Self-hosted infrastructure orchestration

Forgeplane is a self-hosted infrastructure orchestration control plane for governed Terraform, OpenTofu, and Ansible delivery. It turns versioned infrastructure code into typed, reviewable runs while keeping execution inside worker pools that you operate.

Platform model

Forgeplane uses explicit ownership and execution boundaries:

• An organization is the top-level membership boundary.
• A team owns one or more projects.
• A project scopes environments, assemblies, connections, secrets, and automation identities.
• An environment groups deployment targets and policy controls.
• A registry template versions infrastructure source, its input contract, and execution metadata.
• An instance binds one template to one environment.
• A run records one requested operation, its resolved inputs, approval state, logs, and result.
• An assembly is a separately versioned DAG that coordinates published template versions.

Terraform and OpenTofu instances can use managed state, drift monitoring, and the full preview/apply/teardown lifecycle. Ansible templates use the same governed queue and log stream, but are execute-only: they do not use Terraform-style plan/apply promotion, teardown, or drift workflows.

How a run moves through Forgeplane

A typical Terraform or OpenTofu delivery follows this path:

1. Register a template and publish a version with its tool and input contract.
2. Create an environment and an instance bound to that published version.
3. Resolve environment defaults, explicit inputs, connections, secret bindings, worker requirements, and policy at run creation.
4. Queue a plan run on a worker pool that advertises the required capability.
5. Review the plan artifact. When policy requires approval, an authorized reviewer approves or rejects a separate apply intent.
6. Apply the exact promoted plan artifact, then retain the run status, logs, output, and audit records.

Ansible follows the shared admission and worker-execution boundary through an execute run, but it does not use plan/apply promotion. The current private-beta path also does not map published template inputs or catalog secrets into Ansible executor variables. Ansible execution in the private beta documents the supported worker path and its limits. Run operations describes the shared lifecycle.

Runtime

The platform has two runtime roles:

1. The coordinator serves the UI and REST API, stores platform state, resolves policy, and schedules work.
2. Workers fetch signed execution bundles, run an advertised tool capability, and stream status and logs to the coordinator over gRPC.

The coordinator uses PostgreSQL for durable records and NATS JetStream for work delivery. Named worker pools route runs to workers with the required network placement and toolchain.

The production worker image does not bundle infrastructure tools. Build or select an explicitly tool-capable worker image for the tools and versions you intend to execute. The repository’s local profile includes an opt-in OpenTofu worker for evaluation.

Fit and boundaries

Forgeplane is a fit when you need a self-hosted control plane for versioned infrastructure delivery, worker placement, approval gates, audit evidence, and controlled operations.

Before using it for production delivery, account for these boundaries:

• You operate the coordinator dependencies, artifact storage, managed-state storage, and encryption keys.
• The default production worker image cannot execute Terraform, OpenTofu, or Ansible until you provide the matching tool-capable image.
• Ansible is execute-only and does not inherit Terraform/OpenTofu plan, apply, teardown, or drift behavior.
• Selective Undo is a private-beta, disabled-by-default workflow for proposing one evidence-backed historical input removal. It creates a normal governed change; it is not an instant rollback.

Deployment

Private-beta releases are delivered as signed container images and a Helm chart for Kubernetes. The coordinator, database, message bus, artifact storage, managed-state storage, and encryption keys remain within infrastructure you control.

See Container distribution and Helm chart for deployment contracts.

Next steps

Follow the Quickstart to configure a first run. Read Self-hosted Terraform and OpenTofu orchestration for product fit, then review Workers, Environments, Managed state, and Assemblies before designing a production topology.