User Guide: Prototype Applications

Phabricator User Documentation (Application User Guides)

Information about prototypes.

Overview

Phabricator includes prototype applications, which are applications in an early stage of development.

When we begin working on a new application, we usually implement it as a prototype first. This allows us to get a better sense of how the application might work and integrate with other applications, and what technical and product challenges it might face.

Prototypes are often not generally usable. They usually aren't documented, don't have safety and correctness checks in place, very rarely have full integrations or APIs, and may be missing major pieces of critical functionality or even not work at all. The parts of an application we prototype first may not be the useful parts.

Some applications leave the prototype phase quickly, but other applications may not. We build some prototypes just to make sure a specific technical barrier is surmountable, and may not finish the application for a very long time. In other cases, the prototype seems less interesting or useful once it starts working than we might have imagined it would be, or turns out to be far more challenging than we thought. We may lower the priority of a project or put it on hold indefinitely if we're less excited about it after we begin building it.

If you're interested in previewing upcoming applications, you can use the phabricator.show-prototypes configuration setting to enable prototypes.