Project briefing (single entry)¶

This document is the canonical onboarding and navigation hub for roadmap, execution plans, architecture, progress framing, curated technical debt, and major risks. It does not replace long-form specs; it links to them.

At a glance¶

CHERENKOV is scoped as an air-gapped, sovereign security intelligence stack organized around three boundaries:

Boundary	Role
MEISSNER	Fail-closed network perimeter (zero egress).
ABLATION	Redaction / sanitization when data crosses trust boundaries.
TOKAMAK	Isolated validation and cryptographically attributable evidence for findings.

Read next: Product roadmap for release phases and goals, then System architecture for cognitive routing and the Trident model.

Document hub¶

Layer	Purpose	Primary documents
TPM / roadmap	Strategy, phases, milestones	development/roadmap-detailed.md, development/sovereign-roadmap.md, development/releases.md
Execution plans	Sprints and deep phased plan	development/sprint-plan.md
Progress timeline	Gantt-style phased view	development/roadmap.md
Architecture	System design and diagrams	architecture/system-architecture.md, architecture/hld-diagram.md, architecture/lld-diagram.md
System design & patterns	HLD/LLD narrative, patterns	architecture/system-design.md, architecture/design-patterns.md
Processes	Engineering workflow	development/workflow.md
Living backlog / status	Checklists and headline status	development/roadmap.md
Governance / PM rules	Branches, milestones, labels	Refer to AGENTS.md in repo root
Product / narrative SSOT	Sovereign framing	architecture/index.md, what-is-cherenkov.md
Risk exercise	Prospective failure modes	See challenges and risks below
Published site	Reader-facing docs (may trail repo)	docs.cherenkov-security.com

flowchart LR
  Briefing[project_briefing]
  Roadmap[pm_ROADMAP]
  DevPlan[pm_DEVELOPMENT_PLAN]
  DeepPlan[plan_development_plan]
  Arch[architecture_SYSTEM_ARCHITECTURE]
  Premortem[CHERENKOV_PREMORTEM]
  Briefing --> Roadmap
  Briefing --> DevPlan
  Briefing --> DeepPlan
  Briefing --> Arch
  Briefing --> Premortem

Progress¶

Timeline (from roadmap progress doc)¶

Synced with development/roadmap.md.

gantt
    title CHERENKOV Development Roadmap
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    section Phase0_Week1
    Foundation_and_Pydantic_Schemas :done, p0, 2026-04-26, 7d
    Ablation_Sanitizer_and_HMAC :active, p0_2, 2026-04-28, 5d
    section Phase1_Week2_to_8
    MultiProvider_Orchestration :p1, 2026-05-03, 49d
    section Phase2_Week9_to_20
    Tool_Integration_APKTool_Frida :p2, 2026-06-21, 84d
    section Phase3_Week21_to_28
    Tokamak_Validation_Sandbox :p3, 2026-09-13, 56d
    section Phase4_Week29_to_35
    Security_Hardening_and_SBOM :p4, 2026-11-08, 49d
    section Phase5_Week36_to_41
    Enterprise_Readiness_and_UI :p5, 2026-12-27, 42d

That document’s status overview: Phase 0 in progress; Phases 1–5 planned.

How to reconcile status¶

Multiple artifacts track “where we are.” They emphasize different lenses; CI results, merged code, and GitHub issues should win when they disagree with prose.

Source	What it measures
development/roadmap-detailed.md	Product phases aligned to releases v1.0.0-rc1 through v2.5.0.
development/roadmap.md	Feature roadmap and milestones.

If status sources diverge, treat that as a signal to update in a dedicated docs pass—not as contradictory truth.

Technical debt (curated)¶

These items are signals for triage, not an exhaustive audit. Verify in code before prioritizing fixes.

Theme	Notes	Evidence
Vision vs codebase gap	Historical deep review listed few validated scanners vs many generated candidates, scaffold AI integration, persistence gaps, and repo layout debt.	development/sprint-plan.md §2 — dated snapshot; re-validate.
Low coverage bar	CI allows reporting with `fail_under = 25`.	See `pyproject.toml` in repo root
Stub / TODO clusters	Orchestration iterations and dev-crew scaffolding not fully wired.	See repo source tree
Web entrypoint drift	Multiple `cherenkov_web` entrypoints exist.	See repo source tree
Governance vs implementation	Policy and architecture docs may outpace enforced controls in code (see risks).	See architecture docs

Challenges and risks (short list)¶

From development/roadmap-detailed.md: delivering parallel swarm orchestration, enterprise HITL/compliance, mobile exploitation stack, and ecosystem export (SARIF, CI) while preserving zero-egress assurances—each phase increases operational and assurance burden.

From the premortem analysis (representative prevention themes):

Failure mode	Preventive theme
Planning heavy, shipping light	Enforce commit-first cadence vs new planning artifacts.
Ablation drops too much evidence	Telemetry, partial redaction fallback, staged real payloads.
Tokamak timeouts wrong for surface	Profile-aware timeouts (e.g. web vs mobile/boot).
Scanner candidates not validated	Automated nightly validation gates (targets + CI).
Credibility gap (marketing vs reality)	README and public claims track validated capabilities.

See the premortem for the full retrospective table and prescriptions.

Maintenance¶

Update this briefing when roadmap, milestone, or progress docs change materially—at minimum alongside a release tag or sprint close. Prefer a single small PR that adjusts links and debt bullets rather than expanding this file into duplicate long-form prose.

Published documentation site¶

Material aimed at external readers and deployments is also published at https://docs.cherenkov-security.com/. Use this repository’s docs/ paths for source-of-truth engineering artifacts; use the site for curated, reader-facing docs when versions differ, prefer reconciling both in the same release pass.