help

A one-screen guide to Forge, a framework for planning and shipping software changes in Claude Code. It explains Forge’s modes, commands, state files, and review rules.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to orient yourself in a Forge project, understand what /init does, choose commands, and review the project’s release checks.
Why use it?
It gives new users a quick way to understand which command or mode applies when they are unsure how to start.

Command

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/dormstern/forge/help
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dormstern/forge
Per session 55 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 912 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00055 $0.00912
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00456
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00182
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00091

Measured yesterday against content hash 282931a1e370, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

help scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

commands/help.md · 77 lines

What it actually says

/forge:help — Orientation

Execution mode: direct. This command has explicit steps below — execute them in order. Do not enter plan mode, do not write a plan file, do not call ExitPlanMode. The framework already did the planning; you just run the steps.

You are introducing Forge to a user who has the plugin installed but isn't sure how to use it. Print the orientation block below, exactly as written. Do NOT add commentary, do NOT modify the structure, do NOT skip sections. Use the user's actual project context (existence of IDENTITY.md / THESIS.md) to set the Where you are now section, but everything else is verbatim.


═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  FORGE — Vibe-coded plans go in. Only what survives ships.
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

  THREE FILTERS EVERY RELEASE RUNS THROUGH:
  1. Question every plan — Devil's Advocate before code exists
  2. Delete 10% of scope — mandatory, every release
  3. Audit every five features — drift checks vs IDENTITY

  Then the Ralph Loop ships what survived.

  TWO MODES (auto-routed by which state file exists in your project):

  ┌──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┐
  │ FOUNDER mode         │ PM mode                          │
  │ Pre-PMF validation   │ Shipping a product               │
  │ THESIS.md present    │ IDENTITY.md present              │
  │                      │                                  │
  │ /forge:scout         │ /forge:harvest                   │
  │ /forge:interrogate   │ /forge:shape   ← hero command    │
  │ /forge:synthesize    │ /forge:build                     │
  │ /forge:graduate      │ /forge:ship                      │
  └──────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

  WORKS IN BOTH MODES:

  ★ /forge:try       30-second magic-moment demo. Zero setup. Start here.
  /forge:falsify     Devil's Advocate against any plan / pitch / PRD
  /forge:init        Scaffold state files (Validating by default)
  /forge:init --pm   Scaffold for shipping a product instead
  /forge:cycle       Run a full cycle, auto-routed
  /forge:drift       Standalone drift audit on last 5 features
  /forge:status      One-screen state snapshot
  /forge:help        This screen

  STATE FILES LIVE IN YOUR REPO. Plain Markdown + JSON:

  PM mode (6 files):
    IDENTITY.md, features.json, releases.json,
    progress.md, architecture.md, contracts.md

  Founder mode (7 files):
    THESIS.md, hypotheses.json, evidence.json,
    cycles.json, interviews.md, landscape.md, progress.md

  Commit them or .gitignore them — they're yours. Claude reads
  them on every session via the SessionStart hook.
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════

After printing the block, append a single contextual Where you are now: section:

  • If IDENTITY.md exists in the project root: "PM mode detected. Run /forge:status to see your current cycle, or /forge:harvest to start a new one."
  • If THESIS.md exists: "Founder mode detected. Run /forge:status to see hypothesis trajectory, or /forge:interrogate to keep validating."
  • If both exist: "Both modes detected. Tell me which to run — or rename one of the state files to disable that mode."
  • If neither exists: "No state files yet. Run /forge:init (PM, default) or /forge:init --founder (pre-PMF) to scaffold."

End with one line: "Read more: github.com/dormstern/forge"

Do NOT execute any other command. Do NOT make recommendations beyond the contextual one-liner above.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 77 lines · 55 tokens per session scan A 282931a1e370

Subscribe to this mod's changes

help is a command published in the GitHub repository dormstern/forge (6 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 55 tokens to every session and 912 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.