Ship floating launcher, automatic discovery and bounded media search improvements

docs/ROADMAP.md

@@ -1,6 +1,53 @@
 # Production readiness roadmap
 
-Status: Windows v0.1.7 published and installed with resident tray/global shortcut and login startup; Linux headless v0.1.6 and desktop v0.1.4 previews published. Broader production gates remain open. Windows VM tests use CPU only.
+## Current bounded goal — 2026-10-14
+
+Karl replaces the broad production goal with two deliverables. Work stays local;
+there are no intermediate pushes or releases. Publish only the final checked version.
+
+- [ ] Verify native Windows/Linux interaction: launcher shortcut, tray, hide/show,
+  keyboard search, selection, preview and media seeking. Record unavailable UI
+  automation honestly rather than substituting headless tests.
+- [x] Test Windows uninstall and reinstall, preserving existing user data and
+  using a fresh isolated application profile. Reinstalling on the development
+  VM does not prove missing prerequisites on a truly clean Windows image.
+- [x] Establish bounded media baseline and improve practical image, music,
+  audio/video relevance, absent-content results and speech timestamps. Use real
+  Google EmbeddingGemma 2, retain source citations and report regressions.
+- [ ] Run meaningful changed-code checks, build/install the final package,
+  update user documentation and publish that final version once.
+
+Perfect media recognition, macOS, real GPU qualification and the broader gates
+below are outside this renewed scope. Stop experimentation when evidence shows
+the practical limits; explain those limits and ship the verified improvement.
+
+Additional user steering in this same final local version:
+- [x] Replace the normal desktop window with a centered floating search bar;
+  reveal results/preview on input and keep settings behind a small control.
+- [x] Automatically index accessible local files in the background, with
+  system/cache/index exclusions and a settings switch; no first-use folder gate.
+- [x] Search installed applications and launch catalogued results from the bar.
+
+Bounded evidence: uninstall/reinstall and isolated-profile Windows checks passed;
+actual CPU Google media tests and the documented music/timing limits are recorded
+in MEDIA-FINAL-QUALITY.md and SPEECH-FINAL-QUALITY.md. Launcher/app discovery and
+automatic-indexing code passed Windows/Linux desktop tests. Current software
+screenshots show actual retrieval and source highlights. Native final-build
+hotkey/tray/glass interaction remains unchecked after capture/input failures;
+do not infer it from unit tests or software screenshots. A final automatic-start
+check exposed a schema writer conflict. Its correction passed held-writer
+storage/warmup regressions and actual Google CPU retrieval. An empty Windows
+profile with automatic indexing enabled then exposed 27 Desktop files and the
+owned marker, with a resident CPU query-role worker and no schema-lock error.
+
+Final bounded delivery: Windows desktop 0.1.8 is installed and its corrected
+installer verified; Ubuntu 24.04 desktop 0.1.8 passed packaged CPU startup.
+These are the final release artifacts. README includes current working-search
+images and a user-facing agent installation prompt. Headless Linux/Windows CLI
+0.1.6 remain available through older releases. The native interaction checkbox
+above stays open because final capture/input was denied; clean-machine, macOS
+and real GPU gates below remain deferred. No further feature work belongs to
+this bounded delivery. Gitea Actions remain disabled.
 
 Karl's release priority, 2026-10-13: publish a usable first Windows version and
 install it on DEV-WIN11 now. Extensive platform/GPU, clean-machine, signing and