Build in public

A roadmap is more useful when progress and limits are visible.

OpenSoil is establishing the trust, identity, data, and educational foundations needed for useful community soil evidence.

Completed foundation

What is operating now

Live

Public website

Mission, founders, evidence examples, learning guides, methods, cases, policies, support, and responsive navigation.

Live

Google accounts

Verified Google login, secure opaque sessions, PostgreSQL identity records, logout, and account portal.

Live

Global soil-test sharing

Owner-scoped records plus a public world map, context-rich result cards, validated filters, private exact locations, and public precision controls.

Live MVP

Laboratory report importer

Owner-scoped PDF/CSV source storage, integrity hashes, conservative CSV extraction, explicit source verification, field linking, download, and deletion.

Live MVP

Field trial workspace

Private farms and fields, structured trial plans, generated control and treatment plots, and provenance-aware timelines.

Live MVP

Interpretation and open tools

Conservative unit normalization, context-matched comparisons, CSV reports, application-rate conversion, and versioned method/tool registration.

Live MVP

Community Q&A

Authenticated questions and answers, drafts, context, citations, search, votes, accepted answers, saves, reports, and notifications.

Live MVP

Administrator dashboard

Allowlisted Google administration, signup reporting, private inbox, community reports, and recorded moderation actions.

Live

Production operations

PostgreSQL/PostGIS, HTTPS, protected secrets, versioned releases, cache busting, security headers, and privacy boundaries.

Active work

Strengthen the records behind each answer.

The next step is connecting discussions to richer farm, field, sample, treatment, cost, and yield records without weakening ownership or location privacy.

Connected public data platform

Ready to deploy

A main-site public data hub, coordinate-based mapped-soil report, API and documentation return paths, shared release metadata, and cross-surface production checks are implemented. The coordinated main/API/docs release remains.

Community hardening

Next

Email notification preferences, editing history, abuse safeguards, accessible usability testing, and moderator audit views.

Broader uploads and structured links

Next

Add isolated object storage, full malware scanning, automatic reviewed PDF extraction, images, and links among questions, methods, and trials. The bounded private laboratory-report workflow is live.

Field-record expansion

Next

Add seasons, structured treatments, input costs, yields, images, editing, deletion, permissions, and case-study generation to the live field workspace.

Later phases

Build the learning loop in order.

  1. MVP live · expanding

    Field records

    Farms, fields, trial plans, and timelines are live; seasons, structured inputs, images, yields, and permissions remain.

  2. MVP live · expanding

    Project timelines

    Baseline, intervention, observation, measurement, cost, harvest, and decision events are live; case generation and review remain.

  3. Descriptive MVP live

    Analysis

    Normalization and matched comparisons are live; charts, comparable cases, inferential statistics, executable workflows, and dataset versions remain.

  4. Phase 5

    AI assistance

    Source-linked extraction, organization, explanations, missing-context prompts, and transparent limits.

Known limitations

What OpenSoil does not yet do

  • • Community file uploads, edit history, email notifications, and advanced reputation are not live.
  • • Laboratory PDFs require manual value entry; automatic reviewed PDF extraction, full antivirus scanning, object storage, and report export are not live. The current static screen is not full antivirus.
  • • Field workspace editing, deletion, seasons, structured inputs, images, yields, financial ledgers, and collaborator permissions are not live.
  • • Soil comparison is descriptive and deliberately withholds sufficiency ratings and recommendations; advanced statistics and executable contributed code are not live.
  • • Account self-deletion and notification preference controls are not live.
  • • The community and case-study catalog are early-stage and should not be treated as comprehensive.
  • • Encrypted backup and restore tooling is implemented, but production off-host backups and an isolated restore drill have not yet been configured and verified; keep original reports outside OpenSoil until they are.

How to help

Contribute a real constraint.

The most useful input is a real soil question, a field-record workflow, a privacy concern, a method correction, or a difficult example the current design fails to represent.

Choose a contribution pathSend feedback