technical-services-exchange/docs/ROADMAP.md

Provider Exchange Roadmap

Provider Exchange is a Laravel application for a provider-centered field-service network. The project should stay open source, avoid rate-setting, avoid payment custody in the first version, and keep reputation mutual between buyers and providers.

Current Foundation

• Laravel app with Breeze authentication.
• Role support for admin, provider, buyer, and hybrid users.
• Seeded demo users for local testing.
• Provider and buyer profile directories.
• Community feed posts.
• Buyer job posts and provider quote submission.
• Quote revisions, quote decline flow, and quote acceptance.
• Work-order creation from accepted quotes.
• Work-order status transitions, messages, attachments, deliverables, and completion notes.
• Mutual reviews with category metrics.
• Peer-review disputes with comments, evidence, structured recommendations, and public vote breakdowns.
• Universal community ratings for buyers, providers, job posts, work orders, and disputes.
• Database notification events and notification inbox.
• Starter Sanctum API surface for future app clients.
• MIT license and no-payment/no-rate-setting guardrails.

Operating Principles

• Providers and buyers are independent businesses.
• The platform should not set, recommend, or enforce market rates.
• Providers should control rate cards and terms.
• Buyers should control posted offer terms.
• Payment remains direct between buyer and provider unless a compliant payment partner is deliberately added later.
• Reputation should be mutual, transparent, and appealable through community review.
• Dispute voting is a community reputation signal, not legal adjudication.

Next Build Phases

1. Profile depth: richer galleries, equipment lists, certifications, insurance fields, service coverage maps, and imported review summaries.
2. Directory quality: saved searches, better filtering, profile badges, availability signals, and stronger buyer/provider discovery pages.
3. Work-order depth: checklist templates, required evidence rules, appointment windows, onsite timestamps, and change-request records.
4. Reputation refinement: rating category definitions, anti-abuse controls, edit windows, report flows, and moderation views.
5. Dispute workflow: better evidence timelines, reason-coded votes, quorum/visibility rules, and admin/community moderation tools.
6. Notifications: channel preferences, email templates, and event-specific subscription controls.
7. API/mobile prep: token-scoped endpoints, versioned API resources, geolocation check-in groundwork, and mobile-safe work-order actions.
8. Import tooling: guided manual imports for Field Nation, WorkMarket, and similar profile/review history.
9. Admin operations: audit logs, queue health, system status, content moderation, and backup/export workflows.
10. Deployment hardening: production environment docs, queue worker setup, scheduler setup, storage policy, and server provisioning notes.

Scaling Risks To Track

• Search and filtering will need proper database indexes first, then a dedicated search service if directory/job volume grows.
• Ratings and reputation pages should eventually use cached aggregates instead of recalculating averages and counts on every page view.
• Notifications should move from the database queue to Redis-backed queues before high-volume alerting or email delivery.
• Sessions, cache, and queues should move to Redis before running more than one web node.
• Uploaded evidence, profile images, and deliverable files should move to shared or object storage before multi-server deployment.
• Work-order timelines, dispute activity, messages, and notification tables need careful indexes before large production use.
• Realtime chat, websocket presence, mobile push, and geolocation check-ins should be added as deliberate service layers instead of bolted onto normal page requests.
• Background imports, image processing, moderation summaries, and reputation recalculation should run through queue workers rather than web requests.
• Production deployments need explicit PHP-FPM pool, Nginx, scheduler, queue worker, backup, and log rotation documentation.

Future/Deferred

• Escrow or payment custody.
• Automated rate recommendations.
• Native mobile apps.
• Real-time chat/websocket presence.
• Marketplace-wide dispute binding beyond voluntary community reputation.
• Automated scraping of third-party platforms where authentication, terms, or privacy boundaries are unclear.