Plants generate a large variety of shoot forms with regular geometries. These forms emerge primarily from the activity of a stem cell niche at the shoot tip. Recent efforts have established a theoretical framework of form emergence at the shoot tip, that has empowered the use of modelling hand in hand with biological approaches to start disentangling the biochemical and physical mechanisms canalizing form development at the shoot tip. We discuss here how these advances get us closer to identifying the construction principles of plant shoot tips. Considering the current limits of our knowledge, we propose a roadmap for developing a general theory of form development at the shoot tip.