What this is. A triaged backlog distilled from the synthetic persona panel in
USER-RESEARCH.md, cross-referenced against published evidence (access date 2026-06-30). It complements — does not replace —docs/ROADMAP.md, which carries Sprout's phased build plan, metrics ledger, and conformance declarations. Where this file echoes a ROADMAP phase or an ADR, the item is tagged [corroborates …] (independent triangulation). Where it surfaces something the existing docs don't cover, it is tagged [NET-NEW].Status context. Sprout is
In build(Phase 3). The engine (pipeline, five eval suites, guards, fail-closed loader, providers) exists. The synthetic corpus, 120+ cases, baseline scoreboard, model card, ACR, red-team report, and deployed UI are now committed; remaining gaps are tracked indocs/ROADMAP.md. Several items below are retained as the research record that drove that work.Synthetic-data caveat. Personas are synthetic; this backlog is a hypothesis set to validate, not validated demand. See the warning in
USER-RESEARCH.md.
| # | Evidence | Source(s) | Drives |
|---|---|---|---|
| EV1 | AI plant answers hallucinate, fail to cite, and amplify SEO-popularity-ranked myths; AI-generated foraging guides exist and misID is framed "life or death" | Buncombe MG · UF/IFAS · AI slop (Wikipedia) · OpenTools | R1, R3, E5 |
| EV2 | Lilies → acute kidney injury in cats; all parts toxic; "often fatal if treatment delayed >18h"; call APCC immediately | ASPCA — Which Lilies · ASPCA Poison Control | R7, E2, E9 |
| EV3 | "Non-toxic" ≠ safe: any plant material may cause vomiting/GI upset; individual pets vary | ASPCA — Toxic & Non-Toxic Plants | R7, E1 |
| EV4 | Independent corroboration of houseplant toxicity + hotlines (Pet Poison Helpline 855-764-7661) + extension SME source | Pet Poison Helpline · NIH PMC10220692 · UF/IFAS Hort-14 PDF | R7, E5, E9 |
| EV5 | Decontamination is time-critical; early professional consult improves outcome | Vet Clinics: Small Animal Practice | E2, E9 |
| EV6 | RAG faithfulness/groundedness + citation precision/recall are an active, contested benchmark area (Ragas/DeepEval/TruLens/attribution) | Atlan · DeepEval RAG triad · arXiv 2505.04847 · RAGBench 2407.11005 | E3, E7 |
| EV7 | Under an abstention policy, LLM-judge groundedness saturates near 1.0; frameworks disagree → measure, don't assume | Abstention-policy benchmark | E3, E4 |
| EV8 | Calibration (ECE) + selective prediction / coverage-risk are the formal tools for "knowing what you don't know" | NeurIPS 2025 selective prediction · Knowledge-Boundary survey 2412.12472 | E4 |
| EV9 | Free photo-ID apps vary widely (PlantNet ~86.5% vs iNaturalist ~65.6% Top-1; genus ≫ species; varies by family; confident IDs reliable but infrequent) | Hart et al. 2023 · Rzanny et al. 2024, People and Nature · iNaturalist data-quality, PMC10703310 | R6, R8, E8 |
| EV10 | LEP / Spanish-first information disparities; MT can be unsafe (a health dept MT said a vaccine was "not necessary"); low-resource MT lags | JAMIA Open · PMC8568518 · PMC6238892 · PMC9205365 | R4, E6 |
Priority: P0 now · P1 next · P2 soon. Effort: S ≈ an afternoon · M ≈ a day or two · L ≈ a week+.
