ++ | ||||||||||||
| H8 | — | ||||||||||||||
| H9 | — | – – | |||||||||||||
| H10 | — | – – | |||||||||||||
| H11 | — | – | |||||||||||||
| H12 | — | ||||||||||||||
| H13 | — | ||||||||||||||
| H14 | — | – | |||||||||||||
| H15 | — |
Conflicts that actually shape the design
- H1 latency ↔ H3 refresh cadence (mild). More partial refreshes per second pile up ghosting faster, demanding earlier full refreshes — visible flashes that hurt H8 perception and H1 burst behaviour. The ADR-003 strip aspect is the structural answer: a small framebuffer makes both cheaper, not one at the expense of the other. The runtime answer is render §H3: schedule full refreshes on idle ≥ 1 s (v0.1 tech doc).
- H9 heap ↔ H10 binary size (strong). std + gitoxide + mbedtls inflate both. We chose to spend on these (ADR-001, ADR-004) because 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM make them affordable; the kill-switch is spike 7. If heap during push refuses to come under 1 MB free, ADR-004 flips to libgit2-sys for v0.1.
- H9 heap ↔ H5 soak (strong). A long writing session grows the rope and the glyph cache; pushing on top can OOM. Mitigation: 256 KB file cap (v0.1 tech doc) + glyph cache eviction before push + watching the spike in spike 7.
- H6 push success ↔ H12 Wi-Fi reconnect (reinforcing). Both come from the same network stack; investing in reconnect backoff helps both.
- H10 binary ↔ H15 build time (strong). std builds are slow. Accepted in ADR-001 — refactor leverage (H14) is the long-term payoff, not the per-build seconds.
- H4 boot ↔ H10 binary (mild). Larger binary = slower flash load. Affordable at our size class but worth watching as features land.
- H11 stacks ↔ H13 current draw (mild, future). Idle threads draw little but never zero; a future light-sleep policy (v0.8) wants them parked.
- H14 modularity ↔ H15 build time (mild). More small crates = more link work. Boring vs valuable; we lean toward modularity.
5. Function → Component mapping (Phase 2)
Which subsystem owns the delivery of each function. Cells are which ADR constrains the choice.
Components (with anchoring ADR):
| ID | Component | ADR |
|---|---|---|
| C1 | ESP32-S3-N16R8 SoC | ADR-001, ADR-008 |
| C2 | esp-idf-rs (std) + ESP-IDF |
ADR-001 |
| C3 | std::thread + crossbeam-channel |
ADR-006 |
| C4 | PSRAM allocator wrapper | ADR-001 |
| C5 | GDEY0579T93 + DESPI-c579 panel | ADR-003 |
| C6 | embedded-graphics + e-paper driver |
ADR-002, ADR-003 |
| C7 | Custom widget / dirty-rect layer | ADR-002 |
| C8 | ropey rope buffer |
ADR-001 (ecosystem) |
| C9 | TinyUSB host (esp-idf bindings) |
ADR-009 |
| C10 | FAT on microSD | ADR-007 |
| C11 | LittleFS on internal flash | ADR-007 |
| C12 | gitoxide (gix-*) |
ADR-004 |
| C13 | mbedtls TLS (via ESP-IDF) | ADR-005 |
| C14 | HTTPS + GitHub PAT auth | ADR-005 |
| C15 | eFuse-derived encryption key | ADR-005, ADR-007 |
| C16 | USB-C wall PSU | ADR-008 |
Function-to-component matrix (9 strong / 3 medium / 1 weak):
| C1 SoC | C2 std | C3 thr | C4 PSR | C5 EPD | C6 eg | C7 wid | C8 rope | C9 USB | C10 SD | C11 LFS | C12 gix | C13 TLS | C14 PAT | C15 efs | C16 PSU | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 lat | 3 | 1 | 9 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 9 | |||||||
| H2 area | 9 | 9 | 9 | |||||||||||||
| H3 cad | 9 | 3 | 9 | |||||||||||||
| H4 boot | 3 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 3 | |||||||||
| H5 soak | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 1 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 3 | ||||||
| H6 push% | 3 | 9 | 9 | 9 | ||||||||||||
| H7 push s | 3 | 1 | 3 | 9 | 9 | |||||||||||
| H8 dura | 3 | 9 | 9 | |||||||||||||
| H9 heap | 3 | 3 | 9 | 3 | 9 | 9 | ||||||||||
| H10 bin | 9 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 3 | ||||||||
| H11 stk | 9 | 3 | 3 | |||||||||||||
| H12 wifi | 3 | 9 | 3 | |||||||||||||
| H13 mA | 9 | 1 | 9 | 3 | 3 | 9 | ||||||||||
| H14 mod | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 3 | 9 | ||||||||||
| H15 build | 9 | 9 | 3 |
Read across, not down
- C5/C6/C7 (panel + graphics + widget) are the single most leveraged cluster — they own H1, H2, H3 (the top of the priority list). ADR-002 and ADR-003 are the ADRs to keep most honest as v0.x progresses.
