Implemented vs. planned

Lockstep is under active development. This manual describes both the shipped behaviour and the design intent. ROADMAP.md is the single source of truth for per-milestone status; this section is a reader's orientation, kept deliberately coarse so it drifts less.

Working today — all of Phases 1–3 (core sequencer, performance grammar, the 10×4 control surface), the Phase 4 catalogue except Percussion/Digital, Phase 7 (the Set/Song/Scene/Phrase hierarchy), Phase 8 (hardening + FX/master-bus), most of Phase 9, the shipped majority of Phase 10 (key signatures + generators), and all of Phase 11 (the deck engine). Concretely:

• The full 10×4 QWERTY overlay (the surface §5 documents) — cluster, Manipulation Zone, Section Bar, Step Grid, scope colour grammar, top-bar dashboard + held-context preview, contextual scope re-skin, and latch (hands-free virtual-hold).

• Polymetric multi-track sequencing (16 tracks); P-Lock editing; trig conditions (probability / m:n / prev-dep); the Override-ELSE-Base resolver; polyphonic trig steps (≤4 notes/step, snapshot-chord + realtime overwrite/overdub capture, note-edit overlay, note-count badge, musical-gate + per-note-velocity capture); runtime polyphony with the per-track Top/Bottom-bias spread selector.

• The scope+verb grammar — copy/paste/clear for step / section / track / phrase; Clear/Delete confirm tiers with named confirms; global and phrase mutes; the Fill modifier; Control-All; the checkpoint stack; Scene/Song launch + queueing under one launch-quantize authority; per-track input modes (CHROMATIC / LEVELS); the held-step inspector (P-Lock badges, tap-to-clear, note edit, move-step).

• Canonical sections + post-machine FILTER/AMP with role tags; the first-class MIDI-out machine (per-track CC banks, device presets); machine reassignment via Track + hold(SRC) (the machine picker).

• MIDI CC ingestion (soft-takeover + scoped mappings), MIDI clock + sync modes; full project serialization (samples as {path, hash} refs).

• Machines: Sample (trim + loop modes + ZC-snap), Slice (SLICE / SCRUB, transient detection, MONO/POLY, reverse), FM (4-op, free matrix), Analog (dual PolyBLEP + SVF + LFO, Mono/Para-4), Drum (Rytm-style, eight voices), Stretch (Bungee time-stretch player), Stream (disk-stream long-form sampler), Route (audio router / sub-bus), Record / Loop / Tape (the three faces of the four-sub-track deck engine — §5.22: layers + undo, punch-as-a-layer, take-group promote, chase-locked Tape on the project timeline, standalone scrub/wind), MIDI Out, plus the Stub fallback. Shared post-machine CHANNEL/FILTER/AMP.

• The surface-model foundation for external controllers (6.6.5a): one pure buildSurfaceModel() the screen renders from.

• Microtiming, Swing & Quantize (5.1): per-step microOffset (±50% of step length, P-lockable via TRIG meta section); hierarchical additive swing (song-all + song-track + scene-all, ±50%, effectiveSwing = clamp(sum, ±50%)); morph-style qualifier editing (hold Song or Scene while TRACK meta is open to retarget the Swing encoder); sample-accurate look-ahead scheduler; live-record residual capture; Quantize verb (scope + Yes zeros microOffset — see §5.3); amber/cyan step-grid nudge ticks; TRACK band effective-swing readout.

• Retrig / ratchet (authored RTG field in TRIG band, per-step P-lock; live stutter removed 9.10) and Sound Pool overlay (Fill+SRC live-swap + sound_id P-Lock bake), plus the Slice-point picker on slicer tracks (Fill+TRIG).

• Sound Bank (5.7c): the Sound Bank overlay provides full management of the project sound pool — save, recall (with machine-mismatch guard), delete (with sound_id P-Lock remap), inline rename, and auto-naming. Pool is serialized at v16 and survives save/reload.

• Standalone project files (9.1): .lockstep XML files, shared serializer + upgrade chain, New/Open/Save/Save As with dirty guard, last-project auto-open.

• Per-track FX inserts (2 slots, hold FX picker, FX+step animate-bypass).