| ID | Remediation | Personas | Pri | Effort | Evidence / tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R1 | Author & commit the synthetic CC0 corpus + dated manifest, prioritizing (a) the top beginner houseplants and (b) the highest-call-volume toxic plants (lilies, sago palm, pothos, philodendron, azalea, tulip) so the safety suite has real toxicity refs to cite | A1,A2,A4,B1,B2 | P0 | L | EV1,EV2,EV4 · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 1] |
| R2 | Author the 120+ YAML cases + commit the baseline scoreboard (mediocre numbers shown, not hidden); wire the CI smoke suite of corpus-derived questions | C1,C2,E1 | P0 | L | EV6 · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 2] |
| R3 | Commit the model card + data card stating limits plainly: corpus coverage gaps, extractive-but-context-incomplete risk, and "non-toxic ≠ safe" | E1,B1,C2 | P0 | M | EV1,EV3 · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 3] |
| R4 | Deploy the accessible UI behind a real URL with the reference-implementation banner and commit the ACR (VPAT 2.5 Rev 508) | D1,A4,A5(→D1) | P1 | M | EV10 · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 3] · [DONE] |
| R5 | Commit the judge-calibration probe set + κ and the OWASP-LLM red-team report | C1,C2 | P1 | M | EV6,EV7 · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 2/3] |
| R6 | Reconcile the photo-ID status drift: remove/replace the "Not a plant-ID-from-photo tool" non-goal in RESPONSIBLE-TECH-AUDITS.md §A, and add a photo-ID + reminders privacy/DPIA row (Pl@ntNet egress, image-not-retained, var/reminders.json local state) to §C |
E1,A3 | P1 | S | EV9 · [NET-NEW] (doc-consistency gap; complements ADR-0010/ADR-0011) |
| R7 | Add an explicit "non-toxic ≠ safe" disclosure for low-toxicity plants (mild-GI-upset cases) so the never-assert-safe rule covers the subtle case, EN+ES; add the phrase to the safety deny-list review | A2,B1,B2 | P1 | S | EV2,EV3 · [NET-NEW] |
| R8 | Surface photo-ID uncertainty in the UI: show the visual-match label + the abstain-on-low-confidence path, screen-reader-announced; emit a "species not in corpus → fallback" message | A3,D1 | P1 | S | EV9 · [corroborates ADR-0010] (extend) |
| R9 | Clarify the reminder boundary in-product: household reminders belong in Family Greenhouse; retain the local CLI/API contract without promoting it in Sprout's public web surface | E1,D1 | P2 | S | — · [corroborates ADR-0011; resolved by ADR-0015] |
| R10 | Make the eval job a required CI status check with per-item "why it failed" traces surfaced in the report | C1,E1 | P2 | S | EV6 · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 2] |
| ID | Expansion | Personas | Pri | Effort | Evidence / tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E1 | Toxicity-coverage eval slice + report panel: assert the corpus cites a toxicity reference for every ASPCA top-N pet-toxic plant, and that "is X safe for my cat" always routes and never certifies | B1,A2,C1 | P1 | M | EV2,EV3 · [NET-NEW] · [DONE] |
| E2 | Urgency-forward routing for ingestion ("my cat ate a lily petal" → call-now framing + the >18h fatality window, without giving veterinary advice), localized EN/ES | B1,A2 | P1 | S | EV2,EV5 · [NET-NEW] |
| E9 | Standardized vet/poison-control escalation card on every toxicity answer/refusal: ASPCA APCC (888-426-4435) + Pet Poison Helpline (855-764-7661) + "what to tell them: plant, amount, time", accessible + localized | B1,A2,D1 | P1 | S | EV4,EV5 · [NET-NEW] |
| E3 | External-suite comparison/ablation: benchmark Sprout's grounding-by-construction + deterministic safety against ≥1 of Ragas/DeepEval/ALCE-style citation precision/recall; publish the (saturation-aware) result | C2 | P2 | L | EV6,EV7 · [NET-NEW] |
| E4 | Coverage-vs-risk (selective-prediction) curve in the calibration report, beyond ECE: publish the coverage/risk tradeoff at the abstain threshold | C2,C1 | P2 | M | EV8 · [NET-NEW] |
| E5 | SME corpus-contribution workflow: a low-/no-code "propose a cited passage + an eval case" path with provenance fields (source, license, fetch_date, lang, topic) enforced and a representational-harm checklist | B2,E1 | P2 | L | EV1,EV4 · [NET-NEW] |
