Forge CLI — DevOps skill for Claude Code

forge-cli

Assemble, validate, and deploy markdown content across AI coding providers.

Skills, agents, and rules are authored once as markdown with YAML frontmatter. forge-cli transforms them for each provider's conventions and deploys to the right directories.

Why not just copy files?

Copying works until instructions drift. forge-cli adds three things raw copying can't:

• Assembly — strips frontmatter, resolves user/ overrides, applies provider-specific transforms (kebab-case, tool remapping). The deployed file is clean; the source keeps its metadata.
• Provenance — each deployed file has an [in-toto/SLSA][6] record of what sources produced it. When something breaks, you can trace which source file and which override combined to produce the deployed instruction.
• Manifest tracking — .manifest at each target records what was deployed and when. Detects user modifications, skips unchanged files, prunes orphans from renamed sources.

The `user/` subdirectory lets individuals customize without polluting upstream (git-ignored, merged during assembly). Model qualifier directories (`claude-opus-4/`, `claude-sonnet-4/`) handle the reality that models need different instructions as they evolve.

What it does

**Assemble** — Transforms source markdown into provider-specific output. Strips frontmatter, removes GFM reference links, resolves variant overrides, applies provider rules (kebab-case filenames, tool name remapping, TOML conversion). Writes provenance sidecars (SLSA/in-toto) alongside each built file.

**Deploy** — Deploys assembled files from `build/` to provider target directories. Tracks deployments via `.manifest` dotfiles for incremental installs — skips unchanged files, detects user modifications, overwrites stale content.

**Install** — Runs assemble + deploy in one step.

**Validate** — Checks module structure, `.mdschema` compliance, and runs external tools (shellcheck, cargo fmt/clippy, cargo test, tsc, gitleaks) when available.