Skip to content

Product Requirements — CropForge

This page provides a high-level overview of CropForge's design goals and requirements across versions. Full PRD documents are maintained in the project's internal_dev/ directory.

Vision

CropForge is an open-source, code-first virtual farm runtime for agricultural researchers. Researchers write the model; CropForge faithfully executes it and visualises the result.

Design principles:

  1. Code-first: No config files, no GUI to configure. Simulation logic lives in Python.
  2. Compute-then-visualise: The engine runs fully headless to completion, emitting a structured Parquet log. The visual dashboard reads that log separately.
  3. Opt-in complexity: Physics solvers, water balance, nitrogen balance are all opt-in. A researcher who doesn't need them is not burdened by them.
  4. Backward compatibility: Every new version must run all existing user scripts unchanged.

v0.1.0 — Foundation

Core simulation engine (Farm, Field, Crop, Weather, Soil), phase-ordered step dispatcher, Parquet logger, Three.js 3D viewport, and Plotly Dash dashboard.

v0.2.0 — Opt-In Physics

FAO-56 ET0 (Penman-Monteith) and Root Impedance engines using negative-phase hooks. Multi-field dashboard with FieldBufferRegistry. Published to PyPI.

v0.3.0 — Events & Water Balance (In Development)

Farm Event System (Event.irrigation(), Event.fertiliser(), Event.custom()), Soil Water Balance (closes ET0→stress loop), Soil Nitrogen Balance, complete API reference documentation, and ReadTheDocs deployment.

v0.4.0 — Deferred

Lateral water flow (D8 algorithm), Plugin API, R bindings, multi-year carry-over state, live weather API integration (ERA5, IMD), full N-P-K model, WebGL leaf geometry deformation.