Agent workflow

Forge orchestrates work through six phases. Each phase has a primary agent (and sometimes subagents) with clear responsibilities.

Flow overview

flowchart TD
    subgraph Planning
        PO[Product Owner] --> Arch[Architect]
        Arch --> Plan[Planner]
    end
    subgraph Execution
        Plan --> TW[Technical Writer]
        TW --> Eng[Engineer]
        Eng --> QA[Quality Assurance]
    end

Planning: Vision → Architecture → Roadmap
Execution: Refine tickets → Implement (with tests) → Review

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Phase 1: Product Owner

When: You provide product intake, strategy, or market input (often ahead of or with /architect-this).

What it does: Maintains product direction. Reads vision.json and project.json, decides whether vision or project metadata needs updates, and hands off to the Architect when technical alignment is required.

Owns: .forge/vision.json, .forge/project.json (with your review)

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Phase 2: Architect

Command: /architect-this {your prompt}

What it does: High-level design. Loads the vision, runs a clarity check, invokes the right domain SME subagents to update contracts, then hands a recap to the Planner.

Owns: knowledge_map.json structure; delegates content to domain folders.

Domain subagents (invoked by Architect)

Subagent	Scope
Runtime	Configuration, startup, lifecycle, execution
Business logic	Domain model, user stories, errors
Data	Model, persistence, consistency
Interface	Input, presentation, interaction
Integration	APIs, external systems, messaging
Operations	Build, deploy, observability, security

Each owns .forge/<domain>/ and updates it when the Architect delegates.

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Phase 3: Planner

Command: /plan-roadmap

What it does: Aligns GitHub milestones and issues with the vision and knowledge map. Pulls milestones and issues from GitHub, then creates or updates them. GitHub is the source of truth.

Owns: Milestones, issue titles/bodies at the roadmap level

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Phase 4: Technical Writer (refining)

Command: /refine-issue {GitHub issue link}

What it does: Turns a roadmap issue into implementation-ready detail. Retrieves the issue, creates the parent branch feature/issue-<parent> from main, pushes it, and links it to the parent issue (GitHub Development / gh / MCP). Consults SMEs, updates the issue body (user story, steps, how to test, acceptance criteria). Creates sub-issues on GitHub when useful (including a single sub-issue)—but does not create a separate git branch for each sub-issue.

Outputs: Parent branch on the remote, linked to the parent issue; refined parent; optional sub-issues as GitHub tickets only.

Hands off to: Engineer (for implementation branches and code)

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Phase 5: Engineer (building)

Command: /build-from-github with a GitHub issue link (parent or sub-issue)

What it does:

1. Resolves the issue; creates or checks out feature/issue-<N> with root main (top-level) or the parent’s feature/issue-<parent> (sub-issue).
2. Pushes and links that branch to that issue if needed.
3. Implements scoped changes.
4. Runs unit-test, integration-test, and lint-test from .forge/skill_registry.json. Does not commit or open a PR until every check passes (fix or stop and report).
5. Scans the diff for security issues.
6. Commits, pushes, opens a PR (using .github/pull_request_template.md when present).

Outputs: Pull request ready for Quality Assurance.

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Phase 6: Quality Assurance (review)

Command: /review-pr {GitHub PR link}

What it does: Reviews the PR for correctness and security, posts review comments. Humans merge when satisfied.

Outputs: Feedback on the PR; no automatic merge

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Commands summary

Command	Phase	Input	Output
/architect-this	Architecting	Prompt	Updated .forge docs
/plan-roadmap	Planning	Vision + knowledge map	Synced GitHub milestones/issues
/refine-issue	Refining	Issue URL	Parent branch + link; refined tickets; optional sub-issues
/build-from-github	Building	Issue URL	PR (after all tests/lint pass)
/review-pr	Reviewing	PR URL	Review on PR

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Chat participants (VS Code / Cursor)

Participant	Purpose
@forge	General Forge guidance
@forge-refine	Refine issues (Technical Writer flow)
@forge-commit	Commit with validation
@forge-push	Push safely
@forge-pullrequest	Create PR
@forge-setup-issue	Branch prep (create-feature-branch from main or parent)
@forge-build-issue	End-to-end build-from-github
@forge-review-pr	PR review