forge-pipeline

name	forge-pipeline
description	The FORGE gated-planning pipeline that /forge runs: depth-scaled gates that turn any idea into a two-panel-reviewed, critic-checked, tiebroken, routed plan. Mimics Claude Code Ultraplan's deep-plan loop and improves it with cross-model divergence, a fact-verification gate, a correlated-error critic, and a binding tribunal for conflicts.

Skill: forge-pipeline

Invoked by /forge. This skill holds the gate logic; the command file is the thin entry. The whole pipeline formalizes the hand-run pattern: clarify → research+verify → two divergent panels (different models) → critic → gap-analysis → per-conflict expert tiebreak → red-team → synthesize → route → exit.

This file is the always-loaded core: the artifact contract, the depth ladder, and the gates every depth runs. Load a reference file only when the depth or the situation calls for it:

Load	When	Holds
reference/gates-standard.md	depth ≥ standard	the domain-prior lens (G2/G3) · G4a critic · G4b tiebreak · G5 red-team
reference/deep-resume.md	depth = deep, or --resume	checkpoint/resume + the uncapped-conflict rules
reference/regen-discipline.md	G8 only, and only if a phase adds/removes a skill, agent, or other counted artifact	the marketplace count/regen DoD criteria
reference/provenance.md	a human asks why FORGE is shaped this way	provenance, the shared rubric, honest scope

Never load a reference file the depth doesn't reach — that is the point of the split.

0. The artifact contract — read this before dispatching any gate

Every gate's payload lives on disk; only a receipt crosses back into this session.

• The gate's subagent writes its own artifact to .ravenclaude/runs/forge/<slug>/<artifact>.md. Put the absolute run-dir path in its brief. The orchestrator does not write gate artifacts and does not ask a subagent for its artifact's text.

• The subagent returns only this receipt — no plan body, no prose report:

  ---RESULT_START---
  {"gate":"G3","status":"pass|fail|waived","artifact":"<abs path>","bytes":N,
   "digest":["≤5 one-line findings a downstream gate must route on"],
   "blockers":[],"confidence":0.0-1.0}
  ---RESULT_END---
  

• A downstream gate that needs an upstream payload is handed the path and reads it itself. Never paste plan-A / plan-B / critic-brief / red-team text into a brief.

• Fail-closed is preserved: a gate advances on status + blockers + the artifact existing and being non-empty. The payload was never the pass signal — so routing on a receipt loses nothing.

• The Sága run record (commands/forge.md Step 5) = each receipt appended verbatim (+ model / subagent_type, "generic" today / effort) to .ravenclaude/runs/forge/<slug>/run-log.jsonl, one line per gate. A pure append of data in hand.

Why this is load-bearing. A relayed artifact is paid for twice — once on return, then again in every later turn's resent context — and relaying pins two complete plans plus the critic plus the red-team in context through G6. Reading from disk hands each downstream gate the identical bytes at a fraction of the resident context. This buys efficiency with no loss of gate input; it is the single largest cost lever in the pipeline, and it is free.

0.5 Provisioning — always a worktree, always checkpointed (every depth)

Before G0 at every depth, FORGE provisions an isolated git worktree and checkpoints the run's tracked work at each gate boundary. This is a deterministic script step, not an LLM gate — it dispatches no subagent and costs ~0 tokens, so it runs identically at micro through deep.

Provision (once, at run start). Run bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/forge-worktree.sh init <slug> — it creates (or, on a --resume, reuses) the branch forge/<slug> in the worktree .claude/worktrees/forge-<slug>/. The plan's landing (G7 landing=pr writes plan.md there) and any subsequent implementation happen on that branch, isolated from the primary checkout — which is exactly what the worktree_guard posture nudges toward, and what keeps two concurrent /forge runs (or a forge run + the user's own edits on main) from stomping one shared tree. It prints a JSON receipt and, on success, a FORGE_WORKTREE <abs-path> line; hand that path to the implementation phase.

Checkpoint (at each gate boundary and at exit). After each gate and before the single exit, run bash ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/forge-worktree.sh checkpoint <slug> <gate> — it commits the worktree's tracked changes as forge(<slug>): checkpoint — <gate>. During pure planning most checkpoints are no-ops (the run-dir under .ravenclaude/runs/forge/<slug>/ is git-ignored, so there is nothing tracked to commit); the checkpoints that carry weight are the landed plan.md (G6/G7) and the implementation phases, where a commit-per-boundary makes an interrupted run recoverable from the branch. This is the git-checkpoint layer; it composes with — does not replace — the deep-depth atomic-write/resume in reference/deep-resume.md, which is the gate-skip layer over the (git-ignored) run-dir.

