Forge Platform

Handbook

Respecting resources and autonomy

Platform operators need a clear line between interactive Cursor planning (human in the loop each turn) and bounded autonomous execution (unattended or PDCA loops). This page is adoption-focused; canonical methodology…

Related in-repo: Cursor rules and skills (cost-aware planning), Agents and workcells, Governed workflows and rules.

Why Platform cares

Forge Platform is a governed delivery control plane with pluggable agent workcells — not a single opaque agent product. Unattended runs still consume tokens, local compute, and human review when they touch merge, approval, or release boundaries.

Respecting resources aligns with the operating model (three planes): cognition and policy stay inspectable; execution stays bounded; evidence feeds Assay and approval gates.

Interactive vs autonomous

Mode When Read
Interactive Human steers each Cursor turn; plans before code Cost-aware planning and model tiering
Autonomous / bounded Campaigns, patch loops, worker ladders with verify/repair Respecting resources · Autonomy levels

Cost-aware rules answer how to plan in the IDE. The autonomy ladder answers how much change an unattended run may attempt and where humans must gate.

Example at a glance (L1)

A real Dark Factory L1 run, from the worked examples:

  • Goal: fix a broken markdown link in README.md — classified complicated / S / high, routed to the local tier.
  • What ran: the local model stalled, so the worker ladder stepped to Cursor (composer-2.5) — a within-loop recovery, not a human escalation.
  • Where you still gate: the change lands on a branch for approve/merge, and guarded promotion is skipped unless the live tree is clean (no auto-commit).

The Blueprints bounded execution examples page carries the full L1/L2 walkthroughs plus loop, routing, PDCA, and dual-wiki diagrams.

Autonomy ladder (L0–L3 summary)

Full L0–L8 table and enforcement detail: Autonomy levels (canonical).

Level Unit of delivery Human gate (short)
L0 Suggestions only Continuous
L1 One function / contract-bound change Approve branch/merge
L2 Multi-file change-set, no rearchitecture Acceptance criteria + merge
L3 End-to-end use-case slice in one app Intent in; review out

Levels L4+ (feature, subsystem, product increment, multi-platform) add ADR, go/no-go, and strategic checkpoints — see the handbook page.

Forge Dark Factory (PoC)

Forge Dark Factory is the current PoC reference implementation for a sequential local-first autonomous coding loop. It is not a Platform product submodule today.

Aspect PoC notes
Target L1 today; foundation for L2–L3
Stack forge-lcdl patch units + verify/repair/proof; optional forge-workcells local worker
Loop Classify → route → plan → draft → apply → verify → repair → proof → dual-wiki → escalate
Trace Machine record + generated human report with freeze gate

Use Dark Factory to validate ladder and resource rules in code; use this handbook and Blueprints pages for policy regardless of whether you run the PoC.

Platform touchpoints

Canonical references (Blueprints handbook)