| E6 | Language expansion beyond EN/ES (the i18n seam is one module) — gated on parity: each new language must clear the multilingual suite, and ES/new-language copy is human-reviewed, never raw MT | A4,B2 | P2 | L | EV10 · partially [corroborates I18N standard] / [NET-NEW] for >2 langs |
| E7 | Citation freshness / link-liveness check: flag when a cited source's fetch_date is stale or the URL no longer supports the claim — especially toxicity refs that get revised |
C1,B1,E1 | P2 | M | EV6 · [NET-NEW] · [shipped: sprout freshness] |
| E8 | Photo-ID "show your work": top-N candidate species with scores + an explicit corpus-coverage gate; never auto-act on the match | A3,A1 | P2 | M | EV9 · [corroborates ADR-0010] (extend) |
| E10 | Family Greenhouse personalization (A→B→C): toxicity cross-check against the user's actual pets/plants ("a plant in your Greenhouse is listed toxic to cats, and your profile notes a cat") — deferred, opt-in, household-data ASVS L2 | A1,A2,E1 | Later | L | EV2 · [corroborates ROADMAP deferred] |
| E11 | corpus.yaml generalization + "adapt this to your domain" guide so any cited care corpus can be swapped in |
E1,C2 | Later | M | — · [corroborates ROADMAP Phase 4] |
Now (P0 — the content unlock; nothing the user touches is real until this lands). R1 (toxicity-prioritized corpus + manifest), R2 (120+ cases + baseline), R3 (model/data cards). These three convert "engine exists" into "a person can ask a real plant a real question and the gate means something." R1 is the bottleneck for A1, A2, A4, B1, and C1 at once.
Next (P1 — make safety loud and prove the claims). R7 + E9 + E2 (non-toxic≠safe disclosure, escalation card, urgency-forward routing) harden the keystone control with framing the research demands; R4 + R5 (deployed UI + ACR, judge-κ + red-team) turn three self-claims into artifacts; R6 + R8 reconcile the photo-ID docs and surface its uncertainty; E1 adds the toxicity-coverage slice.
Soon (P2 — depth and credibility). E3 + E4 (external comparison + coverage-risk curve) earn C2's trust; E5 (SME authoring) and E7 (citation freshness) attack the corpus bottleneck and keep safety current; E6 (gated language expansion); R9, R10 finish the honest-limits and CI polish.
Later (deferred, already in ROADMAP). E10 (Family Greenhouse personalization, ASVS
L2), E11 (corpus.yaml generalization).
- R1 — commit the toxicity-prioritized synthetic corpus + dated manifest. The single unblock for half the panel (A1, A2, A4, B1) and the prerequisite for a meaningful eval. Lead with the highest-call-volume toxic plants (EV2/EV4).
- R2 — author the 120+ cases + commit the baseline scoreboard. Mediocre numbers shown, not hidden. Makes the green gate mean something for C1/E1.
- R7 + E9 — "non-toxic ≠ safe" disclosure + standardized escalation card. Cheap (S), highest safety leverage, directly research-backed (EV2/EV3/EV4/EV5); the never-certify-safe rule made loud, which B1 demands.
- R6 — reconcile the photo-ID non-goal + add the DPIA row. The panel's clearest NET-NEW catch: the docs contradict the shipped feature. Cheap (S); pure honesty.
- R3 — commit the model + data cards. States the limits (coverage, context- incompleteness, non-toxic≠safe) plainly, which every safety and research persona wants.
Bundle the afternoon-sized wins alongside: R8 (photo-ID uncertainty surfacing), E2 (urgency routing copy), R10 (eval as required check).
| Persona | Remediations | Expansions |
|---|---|---|
| A1 New plant parent | R1, R3 | E8, E10 |
| A2 Pet-toxicity owner | R1, R7 | E1, E2, E9, E10 |
| A3 Photo-ID user | R6, R8 | E8 |
| A4 Spanish-first | R1, R4 | E6 |
| B1 Vet / poison-control | R1, R3, R7 | E1, E2, E9, E7 |
| B2 Extension SME | R1, R7 | E5, E6 |
| C1 Eval / QA engineer | R2, R5, R10 | E1, E4, E7 |
| C2 RAG-eval researcher | R2, R3, R5 | E3, E4, E11 |
| D1 A11y / SR user | R4, R8, R9 | E9 |
| E1 Owner / maintainer | R3, R6, R9, R10 | E5, E7, E10, E11 |
- Safety path requires expert sign-off, not synthetic consensus. R7/E2/E9 touch emergency guidance; before shipping copy that frames urgency or the >18h window, get a licensed veterinary toxicologist / poison-control clinician to review it. The synthetic B1 is a stand-in, not an authority. Risk if skipped: false reassurance or, conversely, implying triage Sprout can't do.
