Forge is now Canopy
We've been building under the working name Forge. We're launching as Canopy. Here's why.
Note: Canopy is in pre-release development. Purchase and download links aren’t live yet. Join the waitlist to be notified at launch.
We have been building this product internally under the working name Forge. We’re launching it publicly as Canopy. This post explains why we’re making the change now, before any public release.
Why we renamed
Two reasons.
One — the “forge” namespace is saturated. Laravel Forge, Atlassian Forge, Autodesk Forge, Minecraft Forge, FerretDB Forge, and a dozen others all live in the software-tools space. Searching “forge self-hosted code intelligence” would be a losing SEO battle before the product had traction. Fighting for a name that was never going to land on the first page of a Google search is expensive; picking a distinct name now is cheap.
Two — it fits the family. Ironpine Labs has three products that were always going to sit under a shared brand: Pith (an ADHD habit tracker), Grove (a reusable creature-engine runtime), and now Canopy. Botanical, hierarchical, all sitting under the Ironpine umbrella. The original Forge name came from a different era and didn’t fit where the company was heading.
We’re doing this before public launch specifically because the cost is bounded. No external users are affected. Every forward reference — docs, tool names, binary, domain — gets renamed once. Doing the same rename after hundreds of customers had the old name baked into their internal docs and CI configs would cost multiples more.
What actually changed
| Surface | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Product name | Forge | Canopy |
| Binary | forge | canopy |
| MCP tool prefix | forge_* (21 tools) | canopy_* (same 21 tools) |
| Config dir | ~/.forge/ | ~/.canopy/ |
| Per-repo config | .forge/ | .canopy/ |
| Env vars | FORGE_* | CANOPY_* |
| Domain | forge.ironpinelabs.com | canopy.ironpinelabs.com |
| GitHub | github.com/ironpine-labs/forge | github.com/ironpine-labs/canopy |
| systemd service | forge-mcp | canopy-mcp |
The public API surface — MCP tool signatures, CLI flag shapes, plugin YAML schema, SQLite schema — is behaviorally identical. Every tool that was forge_prepare is now canopy_prepare and accepts the same arguments, returns the same shape. Every CLI command that was forge index is now canopy index with the same flags.
What didn’t change
The architecture. Local-first, single binary, self-hosted, air-gapped-capable. That’s what Canopy is and what Forge was internally. The name changes; the architecture doesn’t.
The pricing model. Solo, Pro, Team, Air-Gapped — same tier structure, same features per tier, same monthly and annual prices.
Supported languages. TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Rust, Go at launch. C, C++, and C# are on the roadmap for later in 2026; Java, Kotlin, Swift; and Ruby, PHP to follow.
The “no cloud” promise. Your code never leaves your machine during analysis. The only network call at launch is a weekly license health check that transmits a license hash — never code, queries, or file paths.
The version story
Internally, we have been working through versions as Forge up through what we would call v1.6.0. When we made the rename a first-class architectural change, we bumped to v2.0.0. Under semver, renaming every public interface (binary, MCP tools, env vars, config paths) is a breaking change, so the major version bump is correct.
The changelog for those internal development milestones is preserved in the development history — that’s an honest record of what was built and when.
The naming-conflict check
Before committing to “Canopy” we did the usual checks: trademark search, npm registry, crates.io, PyPI, Homebrew, common infrastructure namespaces. “Canopy” has lower collision density than “Forge” in developer tooling. The botanical theme is unoccupied in this space. We’re keeping it.
What to expect at launch
If you’re new here: Canopy is a self-hosted code intelligence engine for AI coding agents. One binary. No cloud, no credits, no vendor lock-in. Launching later this year. The development milestones show where things stand; the roadmap shows what’s coming.
Join the waitlist to be notified when Canopy launches.