ADR 0022: Harvest outlook from the camera, with optional plant profiles

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-11-01

Context

“Ready to harvest” was only ever a status someone set by hand on Grow. The one timing signal was a cycle-wide reminder harvestReminderDays (default 35) after the cycle starts, whatever is planted. The tower’s 3D view sized plants with a fixed 35-day curve. Nothing told you which pod to cut next, or when.

There are two sources of timing. The camera measures each pod’s leaf cover (the primary analyser’s green fraction, ADR 0019) every capture, so it sees the plant actually grow, but it says nothing about how big a given crop gets. Horticultural knowledge says when a crop is usually ready (arugula 17–25 days, kale 30–45), but it doesn’t see this plant, and someone has to enter it for 74 kinds of yCube.

Decision

The camera leads. For each planted pod, take its leaf cover since planting or since the last cut. Fit a least-squares rate over the last dozen photos (at least four, spanning a day). It’s ready when cover reaches the target, or has levelled off (under 0.2 points a day for three days) within 75% of it; otherwise the rate gives days to the target, and soon means within a week. The default target is 40% cover.
Profiles are optional. A plant profile holds a harvest window in days from planting, a cover target and notes, keyed by the name in lower case. A pod matches by exact name, else the longest profile name whose words all appear in its plant name (“Kale” covers “Red Russian Kale”). The profile’s target replaces the default; its window is shown on the timeline and decides the state only when there are no photos to go on.
Agents can fill them in. MCP gets plant_profiles, set_plant_profiles (marked source: agent), remove_plant_profile, harvest_outlook and mark_harvested. “Given my plants, fill in harvest windows” is one tool call after reading pods.
A cut is recorded. mark_harvested (and Home’s Mark harvested button) sets the pod back to growing and stamps lastHarvestAt; only photos after it count, and the first window no longer applies, so a cut-and-come-again plant isn’t called ready on the strength of the leaves just taken. Pods also stamp statusSince when their status changes, for “ready for 2 d”.
Read-only. The outlook never changes a pod’s status or raises alerts by itself. Autopilot rules (ADR 0020) can act on it later.

Consequences

Without photos and without a profile, a pod’s outlook is honestly “unknown”. The demo and any unit with a camera get estimates from day one.
Leaf cover is a crude proxy: a trailing plant that leaves its crop, or a neighbour leaning in, skews it. The target is per crop for that reason, and a better analyser (ADR 0019) improves the outlook without changing it.
One more table and two pod columns (migration 0008); existing pods get statusSince from updatedAt.

Sources: ADR 0019: Pluggable capture analysis · ADR 0011: MCP and the Model Hardware Standard

Imported from docs/adr/0022-harvest-outlook.md in seedypod/core. Edit it there, not here.