forge-orchestrator

Stage: Public preview. Forge is public: anyone may install and use it. Its maturity is below alpha (pre-alpha): no SLA, and interfaces may change without notice.

Orchestration for Claude Code, with Codex CLI as a task runner, on shared repos — single Rust binary, zero deps. Gemini CLI support is in development (build B1, target 2026-10-27).

Multi-agent inside a single tool works fine. Claude Code runs 20 subagents and they stay aligned because the tool manages that orchestration internally. The problem is multi-tool: several AI coding tools on the same repo with no shared state. That's what the orchestrator solves: today for Claude Code, with Codex CLI as a task runner. Gemini CLI support is in development (build B1, target 2026-10-27).

It adds file locking, knowledge capture, task planning, drift detection, and multi-tool orchestration to your development workflow. The tools read from and write to a single state directory. A 12-tool MCP server exposes the full orchestration state to any connected AI client, and can create, claim and complete tasks.

The orchestrator exists because I ran two AI tools on the same codebase and watched them fail in the same ways human teams fail. Claude refactored a module. Codex updated tests against the pre-refactor interface. Both saved. Tests failed. Neither tool knew the other existed. I'd spent 23 years watching this exact scenario with talented human teams. The solution was always the same: orchestration infrastructure.

Install

curl -fsSL https://forge.nxtg.ai/install.sh | sh
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"   # this shell only; new shells already have it
forge init

The installer puts forge in ~/.local/bin (change it with FORGE_INSTALL_DIR) and adds that directory to your PATH with one guarded line in ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc and, if you have zsh, ~/.zshenv. Set FORGE_NO_MODIFY_PATH=1 to leave your shell files alone.

If the claude CLI is on your PATH, the installer then adds forge's MCP tools to Claude Code, using only that CLI: it adds and refreshes the nxtg-forge marketplace (nxtg-ai/forge-plugin), updates nxtg-forge@nxtg-forge if you already have it, and installs the companion plugin nxtg-forge-orchestrator@nxtg-forge. It prints one line per change and changes no Claude configuration any other way. Without claude, or if a step fails, it prints the commands for you to run and still exits 0. Set FORGE_NO_CLAUDE_PLUGIN=1 to skip it.

Single binary. 4.7 MB. No runtime dependencies.

Quick Demo

Four commands from zero to task board:

# 1. Initialize — creates .forge/ directory with state, event log, knowledge base
forge init

# 2. Configure the AI brain — choose 'openai' (needs API key) or 'rule-based' (free)
forge config brain openai

# 3. Generate tasks — reads your SPEC.md or README, creates dependency-aware task graph
forge plan --generate

# 4. See the result — task board with assignments, dependencies, and project health
forge status

From here you can:

• forge run — execute tasks headlessly (autonomous mode, great for CI)
• forge dashboard --pty — launch the TUI dashboard with interactive agent panes

Past Result: Stargate Mode (before v1.6.1)