cc-forge
Ship real software with Claude Code — not vibes. A complete, opinionated SDLC that runs inside Claude Code, built around two pillars: Hermes directs, Argus watches.
cc-forge gives a solo developer or a small team the discipline of a full engineering org — CTO, Security, SRE, QA, Product — without the headcount. It is not a list of tips or a prompt pack. It is an operating system for building software with AI.
The two pillars
Hermes — the Conductor
Hermes is the orchestrating agent at the center of every session. Named after the Greek messenger who moved between all the gods, Hermes sits between you and every other agent, persona, and tool. He doesn't write the code — he makes sure the right agent is doing the right thing at the right time, and he always speaks last with a single clear next step. You never have to ask "what now?"
Argus — the Watcher
Argus is Hermes's vigilant counterpart — the hundred-eyed giant who never fully slept. Where Hermes directs, Argus watches. It is deterministic: it checks that the framework's own contracts still hold — backlog integrity, gates actually run, no silent drift — and reports HEALTHY / DEGRADED / BROKEN with exact evidence. Argus auto-fires at the end of every session and surfaces a staleness warning at the start of the next one, so the framework can't quietly rot between check-ins.
Hermes directs. Argus watches. Personas judge. Three layers, kept distinct: Hermes orchestrates the session, Argus watches the framework (deterministically), and the expert personas judge the project at gate reviews. Argus never grades your code — that's the personas' job — and it never edits your backlog. It only reports drift.
Who it's for
- Solo indie developers and founders building real products, not demos.
- Small teams (2–5) who want consistent, professional engineering standards without a full org.
- Non-engineers with technical ambition — founders, PMs, and operators building with Claude Code for the first time.
What you get
- One-command onboarding —
/hermes-init for a new project, /hermes-adopt to onboard an existing codebase.
- 13 expert personas reviewing your work at the right gates — CTO, Security SME, SRE, QA, Product Owner, and more.
- A 10-domain launch-readiness backlog grounded in real industry standards (OWASP, Google SRE, WCAG, GDPR…).
- Deterministic self-checking via Argus, so framework drift is caught automatically — never discovered too late.
- Token-disciplined sessions that stay fast and focused across an entire project, not just the first hour.
Two ways to start
/hermes-init — Greenfield
Starting fresh. Hermes interviews you, understands your idea, recommends a stack, and sets up the entire project: CLAUDE.md, a PRD stub, Taskmaster tasks, GitHub Actions, and your backlog. You start building in minutes with everything configured correctly.
/hermes-adopt — Existing project
Already have a codebase? Hermes reads your entire repo — every file, doc, config, and commit pattern — and produces a gap report: what stage you're really at, what's missing, what's inconsistent, what your first tasks should be. Your existing code is the source of truth. Nothing is assumed.
The command surface
cc-forge ships a focused set of /hermes-* commands. The ones you'll use daily are at the top.
| Command | What it does |
|---|
/hermes-status | Project health: stage, next task, backlog %, flags. Run it first every session. |
/hermes-next | The single highest-priority unblocked task, with full context. |
/hermes-init | Greenfield onboarding interview + full project setup. |
/hermes-adopt | Read an existing repo and produce a gap report. |
/hermes-backlog-init | Customize the 10-domain backlog to your stack; set a Definition of Done per domain. |
/hermes-intake | Triage a new requirement/bug/change before it becomes work-in-flight. |
/hermes-gate-review | Trigger an SDLC gate — the due personas review in clean contexts. |
/hermes-phase-gate | Advance a PDLC phase (MVP → Beta → Pilot → Launch → Growth) via full-panel review. |
/hermes-argus | Run the framework self-check on demand (it also auto-fires at session close). |
/hermes-deploy | Pre-flight checks → gate verification → Railway deploy. |
/hermes-dashboard | Generate status/dashboard.html — a single-file project overview. |
/hermes-report | Full usage report for review sessions. |
/hermes-update | Pull the latest cc-forge into this project (never touches your project-specific files). |
See CHEATSHEET.md for the full "what to run and when."
Two lifecycles that nest: PDLC + SDLC
The SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) is what activity you're doing right now — the eleven stages:
