Plan Forge Manual
From apprentice to master smith. The complete tour of the four-station AI-Native SDLC Forge Shop.
Quickstart · 30 chapters · 26 appendices · Smelt · Forge · Guard · Learn · Integrate
node docs/manual/export.mjs
🧭 First time? Read Conventions Used in This Manual (5 min, callouts, status pills, code blocks, chapter numbering), the Foreword (10 min, the one-year journey from "impossible" to seven minutes, and what the rest of the book teaches), and the Reader-Journey Ladders (5 min, five persona ladders that route you straight to the chapters that match your job). Need to brief a manager or VP? The Stakeholder Briefing is the 10–15 min white-paper version, designed to be shared as one link. Looking for how to do something specific? Appendix S — How Do I…? Task Index maps verbs to chapters.
Quickstart · Zero to shipped in 30 minutes
New to Plan Forge? Start here. Three focused chapters get you from zero to a shipped feature before you read a single Part I page.
Where to next?
Three paths through the manual depending on what you're doing today.
Start with the Quickstart above. 30 minutes from zero to a shipped feature.
Copilot, AGENTS.md, GHAS, Spaces, Coding Agent — Plan-Forge's deepest integration surface.
Customization, MCP tools, extensions, agents, hooks. Make Plan-Forge fit your stack.
Bitbucket, GitLab, Azure DevOps — language preset notes and the OSS extension surface.
Part I — Smelt · Raw idea → scope contract
The Forge Shop, the four stations, who it's for.
Tour of the shop: stations, gates, sessions.
Zero to pforge smith green in 10 min.
Scope, slices, gates, forbidden actions.
Community extensions, lifecycle, tempering.
Part II — Forge · Scope contract → shipped code
Hands-on: specify, harden, execute, ship.
The command desk — live slice view + cost.
5 LiveGuard tabs — Health, Incidents, Triage, Security, Env.
Studio tab — chat, classification badge, quorum advisory.
9 settings tabs — models, execution, API keys, memory…
Every command, every flag.
Make it yours: principles, profiles, config.
Guardrails, reviewers, skills, hooks.
Full catalog: 18 instruction files, 12 agents, 11 skills, 5 hooks.
102 tools, REST API, WebSocket, telemetry.
10 most-useful tools with schemas and examples.
Full 69-tool catalog in 8 categories.
Install, create, publish guardrail packs.
Copilot, Claude, Cursor, Codex, Gemini…
Quorum, routing, CI, cost optimization.
Diagnostics, common errors, decision trees.
Canonical overview — how the deterministic executor, Phase-25 reflective layer, and Phase-26 competitive layer compose.
Reflexion, trajectories, auto-skills, reviewer.
Worktree races, winner election, auto-fix, cost anomalies.
Closed-loop drain: content-audit scan → triage → fix. Off by default.
Read-only reasoning orchestrator. Intent classifier + embedding cache + quorum advisory.
Part III — Guard · Post-deploy defense (LiveGuard)
The watchtower — lifecycle position, guardian metaphor.
All 14 tools — flags, thresholds, output shapes.
5 real-time tabs — Health, Incidents, Triage, Security, Env.
Read-only tail of another project's forge run.
Telegram, Slack, Discord, OpenClaw — phone-friendly approvals.
Part IV — Learn · Memory & retrospectives
Three-tier memory: hub, files, OpenBrain.
Hallmark, Anvil, Lattice, sync_memories — the v3.x upgrade tour in plain English.
Closed-loop registry — register, fix, validate, remember.
Scenario replay against a dedicated fixture repo.
Five-signal fingerprint of project decay, over time.
Appendices
Every Plan Forge term defined.
Printable 2-page cheat sheet.
Per-preset configs for all 9 stacks.
MIME mismatch, session crashes, safe workflows.
Build a Tracker app in your stack.
Severity matrix + response procedures for every alert.
🏢 Enterprise · Appendices H–N
Reference architecture, GitHub stack alignment, agent factory, fleet operator playbook, compliance, the full enterprise track.
Landing page — the map of every enterprise concern to the doc that answers it.
The thesis: GitHub leaves orchestration to the ecosystem. Plan Forge is built for that lane.
5-team / 1000-dev architecture + Microsoft Foundry composition variant.
7-step recipe to onboard 12+ agent personas in one work day.
Day 1 / Week 4 / Week 12 calendar with go/no-go criteria, KPIs, escalation model.
Data flow, audit logging, identity, air-gapped deployment, Azure Government, OTel.