- C12 (
gitoxide) is overloaded: H6, H7, H9, H10, H11, H14, H15 all touch it. That's why ADR-004 includes a kill-switch (fall back tolibgit2-sysif spike 7 fails). It's also why H9 sits in the top three priorities —gitoxide's memory profile is the unknown. ADR-010 pins the shape of the publish sequence (thegctflow); C12 is just the library that implements it. Changing ADR-010 doesn't change C12's column, but changing C12 (the kill-switch) does not change ADR-010's user contract. - C11 (LittleFS) is unused in v0.1 — config is build-time. Its non-zero cells in the matrix describe the v0.9+ shape per ADR-007, not v0.1 reality.
- C2 (std runtime) sits underneath almost everything, but it's the enabler (H4 boot, H10 binary, H12 Wi-Fi) rather than the bottleneck. Reversing ADR-001 would force re-deciding ADR-004, ADR-005, ADR-006, ADR-007 all at once — they're a single decision in three drawers.
6. Critical performance budget
Pulled from §3 importance and §4 conflicts, in priority order. These are the numbers spikes 2–7 must validate before integration starts.
| Rank | Function | Target | Watched on | If we miss it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | H2 region area | ≤ 1 line per keypress | spike 2 + spike 5 | Increase font size to shrink per-glyph dirty rect (ADR-003 consequence) |
| 2 | H9 PSRAM heap | ≥ 1 MB free at push peak | spike 7 | ADR-004 kill-switch → libgit2-sys; cap rope at 128 KB |
| 3 | H8 durability | 100 % survive power yank after status | bench HIL | Re-evaluate ADR-007 (move config to internal NVS only) |
| 4 | H1 latency | ≤ 200 ms keypress→glyph | spike 5 | Larger partial-refresh region; render multi-char bursts |
| 5 | H6 push % | ≥ 95 % on healthy Wi-Fi | spike 6 + spike 7 | TLS cipher trim; reconnect backoff tuning |
| 6 | H3 cadence | full every ~20 partials | spike 2 | Adjust per panel temperature; defer flash to idle ≥ 1 s |
| 7 | H4 boot | ≤ 5 s to cursor | integration smoke | Trim startup logging; lazy-mount SD after splash |
| 8 | H5 soak | 1 h no leak / no drop | 1 h bench soak | Glyph-cache eviction; PSRAM heap-fragmentation review |
The two not-in-MVP rows but already-shaped-by-design:
| — | H13 current | Measured only in v0.1 | bench multimeter | Cell sizing for v0.8 is data-driven, not spec-sheet | | — | H11 stacks | Sum ≤ 80 KB | static analysis | Was off-by-2x in ADR-006 pre-fix — corrected in §7 |
7. Tradeoffs and their why, linked to ADRs
Plain-language summary of what we accepted in exchange for what.
