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http-capability-gateway v2.0 Roadmap — HISTORICAL / ASPIRATIONAL

⚠️ HISTORICAL DOCUMENT (2026-04-16): This is an aspirational v2.0 vision written when the project was still in design phase. It is NOT on the current release path for v0.1.0 — the features listed here (web UI, plugins, multi-protocol full support, AI policy suggestions, etc.) are explicitly out of MVP scope.

See ROADMAP.adoc and docs/SUPPORTED-FEATURES.md for the current scope and what is actually supported today.

Do not treat any item in this document as a commitment or an imminent feature. It is preserved for reference and long-term direction only.

Original Vision: The Gateway Everyone Wants

Transform http-capability-gateway from "good production gateway" to "the obvious choice for API governance" by making it:

  1. Bulletproof - Never fails, always recovers
  2. Effortless - 5-minute setup, beautiful UI, zero config defaults
  3. Powerful - Handles any protocol, any scale, any use case
  4. Extensible - Plugin ecosystem, community contributions
  5. Observable - See everything, understand everything

🛡️ DEPENDABILITY (Make it Bulletproof)

Priority 1: Resilience

  • Circuit Breakers (#13)

    • Automatic backend failure detection
    • Exponential backoff with jitter
    • Self-healing (auto-recovery)
    • Per-backend circuit state
    • Metrics: circuit_breaker_state, failure_rate

  • Graceful Degradation

    • Stale policy cache (continue with last good policy)
    • Backup policy file support
    • Read-only mode when policy invalid
    • Queue requests during brief outages

  • Policy Rollback

    • Git-based policy versioning
    • Automatic rollback on error spike
    • Policy canary deployments (test on 1% traffic)
    • Diff visualization before applying

Priority 2: High Availability

  • Zero-Downtime Updates (#15)

    • Hot-reload policies without restart
    • Atomic ETS table swap
    • Watch policy file for changes
    • POST /admin/reload endpoint

  • Clustering Support

    • Distributed policy cache (libcluster)
    • Consistent hashing for sticky sessions
    • Leader election for policy updates
    • Gossip protocol for policy sync

🔒 SECURITY (Make it Fort Knox)

Priority 1: Protection

  • Rate Limiting (#14)

    • Per trust level (untrusted: 10/min, authenticated: 100/min, internal: unlimited)
    • Token bucket algorithm
    • Distributed rate limiting (Redis)
    • Return 429 with Retry-After
    • Headers: X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Reset

  • Input Validation

    • Request size limits (body, headers)
    • Path traversal protection
    • SQL injection detection
    • XSS filtering
    • CSRF protection

  • DDoS Protection

    • Connection rate limiting
    • Slowloris protection
    • IP-based blocking
    • Geofencing support

Priority 2: Compliance

  • Audit Logging

    • Who changed what when
    • Policy change history
    • Failed access attempts
    • Compliance reports (SOC2, HIPAA)

  • Secrets Management

    • HashiCorp Vault integration
    • AWS Secrets Manager
    • Environment variable encryption
    • Rotate credentials automatically

⚡ PERFORMANCE (Make it Blazing Fast)

Priority 1: Speed

  • Caching Layer (#17)

    • HTTP caching (Cache-Control, ETag, Last-Modified)
    • Cachex for in-memory cache
    • Redis for distributed cache
    • TTL per route in policy
    • Cache hit/miss metrics
    • Admin API for cache invalidation

  • Connection Pooling

    • Reuse backend connections
    • Configurable pool size
    • Connection health checks
    • Automatic pool scaling

  • HTTP/2 Support

    • Server push for related resources
    • Multiplexing
    • Header compression

Priority 2: Optimization

  • Async Everything

    • Async logging (no blocking)
    • Async metrics export
    • Background policy compilation

  • Response Streaming

    • Stream large responses
    • Chunked transfer encoding
    • Server-sent events (SSE)

🚀 FUNCTIONALITY (Make it Powerful)

Priority 1: Protocol Support (#22)

  • GraphQL

    • Query/mutation name matching
    • Field-level permissions
    • Introspection control

  • WebSocket

    • Long-lived connection policy checks
    • Message-level governance
    • Heartbeat support

