Alajmah · Sep 1, 2026 · Sep 1, 2026 · Sep 1, 2026
diff --git a/docs/INDEX.md b/docs/INDEX.md
@@ -19,14 +19,15 @@ read, start with the [routing table](#which-doc-should-i-read) below.
 | **call the REST or MCP API from code** | [api-reference.md](api-reference.md) |
 | **understand how the codebase is structured** | [architecture.md](architecture.md) |
 | **understand why we drive Chrome via CDP** | [adr-0001-automation-backend.md](adr-0001-automation-backend.md) |
-| **see what's planned / what already landed** | [ROADMAP.md](ROADMAP.md) |
+| **see what's planned next** | [ROADMAP.md](ROADMAP.md) |
+| **see the completed June–July roadmap** | [ROADMAP-HISTORY.md](ROADMAP-HISTORY.md) |
 | **reverse-engineer a new ChatGPT endpoint** | [protocol-reference.md](protocol-reference.md) + [reverse-engineering-notes.md](reverse-engineering-notes.md) |
 
 ---
 
-## Operating guides (Phase 6)
+## Operating guides
 
-These four are the day-to-day operator surface — start here for running a
+These are the day-to-day operator surface — start here for running a
 deployment.
 
 | Doc | Purpose |
@@ -35,7 +36,7 @@ deployment.
 | [os-supervision.md](os-supervision.md) | **Always-on supervision.** systemd (Linux), launchd (macOS), Task Scheduler + NSSM (Windows); `ensure`-on-a-timer and REST+MCP split-service styles. |
 | [runbook.md](runbook.md) | **Operating a running deployment.** Startup checklist, `/health` interpretation, failure modes, breaker states, auth recovery, safe restart, post-deploy validation, logs. Source-cited. |
 | [operational-validation.md](operational-validation.md) | **Accepting a feature into production.** The live validation checklist for `parallel_tabs` (default-off smoke, parallel canary, failure modes, observability). Tracks the "merged" → "operationally accepted" promotion. |
-| [api-reference.md](api-reference.md) | **Calling the API.** OpenAI-compatible REST endpoints and the MCP server surface (tools, transports). |
+| [api-reference.md](api-reference.md) | **Calling the API.** REST endpoints and the MCP server surface (tools, transports). |
 
 ---
 
@@ -45,7 +46,8 @@ deployment.
 |-----|---------|
 | [architecture.md](architecture.md) | **Codebase structure.** Module layout, the `CDPDriver` orchestration/interception hub + extracted collaborators (`backend_client`, `cdp_transport`, `chatgpt_dom`, `completion_detector`), data flow. |
 | [adr-0001-automation-backend.md](adr-0001-automation-backend.md) | **Decision record.** Why the automation backend stays on CDP (drives a real Chrome) and defers a Chrome-extension approach. |
-| [ROADMAP.md](ROADMAP.md) | **Project plan & history.** Phases 1–6, what landed, follow-ups, and the explicit deferral of Group C lifecycle extraction. |
+| [ROADMAP.md](ROADMAP.md) | **Active execution plan.** Stabilize current reality, canonical runtime model, ChatGPT Web contracts, shared session runtime, recovery/backpressure, attachments, compatibility testing, hardened operation, then feature expansion. |
+| [ROADMAP-HISTORY.md](ROADMAP-HISTORY.md) | **Historical roadmap.** Completed Phases 0–7 and the architectural principles that carried forward into the active plan. |
 