| Tradeoff | Got | Paid | ADR |
|---|---|---|---|
| std (esp-idf-rs) over no_std (esp-hal) | Heap, threads, VFS, mbedtls, gitoxide-compatible | +1 MB binary, +5–10 min builds | ADR-001 |
| Custom widget layer over Ratatui | Dirty-rects aligned to e-ink regions; 200 KB binary back | 500 LoC we own and maintain | ADR-002 |
| 5.79" strip panel over 7.5" page or 10.3" reader | 27 KB framebuffer, fast partial refresh, "Freewrite" UX | Only ~11 visible lines | ADR-003 |
gitoxide over libgit2-sys |
Pure Rust, modular, no FFI cross-compile pain | Smart-HTTP path is newer; PSRAM profile unproven (spike 7) | ADR-004 |
| HTTPS + PAT over OAuth device-flow or SSH | Simplest auth that gitoxide smart-HTTP already supports |
Long-lived secret on device; in v0.1 the PAT is compiled into the binary (dev-only target user makes this acceptable); v0.9 moves it to encrypted NVS | ADR-005 |
std::thread over embassy or tokio |
Boring, debuggable, real stack traces; no exec to tune | ~76 KB total stack across 5 tasks | ADR-006 |
| FAT-on-SD + LittleFS-on-flash split | Desktop can read SD; config survives SD reformat | Two filesystems to manage; FAT's power-loss weakness mitigated by atomic-rename | ADR-007 |
| Wall power for v0.1, battery deferred | Measure real draw before sizing the cell | Tethered MVP; not the final aesthetic | ADR-008 |
| USB host (TinyUSB) over BLE-HID | No radio contention with Wi-Fi during push; keyboard powered from the device | One more USB connector on enclosure | ADR-009 |
Atomic Ctrl-G + auto-timestamp commit message |
One key, one outcome; matches the user's existing gct workflow; no modal prompt to slow H1 latency |
Commit history is timestamp noise; the device may author merge commits the user never sees; reversal would break muscle memory | ADR-010 |
Conflicts left explicitly unresolved by v0.1
These are the live tensions we are watching, not deciding harder:
- ADR-004 vs H9. If
gitoxidecannot keep ≥ 1 MB PSRAM free at push peak, we are committed to switching transports for v0.1, not absorbing the OOM risk. - ADR-009 vs H6/H13. If TinyUSB host turns out unstable (spike 4), BLE-HID is the documented fallback — at the cost of Wi-Fi radio contention during push (re-checking H6).
- ADR-007 vs H8. Power loss between FAT rename and dir flush yields the previous saved version. We document this as expected behavior; it becomes a real bug only if soak testing shows it triggering on routine saves.
8. Inconsistencies spotted and fixed
- ADR-006 stack figure. ADR-006 previously said "~40 KB of stack
space for task stacks" — but the v0.1 technical design's task table
(
usb 8 + wifi 8 + ui 16 + render 12 + git 32) sums to 76 KB. Updated ADR-006's Consequences section to reflect the actual budget and cross-reference the tech doc. The 76 KB figure still fits comfortably in the ESP32-S3's 512 KB internal SRAM, so no design change — just documentation accuracy. - Commit-message format triple-mismatch. README said
git commit -m "wip", the v0.1 product doc said"wip <timestamp>", and the user's actual shell alias (gct/git-commit-timestamp) uses a pure ISO-8601 timestamp with nowipprefix. Resolved by aligning all docs ongctand recording the decision as ADR-010. Pulled the v0.7 roadmap item "Commit message prompt instead of hard-codedwip" — it's now contradicted by ADR-010 and removed. - First-run flow vs. target user. The v0.1 product doc described a captive-portal first-run, but the same doc names the v0.1 target user as the dev themselves ("Me. Solo."). Provisioning a solo-dev device through a captive portal is ceremony without a user. Resolved by switching v0.1 to build-time env-var config (no NVS, no LittleFS, no AP mode); on-device provisioning is the v0.9 release that introduces non-dev users. Touches ADR-005, ADR-007, the v0.1 product + technical docs, and the v0.9 roadmap entry.
- Vocabulary leak. Earlier docs used "commit" and "push" as if they
were distinct user actions; the gct/ADR-010 model collapses them into a
single user-facing Publish. Resolved by introducing
CONTEXT.mdas the canonical glossary; user-facing text now uses Save and Publish only.
The minor variance between README's "~12 lines" and product/ADR-003's "~11 lines" of edit area is within rounding for a 14 px glyph in a 240 px tall edit region and is not load-bearing.
How to keep this document honest
- When a new ADR lands, add its components to §5 and re-score any function-row whose dominant component changed.
- When a spike returns numbers, update §6's "Target" or "Watched on" columns — this is the doc that should feel out of date if measured reality drifts from estimates.
- The WHATs change rarely; the HOWs change with each release; the matrices are recomputed when either side changes.