  • gRPC

    • Protobuf method matching
    • Service-level policies
    • Streaming support

Priority 2: Advanced Features

  • Request/Response Transformation

    • Modify headers (add, remove, replace)
    • Body transformation (JSON → JSON)
    • URL rewriting
    • Query parameter manipulation

  • Load Balancing

    • Multiple backend support
    • Round-robin, least-connections, random
    • Health checks
    • Weighted routing

  • Multi-Tenancy

    • Tenant isolation
    • Per-tenant policies
    • Tenant-specific backends
    • Usage tracking per tenant

🎨 EASY TO USE (Make it Effortless)

Priority 1: Beautiful UI (#16)

  • Phoenix LiveView Dashboard

    • Visual policy editor (drag-drop rules)
    • Live policy validation
    • Metrics charts (requests/sec, latency, errors)
    • Request logs viewer (real-time)
    • Policy diff/compare
    • Dark mode
    • Mobile responsive

  • Interactive Tutorial

    • Onboarding wizard
    • Example policies gallery
    • Interactive playground
    • Video walkthroughs

Priority 2: Developer Experience

  • Policy Testing Framework (#19)

    • assert_allows(policy, :GET, "/api/users", trust: "authenticated")
    • assert_denies(policy, :DELETE, "/api/admin")
    • Property-based testing
    • Coverage reports
    • mix policy.test command

  • CLI Tool

    • hcg init - scaffolding
    • hcg validate policy.yaml - validation
    • hcg test policy.yaml - testing
    • hcg deploy - deployment
    • hcg analyze - policy optimization suggestions

  • Policy Templates Library

    • REST API gateway
    • Microservices mesh
    • Internal service gateway
    • Public API gateway
    • Multi-tenant SaaS
    • B2B API platform

🔌 EXTENSIBILITY (Make it Hackable)

Priority 1: Plugin System (#21)

  • Behavior-Based Plugins

    defmodule MyAuthPlugin do
  @behaviour HttpCapabilityGateway.Plugin.Auth

  def authenticate(conn, config) do
    # Custom auth logic
  end
end

  • Plugin Types

    • Auth - Custom authentication
    • RequestFilter - Modify requests
    • ResponseFilter - Modify responses
    • PolicyLoader - Load from custom sources
    • MetricsExporter - Export to custom systems

  • Plugin Discovery

    • Hex.pm package ecosystem
    • Auto-discovery via Mix config
    • Plugin marketplace on website

Priority 2: Integrations

  • API Gateway Integration

    • Kong plugin
    • Traefik middleware
    • Envoy filter
    • AWS API Gateway authorizer

  • Observability Integration

    • Datadog APM
    • New Relic
    • Honeycomb
    • Elastic APM

📊 OBSERVABILITY (Make it Transparent)

Priority 1: Visibility (#18)

  • Distributed Tracing

    • OpenTelemetry integration
    • Jaeger/Zipkin export
    • Trace ID in logs
    • Trace context propagation
    • Span tags: verb, path, trust_level, decision

  • Real-Time Metrics Dashboard

    • Requests per second (live graph)
    • Latency percentiles (p50, p95, p99)
    • Error rates by endpoint
    • Top endpoints by traffic
    • Top denied requests
    • Trust level distribution

Priority 2: Insights

  • Policy Analytics

    • Most-hit rules
    • Unused rules detection
    • Dead code in policies
    • Optimization suggestions

  • Cost Optimization

    • Backend cost per endpoint
    • Expensive routes identification
    • Caching ROI calculation
    • Rate limit effectiveness

🎯 DEPLOYMENT (Make it Cloud-Native)

Priority 1: Infrastructure as Code (#20)

  • Kubernetes

    • Helm chart with sensible defaults
    • HPA (Horizontal Pod Autoscaler)
    • Ingress integration
    • ConfigMap for policies
    • Secret for TLS certs
    • ServiceMonitor for Prometheus

  • Terraform Modules

    • AWS: ECS/Fargate deployment
    • GCP: Cloud Run / GKE
    • Azure: Container Instances / AKS
    • Complete networking setup
    • Load balancer configuration

Priority 2: Developer Workflows

  • GitOps Integration

    • ArgoCD application
    • FluxCD kustomization
    • Automatic policy sync from Git
    • PR-based policy reviews

