Developer blueprints a billionaire-folly forge built on JJ (Jujutsu VCS), object storage, shallow clones, signed offline Actions, and pre-commit remote CI loops.
Key Takeaways
Modern forges (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea) all clone GitHub’s design and bolt features onto git workflows that were built for kernel-style patch email, not centralized team dev.
Proposed fixes: pre-push remote CI hooks for earlier feedback, multi-tier PR approval beyond boolean LGTM, LLM-assisted risk gating to skip four-eyes on trivial changes, and first-class stacked PRs.
Forge scope should stop at issue tracking; wikis and Kanban boards become unmaintained dead weight that lock maintainers in forever.
Hosting unit should shrink: a small cluster of Raspberry Pis should be a valid org, with secure inter-node communication replacing monolithic GitHub Enterprise or GitLab installs.
Actions must be signable, SHA-pinned, tarball-archivable, and runnable locally through the same VCS – no forced remote dependency on marketplace actions.