• Master FX bus (2 post-sum slots, Song + hold FX picker, MZ params under Song+FX, serializer v14).

• Density overlay (entered via generator hub, 3 held → DENSITY cell; sticky DENSITY mode: nav = bank 1-8/9-16; Song-held = master offset (encoder or drag); MOD key = Amount/Mode/Selection sub-page; any non-MOD section key or foreign scope = exit sticky mode; Song-alone = swing).

• Generator hub (3 held ≥350 ms → momentary picker EUCLID / DENSITY / VEL; short tap = tap tempo retained).

• In-cell gesture affordances (9.11/9.12): each key cell shows its full gesture set in a fixed-slot layout (double-tap · tap · PRIMARY · hold · func hint) with painted vector glyphs (dot = tap, two dots = double-tap, ring = hold, amber chip = func). PRIMARY is the strongest action. 3 shows PRIMARY = GEN HUB (ring), tap slot above = TAP TEMPO. Slot content is derived from the grammar table — the same resolveBinding query that dispatches — so display and behaviour cannot silently diverge (the earlier KeyAffordances side-table was deleted in 9.12).

• Context inspector (9.11): always-on 4-region strip below the top info row. Regions: KEY (focused key + gesture list), HELD (active modifier scope + grammar note), OVERLAY (active picker or mode name + cancel hint), EDIT (held-step overrides). Each region has an idle fallback; built by buildInspectorModel() — unit-tested and dual-target. The timeline strip (Phase 11) sits below it: bars + wall-clock rulers, tape end lugs, markers, cursor — read-only.

• The STATUS lane captions the MZ. The lane sits directly above the Manipulation Zone, and when it has no confirm / alert / toast to show it says where the eight knobs are about to write — the one thing the knobs cannot say about themselves:

  Held	Where a knob writes
  (nothing)	the focused track's base params
  a step	that step's P-Lock override
  Fill + a step	that step's fill override (a second set of locks)
  Fill, no step	nowhere — the write is dropped, and the lane tells you
  Morph	a deviation into the morph layer (A/B)
  Control-All	every track with the same parameter
  a meta band	that band's own controls (COND, MIXER, DENSITY …)

  It is quiet on purpose: it is always true, so it must never compete with the things that are only sometimes true — any confirm, alert or toast outranks it.

• Hierarchical time — per-Song/per-Scene tempo ratios and time signatures on the unified TIME page; key signatures (root + brightness + functional modifiers) on its KEY sub-page (§5.21).

• Deterministic generators off the 3-key hub: Euclid, Density, the velocity overlay, the melodic generator (seeded, prints editable trigs, Keep-rhythm mode) and the harmonic voice-mover (in-key chord sculptor, one chord per bar) — §5.21.

• Morph + crossfader (5.2), Cue-scope audition + cue balance crossfade (Func+3 / Cue+Mute / cue console, 6.4), lock-only / one-shot / recorder trigs (5.6), per-take stem export, the capture tape deck (§5.20), and the sample pool with content-hash identity, typed pickers, save-and-promote and missing-file relink (9.18).

Planned / open — the remaining catalogue synths (4.6 Percussion, 4.7 Digital — unblocked, first-party); Song/Scene management UI (5.3 — names, colours, browser, Kit recall) and the snapshot restore-semantics spec (9.4); the cue follow-ons (6.4 — Cue + Scene, Cue + MIDI-out; the balance crossfade and the 6.4a P-Lock/morph overlay tiers shipped); UI polish + preset-selection leftovers (5.8); the sampling-overlay remainder (5.4, largely superseded by the capture machines — being re-scoped); diatonic nav + per-track scale-quantize (10.5/10.6) and chord placement on existing rhythm (10.11); external controller surface polish (6.6.8); the capture-stems completion (11.11 — dynamic stem set, arm preview, take sheet; see §5.23); the structural passes in flight (9.12 dispatch migration, 9.15 unified surface invalidation, 9.14 stage 5); the Machine Module ABI (6.7, deferred until a second consumer exists); and beta polish — CI, factory content, final name (6.8).

See ROADMAP.md for the authoritative milestone breakdown and current status — it is the single source of truth for what ships when.

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