Northstar An open software forge for humans and agents

overview

Northstar is a repository-native software forge where human and agent work share one evidence trail. It includes Git hosting, organizations, issues, reviews, runners, project memory, agent objectives, sandboxed execution, policy checks, and recovery operations.

problem

Adding an AI integration to an existing forge leaves the most important decisions fragmented across bots, pull requests, logs, and external sandboxes. A trustworthy agent workflow needs repository ownership, approval boundaries, execution evidence, independent review, rollback, and operational history to agree.

approach

I designed a self-hostable open core with native smart-HTTP and SSH Git access, commit-bound reviews, background migration, signed webhooks, disposable network-controlled sandboxes, independent review agents, repository policies, metered model budgets, backup verification, and incident-aware rollback.

outcome

The current alpha supports real repository hosting and migration plus approved agent objectives that produce patches, test evidence, review results, and a human-controlled merge. The same codebase targets both community self-hosting and a managed cloud edition.

selected details

• Native Git hosting over authenticated smart HTTP and SSH
• Human-approved agent runs in disposable, policy-controlled sandboxes
• Patch, test, review, incident, and rollback evidence in one trail
• GitHub migration, runners, backups, audit exports, SSO, and model budgets

related projects

• OpenCel: A self-hosted deployment platform
• Overseer: Self-hosted command center for every machine
• Quad Build: Describe an app, then build and ship it with AI