About

ForgeTrail is a persistent development system for building software with AI agents.

Who it is for: builders using Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, or similar agents who want structure without a heavyweight process.

Why it works: phases with exit criteria, a ledger in appledger/, and templates pre-loaded with production lessons. Each project leaves decisions, lessons, and a session handoff that future work follows.

What it is not

• Not a project tracker, audit log, or observability product
• Not a hosted SaaS or a plugin
• Not a substitute for your judgment at phase gates

Origin

Distilled from Exec Foundry and refined across about a dozen further projects. Built by Catalyst Forge.

Open source under Apache License 2.0. Community support via GitHub issues (best-effort, no SLA). Commercial help: catalystforge.com.

Works alongside

ForgeTrail stays the lifecycle and memory layer. Optional neighbors on the Catalyst Forge tools shelf cover jobs such as a Markdown site (FilePress), named local ports (LocalSlip), a local status board (LocalHelm), and editorial or readiness skills. None of those are required to try ForgeTrail.