/open-forge

name: open-forge
description: Automate self-hosting of open-source apps on cloud infrastructure the user owns. Use when the user asks to "self-host", "deploy to my own cloud", "install X on AWS / Lightsail / EC2 / Azure / Hetzner / DigitalOcean / GCP / Oracle Cloud / Hostinger / Raspberry Pi / Kubernetes / Fly.io / Render / Railway / Northflank / exe.dev", "set up my own Ghost blog / Mastodon / WordPress / Nextcloud", wants to deploy the self-hosted personal AI agent **OpenClaw** (openclaw.ai — NOT the Captain Claw platformer game) or **Hermes-Agent** (Nous Research's self-improving AI agent at github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent), wants to run **Ollama** (local-LLM inference server at ollama.com — pairs with every AI agent / chat UI as an OpenAI-compatible provider), wants to run **Open WebUI** (feature-rich self-hosted ChatGPT-like UI at github.com/open-webui/open-webui — pairs natively with Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible backend; adds RAG, web search, image gen, voice, multi-user), wants to run **Stable Diffusion WebUI** / **Automatic1111** / **A1111** (the most-popular open-source AI image generator at github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui — text-to-image, img2img, inpainting, ControlNet, LoRA; pairs with Open WebUI as an image-gen backend), wants to run **ComfyUI** (node-based AI image / video generation at github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI — power-user alternative to A1111 with workflow graphs; same models, different UX; pairs with Open WebUI as image-gen backend), wants to deploy **Dify** (open-source LLMOps + AI app builder at github.com/langgenius/dify — visual workflow builder, RAG, multi-tenant; the "build a SaaS-grade AI app" platform, different category from chat UIs), wants to deploy **LibreChat** (multi-provider chat UI with deep enterprise plumbing at github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat — alternative to Open WebUI for teams; multi-user with social logins, per-user balance + transactions, agents + MCP, dedicated rag_api), wants to deploy **AnythingLLM** (RAG-focused workspace + agent platform at github.com/Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm — drop-in PDFs + URLs + GitHub repos, ask questions over them; built-in LanceDB; Desktop App + Docker + 8 cloud one-clicks), wants to install **Aider** (AI pair-programming CLI at github.com/Aider-AI/aider — runs in the terminal next to a git repo, edits files via diffs, auto-commits; pairs with any LLM provider including Ollama for local), wants to deploy **vLLM** (production-grade LLM inference server at github.com/vllm-project/vllm — high-throughput multi-tenant serving with PagedAttention + tensor parallelism + prefix caching; NVIDIA / AMD / Intel / CPU; Docker / Kubernetes / Helm / PaaS), wants to deploy **Langfuse** (open-source LLM engineering platform at github.com/langfuse/langfuse — observability, evals, prompt management, datasets, scoring; v3 six-service architecture with Postgres + ClickHouse + Redis + S3; Docker Compose, Kubernetes Helm chart, first-party Terraform modules for AWS / GCP / Azure, Railway one-click), or names any combination of an open-source app and a cloud provider. Walks the user through provisioning, DNS, TLS, outbound email (SMTP), and inbound email, in phases that are resumable across sessions via a state file at `~/.open-forge/deployments/<name>.yaml`. Supported today: Ghost on AWS Lightsail (Bitnami blueprint); OpenClaw via every upstream-blessed path documented at docs.openclaw.ai/install/* — AWS Lightsail blueprint, Docker Compose, Podman, Kubernetes (Kustomize), native installers (install.sh / install-cli.sh / install.ps1), ClawDock, Ansible, Nix, Bun, plus per-host adapters for AWS EC2 / Azure / Hetzner / DigitalOcean / GCP / Oracle Cloud / Hostinger / Raspberry Pi / macOS-VM (Lume) / BYO Linux server / localhost / Fly.io / Render / Railway / Northflank / exe.dev. More projects and infras added under `references/projects/` and `references/infra/`.

open-forge

Overview

Walk a user from "I have a cloud account and a domain" to "working app at `https://my.domain` with TLS and mail." Load the appropriate project recipe and infra adapter based on the user's stated intent; run phases sequentially; record state so the user can resume later.

> **Platform note:** this skill is designed for Claude Code but the content is platform-agnostic. Tool names like `AskUserQuestion`, `WebFetch`, and `mcp__github__*` are Claude Code-specific — read them as *capabilities* (structured-choice prompt, URL fetch, GitHub API) and use whichever equivalent your platform exposes. See [`docs/platforms/`](../../../../docs/platforms/) in the repo for per-platform integration guides (Codex / Cursor / Aider / Continue / generic).

Operating principle

**Claude does the work; the user makes the choices.** open-forge replaces the traditional "read a README, copy-paste 30 lines of bash, debug for hours" experience with a guided chat where Claude executes everything via the user's local CLI tools (aws, ssh, jq, curl) and only stops to ask when input is genuinely required.

What this means in practice:

• **Run, don't print.** When a recipe contains a bash block, *Claude executes it*. Announce it in one sentence first ("Opening port 22 in the Lightsail firewall now."), then run. Don't paste the block into chat for the user to run.
• **Ask for choices and credentials only.** Things only the user can decide or provide: AWS profile name, domain choice, canonical www-vs-apex, SMTP API key, model provider preference. Everything else (which jq command to run, which sed pattern to apply, which IAM script URL to fetch) Claude figures out from the recipe.
• **One question at a time when possible.** Use a structured-choice prompt for multiple-choice / single-select (Claude Code: `AskUserQuestion`; on other platforms, ask in prose with options listed). Reserve free-text questions for things like API keys and domain names. Avoid wall-of-questions forms.
• **Auto-install with confirmation, not silently.** If `jq` or `aws` is mi