@bigbrainforge/setup

Forge workstation setup — paste one license, get a working Forge install.

npx @bigbrainforge/setup <your-forge-license>

Or run it with no argument and paste the license when prompted (the value is never echoed to the terminal):

npx @bigbrainforge/setup

What it does

1. Checks the machine has tar (needed to unpack the plugin bundle).
2. Stores the license at ~/.claude/forge/license (0600).
3. Discovers and pins your Forge instance (~/.claude/forge/config.json).
4. Seeds ~/.npmrc with the @bigbrainforge registry + auth line.
5. Downloads and sha256-verifies the Forge plugin bundle, then stages it as a local Claude Code marketplace under ~/.claude/forge/plugin-bundle/.
6. Registers the marketplace and installs the plugin via the claude CLI — if claude isn't on this machine, prints the two commands to run by hand.
7. Hands off to the plugin's own bootstrap (server check + issue tracker setup).

Every step names its own failure tier (machine / credential / instance discovery / package plane / distribution plane / Claude Code CLI / plugin bootstrap) and the one fix to try next — nothing is a silent skip.

Behind a proxy or TLS inspection

Setup and the Forge plugin use the standard proxy variables. Set them in the environment that runs setup and Claude Code:

• HTTPS_PROXY — your proxy, e.g. http://proxy.example.com:8080; put a proxy login in the URL as http://user:password@host:port.
• NO_PROXY — hosts to reach directly, comma-separated.
• NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS — the path to your organisation's root CA certificate (PEM), when a proxy or firewall inspects TLS.

A proxy or certificate failure is reported as such, with the variable to fix.

If a step fails after setup has already run once

Run the same command again: npx "@bigbrainforge/setup". Step 4 points the @bigbrainforge npm scope at the Forge license proxy, and the proxy serves this public package with no license check, so the rerun works even when your license is missing, expired or revoked.

One exception: a machine whose ~/.npmrc still has the retired @bigbrainforge:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com line cannot find this package until setup replaces that line. On such a machine, run setup once with a one-shot registry override:

npx --@bigbrainforge:registry=https://registry.npmjs.org "@bigbrainforge/setup"

Runtime dependencies

None. This package is published PUBLIC to npmjs and runs via npx on a machine with zero prior Forge configuration; everything it needs beyond Node's own builtins is bundled at build time (scripts/build.mjs, esbuild). It carries no secrets and no sealed Forge IP — anything of value it downloads is license-gated server-side.