Platform Support Policy & Roadmap Freshness

Status: Open — nothing implemented yet: no reference/platform-support.mdx page exists, no last_reviewed frontmatter baseline has been applied beyond this item and the roadmap index, and docs/scripts/check-roadmap-freshness.ts does not exist

Shipped facts

Only a thin platform note exists today: getting-started/installation.mdx states jackin❯ supports macOS and Linux, with Windows via WSL2 called out as "possible but untested." There is no dedicated platform support policy page, no declared support tier per platform, and no Debian-only base-image rationale documented anywhere. CI (.github/workflows/release.yml) still builds macOS and Linux binaries only — no Windows artifact. The codebase still has a small number of #[cfg(windows)] blocks against dozens of #[cfg(unix)] blocks, consistent with Windows being effectively unsupported. Roadmap freshness tracking has not started: only this file and roadmap/index.mdx carry a last_reviewed field, and no CI check reads it.

Remaining work

1. Platform support page. Write docs/content/docs/reference/platform-support.mdx declaring per-platform support tiers (macOS primary, Linux experimental, Windows/WSL2 best-effort, Windows native out of scope). Link it from the README install section and from getting-started/installation.mdx.
2. Base image rationale. Document the Debian-only construct-image policy (either a section in developing/construct-image.mdx or a short standalone page) and how to advocate for change.
3. Roadmap freshness frontmatter. Add last_reviewed: YYYY-MM-DD to every roadmap MDX file's frontmatter as a baseline; new items should include it from creation.
4. Freshness check. Add a Rust validator under crates/jackin-xtask/src/docs.rs, flagging roadmap items whose last_reviewed is older than a threshold (6 months, adjustable) or missing entirely. Wire it into docs/package.json scripts and CI, following the shape of cargo xtask roadmap audit.

Related work

• Research: Platform support policy and roadmap freshness tracking — design rationale — platform matrix philosophy, Debian rationale, and staleness-check design.
• .github/workflows/release.yml
• crates/jackin-xtask/src/docs.rs (roadmap/docs validators)
• /reference/research/isolation/smolvm-backend/ — Linux/KVM support affects platform matrix.
• /reference/research/isolation/orbstack-isolated-machines/ — macOS-only backend.
• /reference/research/security/sandbox-backends/selectable-sandbox-backends/ — backend selection affects platform support.