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Disclaimer

Effective date: June 18, 2026 · Version: 1.0

Important: GhostMap is currently in pre-release. Some features described in this documentation are best-effort. Read this page before relying on GhostMap output for critical work.

Pre-release software​

GhostMap is currently in the V1 series of releases. The published version number is 0.5.0, which under semver signals "feature-complete pre-1.0". The public API surface (settings, command names, persistence schema) is intended to stay stable through V1, but small changes are still possible until a 1.0 ships.

"Best-effort" languages​

The Ghost Engine supports 19 languages across three quality tiers:

  • Tier 1 (first-class) - extraction and nesting both work end to end.
  • Tier 2 (best-effort) - extraction works; nesting may be partial. Currently: Go, Groovy, Objective-C.
  • Tier 3 (top-level only) - top-level symbol extraction works; deeper structure is unreliable due to language grammar features that a regex/Tree-sitter pipeline cannot reasonably capture without a real language frontend. Currently: Scala, Solidity, Julia, Elixir.

If your project is primarily in a Tier 3 language, treat the Ghost Tree as a coarse top-level index, not a structural tree.

Known gaps​

Even on Tier 1 languages, the following are known not to work today:

  • C++ const detection - top-level const declarations are not currently extracted.
  • Go method-to-receiver nesting - methods are extracted, but they do not nest under the receiver type they belong to.
  • Java bare-name constructors - public Service(args) without a return type slot can be missed.
  • Java multi-method-per-line - two method bodies on the same line nest as siblings instead of in sequence.
  • Objective-C nested-struct hierarchy - a struct declared at module scope between two @implementation blocks can attach to the wrong parent.
  • Groovy comment backtrack - trailing comments after a method body can be absorbed into the previous block's range.
  • SQL -- anchor style - -- line comments are not currently parsed for @ghost anchors.

These are tracked for resolution in upcoming rounds.

Language pack expansion (separate workstream)​

Roughly 20 additional languages (Kotlin, Swift, Haskell, OCaml, Clojure, Lua, R, Bash, the SQL family, …) are on the roadmap but not supported today. The expansion is gated on a set of validation and packaging risks surfaced by prior audits of the existing 19-grammar bundle:

  • Dart WASM load failure risk: the Dart grammar has been observed to fail to load on some Electron/Node combinations and silently fall back to regex.
  • Invalid Elixir / Objective-C queries: existing query files reference nodes the upstream grammars do not always expose; new queries we ship must be validated against the grammar version we bundle.
  • Weak Julia coverage: many definition shapes (macros, @inline-emitted defs) are not extracted; new similar-shape languages need a fixture set proving the shapes we claim to cover.
  • Duplicate symbol issues: some grammar packs expose colliding WASM symbol names that mis-load at runtime without a duplicate-symbol guard.
  • Non-reproducible WASM provenance: today's WASMs are checked-in artifacts; the expansion needs a reproducible build job before adding more.
  • Fallback masking broken grammars: the LSP → Tree-sitter → regex chain hides grammar regressions; the expansion needs a per-grammar load + sample-query smoke that fails loudly.

Until a candidate language passes all of those gates (and gets a fixture row in the matrix tests), it does not appear in Requirements or the language sections of the marketing site.

The Ghost Tree is a fast, opinionated navigational view of your code. It is not a complete semantic model of your program. Do not use it as the sole source of truth for:

  • Refactoring decisions that depend on call-graph correctness.
  • Compliance, audit, or regulated-quality reviews.
  • Security-critical analysis.
  • Any task where missing a symbol would cause material harm.

The Ghost Tree's job is to make navigation faster. The compiler, the language server, and your tests are the sources of truth for correctness.

Anchor diagnostics​

The @ghost diagnostic system catches the most common annotation mistakes (unclosed range, detached anchor, invalid status, malformed syntax) but does not check semantic correctness of the description or status text. An anchor that says status: done will be treated as done even if the surrounding code was never finished.

Performance under stress​

GhostMap is engineered to stay responsive on files up to 60,000 lines and under most levels of system load. Under extreme RAM pressure (80-90% used), language servers can become slow and the Ghost Engine will fall back to the regex layer. In those conditions, the Ghost Tree may render with reduced precision; the status badge in the panel header tells you when this happens.

Liability​

The full disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability is in the GhostMap Terms of Use, included with the source repository as LICENSE (further questions: getghostmap@proton.me). GhostMap is provided as-is under the GhostMap Free Non-Commercial License.

Reporting an issue​

If you encounter a behavior that contradicts this documentation, write to getghostmap@proton.me so the docs can be updated or the bug fixed. Legal, licensing, and privacy correspondence go to the same address.

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