client/specs/PITCH.md

Forage - The Platform for Forest

Elevator Pitch

Forage is the managed platform for Forest. Push a forest.cue manifest, get production infrastructure. Think Heroku meets infrastructure-as-code, but built on the composable component model of Forest.

The Problem

Modern infrastructure tooling is fragmented:

• Kubernetes is powerful but complex - teams spend months just on platform engineering
• Heroku is simple but inflexible - you outgrow it fast
• Infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Pulumi) require deep expertise
• CI/CD pipelines are copy-pasted across projects with slight variations
• Component sharing across teams is ad-hoc at best

Forest solves the composability problem: define workflows, components, and deployments in shareable, typed CUE files. But Forest still needs infrastructure to run on.

The Solution: Forage

Forage is the missing runtime layer for Forest. It provides:

1. Component Registry

• Publish and discover forest components
• Semantic versioning and dependency resolution
• Organisation-scoped and public components
• forest components publish pushes to Forage registry

2. Managed Deployments

• Push a forest.cue with destinations pointing to Forage
• Forage provisions and manages the infrastructure
• Zero-config container runtime (no Kubernetes knowledge needed)
• Automatic scaling, health checks, rollbacks
• Multi-environment support (dev/staging/prod) out of the box

3. Managed Services

• Databases: PostgreSQL, Redis - provisioned alongside your app
• Object Storage: S3-compatible storage
• User Management: Auth, teams, RBAC
• Observability: Logs, metrics, traces - included by default
• Secrets Management: Encrypted at rest, injected at runtime

4. Organisation Management

• Team workspaces with role-based access
• Billing per organisation
• Audit logs for compliance
• SSO/SAML integration

How It Works

// forest.cue - This is all you need
project: {
  name: "my-api"
  organisation: "acme"
}

dependencies: {
  "forage/service": version: "1.0"
  "forage/postgres": version: "1.0"
}

forage: service: {
  config: {
    name: "my-api"
    image: "my-api:latest"
    ports: [{ container: 8080, protocol: "http" }]
  }
  env: {
    prod: {
      destinations: [{
        type: { organisation: "forage", name: "managed", version: "1" }
        metadata: { region: "eu-west-1", size: "small" }
      }]
    }
  }
}

forage: postgres: {
  config: {
    name: "my-db"
    version: "16"
    size: "small"
  }
}

Then:

forest release create --env prod
# Forage handles everything: container runtime, database provisioning,
# networking, TLS, DNS, health checks, scaling

Target Users

Primary: Small-to-Medium Engineering Teams (5-50 engineers)

• Need production infrastructure without a dedicated platform team
• Want the flexibility of IaC without the complexity
• Already using or willing to adopt Forest for workflow management

Secondary: Individual Developers / Startups

• Want to ship fast without infrastructure overhead
• Need a path that scales from prototype to production
• Price-sensitive - pay only for what you use

Tertiary: Enterprise Teams

• Want to standardize deployment across many teams
• Need compliance, audit, and access control
• Want to share internal components via private registry

Pricing Model

Free Tier

• 1 project, 1 environment
• 256MB RAM, shared CPU
• Community components only
• Ideal for experimentation

Developer - $10/month

• 3 projects, 3 environments each
• 512MB RAM per service, dedicated CPU
• 1GB PostgreSQL included
• Custom domains

Team - $25/user/month

• Unlimited projects and environments
• Configurable resources (up to 4GB RAM, 2 vCPU)
• 10GB PostgreSQL per project
• Private component registry
• Team management, RBAC

Enterprise - Custom

• Dedicated infrastructure
• SLA guarantees
• SSO/SAML
• Audit logs
• Priority support
• On-premise registry option

Usage-Based Add-ons

• Additional compute: $0.05/vCPU-hour
• Additional memory: $0.01/GB-hour
• Additional storage: $0.10/GB-month
• Bandwidth: $0.05/GB after 10GB free
• Managed databases: Starting at $5/month per instance

Competitive Positioning

Feature	Forage	Heroku	Railway	Fly.io	K8s (self-managed)
Simplicity	High	High	High	Medium	Low
Flexibility	High (CUE)	Low	Medium	Medium	Very High
Component Sharing	Native	None	None	None	Helm (limited)
Multi-environment	Native	Add-on	Basic	Manual	Manual
IaC Integration	Native (Forest)	None	None	Partial	Full
Price Entry	Free	$5/mo	$5/mo	$0 (usage)
Workflow Automation	Forest native	CI add-ons	Basic	Basic	Custom

Differentiators

1. Forest-native: Not another generic PaaS. Built specifically to make Forest's component model a deployable reality.
2. Typed Manifests: CUE gives you type-safe infrastructure definitions with validation before deploy.
3. Component Ecosystem: Publish once, use everywhere. Components are the unit of sharing.
4. Progressive Complexity: Start simple, add complexity only when needed. No cliff.
5. Transparent Pricing: No surprises. Usage-based with clear ceilings.

Technical Architecture

The Site (this repo)

• Rust + Axum: Fast, safe, minimal dependencies
• MiniJinja: Server-side rendered - fast page loads, SEO-friendly
• Tailwind CSS: Utility-first, consistent design
• PostgreSQL: Battle-tested data layer

The Platform (future repos)

• Container Runtime: Built on Firecracker/Cloud Run/ECS depending on region
• Registry Service: gRPC service for component distribution (extends forest-server)
• Deployment Engine: Receives forest manifests, provisions infrastructure
• Billing Service: Usage tracking, Stripe integration

Roadmap

Phase 0 - Foundation (Current)

• Marketing site with pitch, pricing, and waitlist
• Component registry browser (read-only, pulls from forest-server)
• Authentication (sign up, sign in, API keys)
• Organisation and project management UI

Phase 1 - Registry

• Component publishing via CLI (forest components publish)
• Component discovery and browsing
• Version management and dependency resolution
• Private organisation registries

Phase 2 - Managed Deployments

• Container runtime integration
• Push-to-deploy from forest CLI
• Health checks and automatic rollbacks
• Environment management (dev/staging/prod)
• Custom domains and TLS

Phase 3 - Managed Services

• PostgreSQL provisioning
• Redis provisioning
• Object storage
• Secrets management

Phase 4 - Enterprise

• SSO/SAML
• Audit logging
• Compliance features
• On-premise options