Fail-safe by contract — provisioning is a safety anchor, never a gate. Every case the script can't provision exits 0 with a status receipt and FORGE proceeds in the primary checkout: not-a-git-repo, already-in-worktree (the nesting guard — a FORGE run launched from inside a linked worktree does not nest a second one), or opted out. Opt-out: forge_worktree: off in .ravenclaude/comfort-posture.yaml, or the FORGE_WORKTREE=off env var (absent ⇒ on, the default). The script is idempotent, bash-3.2-safe, and carries a --self-test (its own scratch-repo fixtures) — a registered, citable canonical route, mirroring forge-route.py --self-test.

1. Depth ladder — the gate SET scales with depth (tiebreak F4)

A 0-call gate is just overhead, so depth collapses the pipeline, it doesn't thin it. --depth quick is the default (cheap-by-default so the command is used for every idea — tiebreak F1).

Depth	Gates run	~calls	Also load	Use for
micro	G0 · G6 · G7 · G8	1-2	—	a truly atomic idea needing only a structured sanity pass
quick (default)	G0 · G1-lite · G2 · G3 · G6 · G7 · G8	3-5	—	most ideas (a new skill, a hook tweak, a knowledge doc)
standard	+ G4a · G4b · G5	6-10	gates-standard.md	a non-trivial multi-file change
deep	standard, no conflict cap, 2nd red-team, checkpoint/resume	11-18	gates-standard.md + deep-resume.md	a substantial multi-plugin build

Before G0 at every depth, §0.5 provisioning runs (worktree + checkpoints) — a deterministic script step, not counted in ~calls (it dispatches no subagent).

2. The gates every depth runs

Each gate is fail-closed (no advance without an explicit pass or a recorded waiver) and emits a typed artifact into the Sága run dir .ravenclaude/runs/forge/<slug>/, per §0. Only plan.md (G6) is a candidate to land in the repo; per-gate artifacts stay in the run dir (avoids docs/ sprawl).

G0 — Scope / Clarify + routing triage

Ask ≤2-3 batched clarifying questions via AskUserQuestion (auto-routes through the decision-review hook). Produce a one-paragraph scoped intent, an explicit out-of-scope list, a named owner, and a one-line success signal. Fast triage: if the idea is plainly large + cloud-suited + privacy-clean, offer to hand to Ultraplan now before spending tokens. → scope.md.

G1 — Research + Fact-Verification (TIERED — tiebreak F2)

Build a claims table of every load-bearing fact the plan rests on. Tiered enforcement:

• BLOCK (cannot advance): a claim about anything outside the repo — third-party API behavior, tool/SDK versions, pricing, performance numbers — without either a this-session source (url + retrieval date) or an [unverified — training knowledge] marker carrying a claim-specific one-sentence justification (why it can't be verified now + what route would verify it).
• WARN, continue: a repo-structural claim (a file exists, a skill is present, a gate slot is free) the model just confirmed via a visible in-session tool call — that is grounded; demanding a second citation is theater. If it wasn't confirmed in-session, it's BLOCK-tier.
• Skip entirely at micro depth.

→ claims-table.md (columns: claim · tier · source/marker · settling-gate). This is the accuracy discipline from docs/accuracy-near-guarantee-design.md applied to planning: a plan must rest on tested facts, not assumptions.

G2 / G3 — Two divergent panels (different models, in parallel)

Dispatch one worker subagent per panel, models pinned per --models (B must differ from A — cross-model divergence is the improvement over Ultraplan's same-model critic). Each panel writes a complete phased plan that must include: per-phase acceptance tests + pre-build gates, a dependency DAG (what blocks what; what parallelizes; the critical path), and ≥2 alternative approaches with one-line trade-offs (the Ultraplan deep-plan structural inheritance — a plan, not a task list). Panel B additionally writes a gap-delta: every place A and B disagree or one is silent, plus a note if A's sequencing over-serializes. → plan-A.md, plan-B.md, gap-delta.md.

Both panels are dispatched in one batch (wall-clock ≈ the slower panel, not the sum). Per §0 each returns a receipt only. Panel B is handed plan-A.md's path and reads it for the gap-delta — never A's text inline, and B must draft its own plan before reading A, or the divergence the whole design rests on collapses into anchoring.