  • CI/CD Templates

    • GitHub Actions workflows
    • GitLab CI templates
    • Jenkins pipelines
    • Policy validation in CI

🌟 KILLER FEATURES (Make it Unique)

The "Wow" Factors

  1. AI-Powered Policy Suggestions

    • Analyze traffic patterns
    • Suggest optimal policies
    • Detect anomalies
    • Auto-generate policies from OpenAPI specs

  2. Time-Travel Debugging

    • Replay requests from logs
    • Step through policy evaluation
    • "Why was this request denied?"
    • Visual policy execution trace

  3. Policy Simulation

    • "What if" analysis
    • Test policy changes on historical traffic
    • Impact prediction before deployment
    • A/B test policies

  4. Community Policy Library

    • Share policies on hub.hyperpolymath.org
    • Star/fork popular policies
    • Policy composition (import shared rules)
    • Security policy marketplace

  5. Zero-Config Mode

    • Start with hcg start
    • Auto-generate policy from traffic
    • Learn mode (observe only)
    • Graduate to enforcement mode

  6. Visual Policy Builder

    • Flowchart-style policy design
    • Drag-drop nodes for rules
    • Real-time validation
    • Export to YAML

📈 ADOPTION STRATEGY

Make It Irresistible

  1. Quick Start Promise: "5 Minutes to Production"

    curl -sSL https://get.hcg.dev | bash
hcg init
hcg start  # That's it!

  2. Free Tier with All Features

    • No artificial limitations
    • Open source forever
    • Optional paid cloud hosting
    • Enterprise support available

  3. Viral Features

    • Beautiful public dashboards (share your metrics)
    • Policy templates sharing
    • Success stories showcase
    • Badge: "Protected by HCG"

  4. Integration Everywhere

    • Docker Hub official image
    • AWS/Azure/GCP marketplaces
    • Terraform registry
    • Helm artifact hub
    • VS Code extension

  5. Community Building

    • Discord server
    • Monthly webinars
    • Blog with tutorials
    • YouTube channel
    • Twitter bot (gateway tips)

🎯 IMPLEMENTATION PRIORITY

Phase 1: Dependability (v1.1.0) - 2 weeks

  • Circuit breakers (#13)
  • Hot-reload (#15)
  • Graceful degradation

Phase 2: Easy to Use (v1.2.0) - 3 weeks

  • Web UI dashboard (#16)
  • Policy testing framework (#19)
  • CLI tool

Phase 3: Performance (v1.3.0) - 2 weeks

  • Caching layer (#17)
  • Rate limiting (#14)
  • Connection pooling

Phase 4: Observability (v1.4.0) - 2 weeks

  • Distributed tracing (#18)
  • Real-time metrics dashboard
  • Policy analytics

Phase 5: Extensibility (v2.0.0) - 3 weeks

  • Plugin system (#21)
  • Protocol support (#22)
  • Helm chart (#20)

💡 COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

vs Kong

  • ✅ Simpler policy language (DSL v1 vs Lua)
  • ✅ Better stealth mode
  • ✅ Native Elixir performance
  • ✅ Built-in policy testing

vs Traefik

  • ✅ More fine-grained verb control
  • ✅ Trust-level based governance
  • ✅ Better observability out-of-box

vs Envoy

  • ✅ Much easier to configure
  • ✅ Beautiful UI (Envoy has none)
  • ✅ Policy-first design
  • ✅ Smaller learning curve

vs AWS API Gateway

  • ✅ Self-hosted (no vendor lock-in)
  • ✅ Open source
  • ✅ No per-request pricing
  • ✅ More flexible policies

🚀 Success Metrics

Adoption:

  • 1,000 GitHub stars in 6 months
  • 100 production deployments
  • 10 community plugins

Performance:

  • <5ms latency overhead
  • 10,000+ req/sec on single instance
  • 99.99% uptime in production

Community:

  • 50 policy templates shared
  • 100 Discord members
  • 10 blog posts/tutorials

🎊 The Ultimate Goal

"The Gateway Everyone Wants"

When developers think "I need an API gateway," their first thought should be:

"http-capability-gateway - duh! It's so easy, so powerful, and that UI is gorgeous!"

Make it so good they can't resist.