Nest on the customer's site, and turn frontier models into production systems.
Open knowledge base & tooling for Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) · EST. 2026
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FDE is the pivotal role for landing AI inside the enterprise. Frontier models get stronger every month, but the speed at which companies wire them into core workflows lags far behind — and the people closing that gap are FDEs. Yet the first-hand material on the role is scattered across job pages, blogs, podcasts, and tweets; there is no systematic, neutral, source-traceable body of knowledge.
OpenFDE aims to fix that: we retrieve, de-duplicate, and structure the scattered first-hand signals into reusable knowledge, and we go further by open-sourcing the AI-native tools an FDE needs across the full lifecycle — because in the AI era, an FDE has to be an AI-native team/organization.
The swift is our mark: it spends almost its whole life in flight, yet it "nests" on the customer's site — landing systems for real, staying long-term, and continually bringing signals back from the front line.
| 📖 The FDE Handbook | A chaptered handbook from "what is an FDE" to role value, org & business models, tech stack, and interview prep |
| 🧭 Competency Model · Role Map · Transition Paths | The 3C competency framework, plus concrete paths into FDE from consulting / engineering / sales / pre-sales / PM / CSM / product roles |
| 🗺️ The FDE Tooling Map | Framed as "AI-native FDE team = small human core + fleet of agents," covering the full lifecycle market → contract → design → build → launch → operate, including the productization base, the model fleet, and AI hardware selection |
| 📚 Reference Library | First-hand material tiered by credibility: 1,550 retrieved → 1,251 de-duplicated → 663 verified ("verified" = actually opened, or an authoritative spec link; never fabricated to pad the count) |
| 🧱 Open-source FDE tools (in progress) | Fork / adapt the ⭐ must-have agent tools from the map into FDE-specific ones |
| 🤖 FDE Agent · FDE Loop | An executable agent runtime for the enterprise site: OBSERVE → ELICIT → INDUCE → ACT → EVOLVE + DEPLOY / ATTRIBUTION. Connect MCP, Feishu, Slack, CRM, and databases with approval gates, audit trails, and reusable skills. See Open-FDE/FDEAgent. |
Full content at open-fde.com.
Palantir's moat isn't a single tool — it's the productization platform underneath, which sinks 50%+ of its investment into building its own product so every on-site delivery compounds into reusable product rather than a one-off project. OpenFDE argues that an FDE team in the AI era must do the same: use the best agentic tools and models to amplify output, feed on-site needs back into your own product, and survive on product compounding rather than throwing bodies at the problem.
Whether you're an FDE, want to become one, or are building an FDE team — you're welcome to take part: add first-hand material, revise the handbook, contribute tools, or fix errors. Just open an Issue or PR.
OpenFDE has no affiliation with or endorsement from OpenAI, Palantir, Anthropic, Google, ByteDance, or others; trademarks belong to their respective owners.
- Documentation content: CC BY-SA 4.0 (attribution + share-alike)
- Site & tooling code: MIT