 ---
 
@@ -89,4 +91,4 @@ curl -s http://localhost:8080/health
 
 See [runbook.md](runbook.md) §1 (startup checklist) and §8 (post-deploy
 validation) for the full operational sequence, including the exact-output
-`"Reply with exactly: ok"` sanity send.
+`"Reply with exactly: ok"` sanity send.
diff --git a/docs/ROADMAP-HISTORY.md b/docs/ROADMAP-HISTORY.md
@@ -0,0 +1,180 @@
+# ChatGPT-Web2API Roadmap History
+
+> **Status:** Historical archive. Do not use this file to sequence new work.
+>
+> The active execution plan lives in [ROADMAP.md](ROADMAP.md). This file records
+> the stabilization roadmap that shaped the repository from June through July
+> 2026 and was superseded on 2026-09-01 after a fresh deep-dive of `master`.
+>
+> For the complete pre-archive roadmap text and its detailed rationale, inspect
+> `docs/ROADMAP.md` at master commit
+> `497527dceabfa3f95961e23c291e618c5570f1ac`.
+
+## Why this was archived
+
+The previous roadmap had become mostly a historical record. Its major phases
+had already shipped, while the actual next work had moved to runtime contracts,
+session management, attachment safety, compatibility testing, and hardened
+operation. Keeping completed phases in the active plan made sequencing less
+clear and encouraged new planning material to accumulate beside stale goals.
+
+The architectural decisions below remain important; only their status changed
+from "roadmap" to "shipped baseline."
+
+---
+
+## Phase 0 — Broad stabilization / PR #9
+
+**Outcome:** shipped.
+
+The composer redesign, Phase-2 completion work, and owned-tab isolation landed.
+`owned` became the safe default tab mode, with adoption kept behind explicit
+configuration.
+
+Key invariant established:
+
+```text
+browser ownership and mutation isolation must fail closed rather than silently
+fall back to a shared tab
+```
+
+---
+
+## Phase 1 — Observability gaps
+
+**Outcome:** substantially shipped; residual observability work was folded into
+later reliability work.
+
+The repository established an honest `/health` model with live Chrome/CDP state
+and explicit `starting`, `healthy`, `degraded`, and `broken` states. Silent
+best-effort paths were progressively instrumented rather than treated as
+success.
+
+---
+
+## Phase 2 — SSE as the recommended persistent MCP transport
+
+**Outcome:** shipped.
+
+SSE replaced stdio-per-session as the recommended persistent deployment mode.
+Integration tests exercised real MCP initialization, tool listing, reads, and
+chat. The fresh-chat completion deadlock discovered during this phase was fixed
+by resolving the conversation ID during completion observation rather than
+waiting for a stale pre-loop value.
+
+---
+
+## Phase 3 — `chatgpt-web2api ensure`
+
+**Outcome:** shipped.
+
+`ensure` became the repository-owned point-in-time reconciler for REST + MCP/SSE.
+It intentionally remained a reconciler rather than a long-running supervisor.
+The degraded-REST policy was designed to avoid destructive browser restarts
+while CDP might still recover.
+
+Key lifecycle invariant:
+
+```text
+REST owns Chrome.
+MCP/SSE attaches.
+Hooks and supervisors invoke repo-owned lifecycle logic rather than reimplement it.
+```
+
+---
+
+## Phase 4 — Non-rate-limit circuit breakers
+
+**Outcome:** shipped.
+
+The project added distinct breaker policies for:
+
+- authentication expiry;
+- composer/send-readiness failures;
+- CDP reconnect failures;
+- Chrome crash loops.
+
+Breaker state became visible in health and error surfaces, and recovery was made
+failure-class-aware instead of treating every degraded state as a restart
+signal.
+
+Historical follow-ups identified during this work included:
+
+- transient backend 404 handling (later resolved);
+- clearer `requests_served` semantics;
+- non-401 backend-error observability;
+- MCP `/messages` trailing-slash behavior;
+- deferring configurable breaker thresholds until field data justifies them.
+
+---
+
+## Phase 5 — `cdp_driver.py` decomposition
+
+**Outcome:** shipped.
+
+The original driver monolith was split into focused collaborators:
+
+```text
+backend_client.py
+cdp_transport.py
+chatgpt_dom.py
+completion_detector.py
+```
+
+`CDPDriver` intentionally remained the orchestration/interception facade and
+monkeypatch seam used by the collaborators and tests. The post-extraction audit
+found that further line-count reduction would require moving lifecycle/tab
+ownership and reconnect policy, which was explicitly deferred as a separate,
+high-risk decision rather than pursued for cosmetic size reduction.
+
+That conclusion still stands: further extraction is not a roadmap priority by
+itself.
+
+---
+
+## Phase 6 — Operational documentation
+
+**Outcome:** shipped.
+
+The repository added OS-supervision guidance, a production runbook, and a
+documentation index. The operating model distinguishes point-in-time reconcile
+from continuous supervision and documents safe restart behavior.
+
+---
+
+## Phase 7 — Parallel multi-tab operation
+
+**Outcome:** shipped, with later session-pool work building on it.
+
+The repository generalized cross-process locking to per-target mutation locks,
+added explicit Chrome ownership, enforced owned-tab requirements in parallel
+mode, and documented the one-Chrome/many-tabs deployment model.
+
+Key safety invariant:
+
+```text
+parallel mode requires owned tabs + per-target locking + fail-closed ownership
+checks as one bundle
+```
+
+Subsequent work added the experimental MCP session-affine driver pool with lazy
+owned-tab materialization, bounded capacity, TTL cleanup, lease accounting, and
+account-level throttling. That newer pool is the starting point for the active
+roadmap's transport-neutral session runtime; it should be generalized rather
+than reimplemented.
+
+---
+
+## What carried forward into the active roadmap
+
+The historical roadmap established several principles that remain binding:
+
+1. Stabilize and instrument behavior before large structural changes.
+2. Keep browser lifecycle ownership explicit.
+3. Fail closed when session/turn identity is uncertain.
+4. Retry observation/reconciliation when safe; never blindly resend a mutation.
+5. Keep concurrency bounded and model shared account/browser constraints.
+6. Treat upstream ChatGPT Web behavior as volatile and diagnosable, not stable.
+7. Avoid refactors whose only measurable outcome is lower line count.
+
+The active plan begins at **Phase 8** in [ROADMAP.md](ROADMAP.md).