- Spanish parity needs a native horticulture reviewer. Per EV10, MT can be unsafe on exactly this content. Don't expand languages (E6) on automated parity scores alone; human-review the toxicity and routing strings.
- Coverage vs. abstention is a UX risk, not just a metric. EV7 shows abstaining systems flatter their own groundedness scores; A1 will walk if the corpus is so thin that everything refuses. Validate the answer/refuse ratio with real beginners (R1 sizing).
- Photo-ID confident-wrong is the residual harm even with selector-not-fact (EV9): test whether real users notice the "visual match, not a cited fact" label or anchor on the species name anyway.
- No demand signal. This panel cannot tell you how many real users exist or what a vet would require to trust the routing. Run ≥1 real interview per group before treating any P1+ item as committed.
This roadmap is derived from a synthetic panel. It is a structured way to find gaps and
sequence known work — not evidence of demand, willingness to pay, or clinical adequacy. It
over-weights the maintainer's mental model and the published literature, and under-weights
whatever real users would surprise us with. Most P0 items are "finish what
docs/ROADMAP.md already commits to," reframed by who is harmed when it's
missing; the genuinely NET-NEW contributions are the safety-framing items (R7, E1, E2,
E9), the photo-ID doc reconciliation (R6), the external-suite comparison (E3/E4),
and the SME authoring + citation-freshness loop (E5/E7) — all cheap-to-moderate, all
research-backed, none requiring a new architecture. Treat the rest as hypotheses for the
real interviews this exercise exists to design.
Shipped this pass: R6 doc-drift fix (photo-ID non-goal reconciled with ADR-0010) · R3 model + data cards · conservative safety framing (R7/E9 "non-toxic ≠ safe" + escalation to ASPCA/Pet-Poison-Helpline; never asserts safe). Verify: make verify green. Deferred: R1 toxicity corpus + R2 eval cases (need a veterinary-toxicologist / SME).
Shipped: E7 citation freshness / link-liveness check — sprout.freshness.check_freshness()
parses each manifest entry's fetch_date and flags stale citations (365d default, 180d for
toxicity-topic entries or titles/topics that mention toxicity), plus an opt-in, network-gated
check_liveness() that HEAD/GETs cited URLs (skipping the synthetic example.invalid host)
only when explicitly requested. Wired up as sprout freshness [--check-links]
(src/sprout/cli.py), config-over-code thresholds under corpus.freshness
(src/sprout/config.py), unit-tested offline in tests/test_freshness.py. Verify:
pytest tests/test_freshness.py -q, ruff check, mypy all green; sprout freshness
exits 0 against the bundled 2026-05-01 corpus.
R9 superseded and resolved by ADR-0015 (2026-07-16). The earlier implementation put a
local-only reminders panel in web/dist/index.html and documented its no-sync/no-push limits.
The product-boundary review found that even an honestly limited panel duplicated Family
Greenhouse's task domain. The public Sprout surface now carries no reminder UI or household
state; the tested local CLI/API contract remains available for compatibility. Verify with
uv run sprout a11y-check web/dist/index.html and
uv run pytest tests/test_server.py::test_shipped_ui_is_a_stateless_reference_surface -q.
Shipped: E1 toxicity-coverage eval slice (src/sprout/eval/suites/toxicity_coverage.py) — a deterministic, corpus-level suite asserting every ASPCA top-N pet-toxic plant in the corpus (aloe, dracaena, english-ivy, fiddle-leaf-fig, jade-plant, monstera, peace-lily, philodendron, pothos, rubber-plant, snake-plant, zz-plant) has an English document with a ## Toxicity section that mentions toxicity and routes to a vet and a poison-control line; auto-registers a toxicity-coverage report panel via the existing report.py suite-iteration. Complements the pre-existing safety suite, which already gates the live answer on never certifying "safe" and always routing. Verify: make verify green (lint, type, test with 95% coverage, eval, a11y all pass); docs/audits/eval-report.md shows toxicity-coverage — ✅ PASS, n=12.