ForgeADE

Native AI Development Workspace

ForgeADE is a native, lightweight, AI-first development workspace built for modern software engineers. Unlike traditional IDEs that treat AI as an extension, ForgeADE treats AI agents, terminals, Git, and projects as first-class citizens — all running locally with minimal resource usage.

Built with Wails v3 (Go + WebView), React 19, and CodeMirror 6.

Philosophy

• Native First — No Electron. Go backend, lightweight WebView frontend.
• Workspace First — Everything belongs to a workspace. Folders are temporary workspaces.
• AI Native — AI is part of the architecture, not an extension.
• Lightweight — Fast startup, low RAM usage.
• Offline First — Everything works locally. Cloud features are optional.

Features

• Terminal Session mode (default) — run agent CLIs (pi, claude, codex, opencode, or custom) in PTY sessions with scrollback replay, auto-naming, resume, and restart. ForgeADE never interprets agent output; the terminal renderer stays generic.
• Code editor — CodeMirror 6 with workspace symbol indexing (completions, outline, auto-import), inline syntax check (esbuild), formatting (prettier), diff gutters with per-hunk revert/stage.
• Git UI — commit graph, branches, staging, conflict resolution, per-hunk revert, and AI-generated commit messages from the staged diff.
• Built-in AI agent — chat with tool use, approvals, and skills, powered by configurable LLM providers.
• ACP agents — external agents over the Agent Client Protocol with permission prompts, model switching, and slash commands.
• MCP — connect Model Context Protocol servers; discover and import servers/skills from other agent tools installed on the machine.
• Plugins — plugin manager built on a declarative runtime (cordis), plus a marketplace system used by the built-in agent harness.
• SSH/SFTP explorer — open a remote directory as a workspace over SSH.
• Automations — saved prompt workflows on cron schedules.
• Browser Use — in-app WKWebView engine exposing browser_* tools to agents.
• Search — instant filename search (trie), ripgrep content search, and project-wide replace.

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Shell	Wails v3 (beta.16), Go 1.26
Frontend	React 19, TypeScript, Vite, Zustand
Styling	Tailwind CSS v4 (CSS-first @theme tokens) — see docs/DESIGN_SYSTEM.md
Editor	CodeMirror 6
Terminal	xterm.js + creack/pty
Lint	oxlint (frontend), go vet (backend)

Getting Started

Prerequisites: Go 1.26+, Bun, Node (for version scripts), and the Wails v3 CLI:

go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v3/cmd/wails3@latest

bun install --cwd frontend   # frontend dependencies
make dev                     # hot-reload development

Build & Release

make build                   # debug build with devtools
make build-prod              # release build
make sign ID="..."           # codesign (see Makefile)
make notarize EMAIL=... TEAM=...   # notarize (see Makefile)

Tests & Checks

make test                    # go test ./...
make vet                     # go vet ./...
cd frontend && bun run lint  # oxlint
cd frontend && bun run build # tsc -b && vite build

Note: a few tests in internal/acp are live smoke tests that require the opencode/codex/pi/claude binaries on PATH; they fail on machines without them.

Project Structure

├── main.go               # Wails app bootstrap, window creation
├── app.go                # App struct, wiring, lifecycle (bindings live in *_api.go)
├── *_api.go              # Frontend API surface, one file per feature area
├── internal/             # All business logic (see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md)
│   ├── agentsession/     #   Terminal Session mode: CLI configs, sessions, disk store
│   ├── terminal/         #   PTY session manager
│   ├── agent/            #   Built-in LLM agent (turn loop, tools, approvals)
│   ├── acp/              #   Agent Client Protocol drivers
│   ├── index/            #   Workspace symbol index (completions, outline)
│   ├── git/              #   Git engine (status, graph, diffs, hunks)
│   ├── commitmsg/        #   AI commit message generation
│   ├── editor/           #   esbuild syntax check + prettier formatting
│   └── …                 #   search, mcp, plugins, skills, llm, browseruse, …
├── frontend/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── components/   # Feature UI (agent/, editor/, session/, settings/, modals/, …)
│   │   ├── stores/       # Zustand stores + workspace context store
│   │   ├── services/     # Agent engines, API bridge
│   │   ├── lib/          # Wails bindings facade, editor globals, design helpers
│   │   └── index.css     # Design tokens (single source of truth)
│   └── bindings/         # Generated Wails bindings (build artifact, gitignored)
├── docs/                 # ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN_SYSTEM, CONTRIBUTING
├── cmd/shelltest/        # Terminal animation stress-test CLI (make shell-test)
└── samples/              # Small polyglot fixtures for manual editor testing

Documentation

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — system overview, backend package map, the four "session" concepts, event flow, known debt
• docs/DESIGN_SYSTEM.md — tokens, the text-ui scale, theming rules, do/don't
• docs/CONTRIBUTING.md — workflow, conventions, commit style

License

MIT