G6 — Synthesize

Dispatch this as a subagent and hand it the run-dir path; it reads the gate artifacts from disk and merges them into a single plan.md: the reconciled dependency DAG, the risk matrix (critic + red-team, when those gates ran), the alternatives section, every tiebreak verdict, every red-team mitigation. No dangling conflict; every G1 [unverified] claim carries the step that will settle it. This is the authoritative artifact — and the only one the orchestrator later reads in full (once, at G8).

G7 — Route (deterministic — no model judgment)

python3 ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/forge-route.py --plan <run-dir>/plan.md --size small|medium|large [--research-done] [--privacy clean|sensitive] → JSON:

• execution ∈ use_local | consider_ultraplan | lean_ultraplan (three-signal rubric; privacy=sensitive is a hard cap to local).
• landing ∈ main | pr — a plan carrying an engineering pre-commitment (a concrete version-bump target, a reserved Gate N slot, a .repo-layout.json/allowed_globs edit, a named PR/branch target) lands via a forge/<slug> draft PR; a pure design/analysis plan lands straight to main (tiebreak F3 — a stale pre-commitment must not sit canonically in main).

The script reads plan.md from disk — it never needs the plan in context. It also runs --self-test (its own fixtures) — a registered, citable canonical route.

G8 — DoD / Exit

Verify the plan carries its definition-of-done (acceptance tests, version bumps, layout allow-list, prettier/audit-gates per AGENTS.md). If any phase adds or removes a skill, agent, or other artifact whose count is encoded in marketplace prose, load reference/regen-discipline.md now and fold its criteria into that phase's DoD — skipping this is what caused the 2026-06-03 three-PR hotfix chain (PRs #244-#247).

Then the single exit:

• execution=use_local → call ExitPlanMode(plan.md).
• execution=lean_ultraplan/consider_ultraplan → decline ExitPlanMode with a "sending to Ultraplan" note (the harness opens the browser session, seeded with plan.md).
• reject (G5 left an unmitigated blocker, or G0 scope is incoherent) → report the blocker, no exit.
• Land plan.md per the G7 landing verdict (main, or open the draft PR).

3. Cost / latency controls

• The §0 artifact contract is the primary lever — it bounds resident context, which every later turn re-pays. Everything below trims marginal calls.
• Depth default quick + the gate-set scaling (§1) + the reference-file split (load only what the depth reaches).
• Conflict cap top-N≈5 at standard (uncapped only at deep — see deep-resume.md).
• Claims cache: G1 entries are content-addressed by (claim, source-url); a re-run reuses verified claims whose retrieval date is < 90 days (matches the repo's knowledge-freshness contract). WebFetch is already 15-min URL-cached.
• Parallel where independent (G1 explore subagents; G2/G3 panels = one batch of Task calls), serial where dependent (G4→G5→G6) — capped by the .ravenclaude/comfort-posture.yaml parallelism: posture like spawn-team Step 5 (enabled: false → serial; max_workers: N → batches of ≤N; absent → unchanged). A cap, not a floor.
• Brakes reused: runaway-brake.sh (PreToolUse call caps) + guard-recursive-spawn.sh (tree topology) fire automatically — a thrashing gate trips the brake deterministically.
• Fail-fast: G1 BLOCK and a G7 reject short-circuit the expensive G2–G6 core when an idea is under-specified or non-viable.

Thinking budget (cost ↔ depth lever)

Raise effort — the Task/Agent dispatch option (low|medium|high|xhigh|max), not a brief keyword — to xhigh only for the gates that do adversarial reasoning over a whole plan: the G2/G3 panels, and — at standard+ — the G4a critic and G5 red-team (their policy travels with them in gates-standard.md). G0 scope, G1 fact-lookup, G4b tiebreaks, G6 synthesis, and G7 routing are shallow or deterministic and do not warrant it — leave them at the session default. --depth quick may skip the escalation entirely.

Anthropic's Opus 4.8 guidance is to "raise effort … rather than prompting around it", and xhigh is its recommended starting point for coding and agentic work (the API default is high). The pipeline's old ultrathink-in-the-brief instruction was a workaround for a flag that did not exist when it was written; --effort / effortLevel / the Task effort option all exist now. Dated correction, the per-model inversion (Opus 4.8 → xhigh, Fable 5 → high), and sources: reference/provenance.md.

Do not buy tokens here. Trimming reasoning on the critic or red-team, or collapsing G3 into a review-of-A instead of an independent plan, saves tokens by deleting the divergence and adversarial depth the pipeline exists for. §0 and the depth/reference splits are free; these are not.