Forge — The Front Door Decision

Timeline

1. 1

   Start

   Ignite + Charge received

   Plumber feedback + Housecall Pro competitive analysis (GPT exchange) delivered as the Charge

2. 2

   Early

   Orientation + pulse

   Found the 2026-06-21 Strike ('memory and attention system, not a CRM') — the engine had pre-decided the positioning question

3. 3

   Mid

   Two corrections from Zeb

   Gino is a test org, not the demo target; the plumber discovery conversation had already happened (flooded phone)

4. 4

   Mid-late

   The pushback

   'It's now both? really?' — hedged both-segments answer rejected; front-door reframe produced

5. 5

   Close

   Decision made durable

   docs/forge-front-door-decision.md written; Anvil + Strike captured; CLAUDE.md + PROJECT_INDEX corrected

6. 6

   Post-wrap

   Journal under-reporting found and fixed

   Zeb noticed the live page showed none of the 3 spins engine-health counted — renderer never displayed chapters[].spins; fixed with a public/internal split (option 2)

What shipped

• docs/forge-front-door-decision.md — the durable decision record: identity (front door), rejected options with reasons (HCP sidecar, fit-shop CRM identity), the defensibility argument (shop memory/judgment vs. platform AI roadmaps), plumber pilot scope, v1 build table, positioning language, open items

• forgekit-os/journal/anvils.md — 'Is Forge a sidecar to Housecall Pro, or a fit-shop CRM?' (the fork evaporated when the question changed from segment selection to product placement)

• forgekit-os/journal/strikes.md — 'Forge is the front door, not the back office.' Sharpens the 2026-06-21 Strike from what Forge is into where it lives

• CLAUDE.md + PROJECT_INDEX.md — Gino's Electric corrected from 'pilot/first client' to 'test org modeled on the real electrician'; dead docs/gino-pilot.md reference replaced with the new decision doc; Forge status now points at the front-door identity

• build-session.mjs — chapter renderer added with a public/internal split: public build-log pages stay summary-level (engine is private, per the Phase 2A IP boundary), full chapters[].shipped/spins/wins render to forgekit-os/journal/build-log/<slug>.html which never deploys. Both recent session pages rebuilt.

• inferred-gates.config.mjs — DIFF_EXCLUDE + INFERRED_RULES moved out of build-session.mjs per the engine-guard line-limit split (the script's own FREEZE note called for exactly this); stale docs/forge-journal/ exclude paths fixed to forgekit-os/journal/

• retro.mjs — forgekit-os/journal/build-log/ added to the safe-generated commit globs so internal pages are auto-committed by the retro pipeline