ForgeGuard v1.4.0 — Goal Intelligence

ForgeGuard v1.4.0 — Goal Intelligence

ForgeGuard v1.4.0 upgrades goal handling from a simple gate into a portable measurable-objective policy for substantial agent-driven work.

The objective is not to turn every task into a planning exercise. Goal Intelligence activates only when the user explicitly asks for goal-backed work or when a substantial task does not yet have an honest, measurable completion condition.

Highlights

Goal need-check

ForgeGuard first decides whether a goal is useful at all.

Routine tasks with clear acceptance criteria should proceed directly. Substantial ambiguous work gets a measurable objective before implementation.

Goal quality bar

A goal is expected to define:

• a concrete outcome;
• the relevant system/artifact/environment or user-visible target;
• verification evidence;
• a binary or quantitative success threshold;
• in-scope and out-of-scope boundaries when they matter;
• a stop or escalation condition.

This shifts goal definition away from activity descriptions and toward observable completion.

Weak-goal detection

Activity-only objectives such as "make progress", "improve things", "keep investigating", or "work on performance" are not considered sufficient for substantial goal-backed work.

ForgeGuard sharpens them when repository context makes the intended result clear. When multiple materially different outcomes remain plausible, it asks one focused clarification question instead of guessing.

Meaningful quantification

Goal Intelligence supports quantitative engineering success when the domain provides a real metric:

• exact test, typecheck, build, CI, or acceptance commands;
• latency, throughput, memory, bundle size, error rate, cost, accuracy, coverage, flake rate, or uptime thresholds;
• required successful repetitions or reviewed examples;
• bounded files, modules, services, routes, records, or environments;
• monitoring windows, failure thresholds, and rollback triggers.

ForgeGuard avoids decorative precision. When a useful metric is unavailable, it uses the strongest honest binary validator instead.

Domain heuristics

The goal policy now includes guidance for:

• bugs — reproduce, fix, and regression verification;
• tests — exact validator and pass condition;
• performance — metric, threshold, method, and repetition count;
• quality/reliability — observable quality gates;
• research/architecture — decision, scope, and evidence standard;
• operations — healthy state, monitoring window, rollback, and escalation.

Existing goal state

When an agent environment provides persistent goal-management capabilities, ForgeGuard checks existing active goal state before creating another goal.

Matching unfinished goals can be reused. Conflicting goals are surfaced instead of silently duplicated or overwritten.

ForgeGuard remains portable: it does not assume specific goal tool names or invent persistent goal APIs when they do not exist.

Clarification discipline

Goal Intelligence uses at most one concise clarification question when missing information can materially change the outcome, validator, environment, or scope.

The policy is designed to improve precision without turning engineering work into a questionnaire.

Integration with other ForgeGuard layers

Goal Intelligence defines what success means.

The rest of ForgeGuard then operates around that goal:

Goal Intelligence
      │
      ▼
   Risk Gate
      │
      ▼
Implementation
      │
      ▼
 Verification
      │
      ▼
Commit Intelligence

This creates a consistent path from measurable intent to safe execution to evidence-backed completion and commit documentation.

Automation fix

The repository branch has moved from main to master. ForgeGuard v1.4.0 updates CI and release workflow branch filters to accept both names so automation continues to work across the rename.

Upgrade

npx --yes github:GendByteMaster/ForgeGuard install --force

For Codex, start a new session after upgrading so the refreshed skill and managed instruction block are loaded.

Breaking changes

None.

Goal behavior is stricter only for substantial ambiguous work: ForgeGuard now expects measurable evidence and success criteria before treating such a goal as ready.

License

MIT.