How Forge works
From document to result,
step by step.
Step 1
Arrives
A PDF or a spreadsheet, uploaded or forwarded.
Step 2
AI
The fields you asked for are read out of it.
Step 3
Software
Formats, dates and totals are checked against your rules.
Step 4
AI
What the rules could not decide is reasoned about, and marked as such.
Step 5
A person
Reviews what needs reviewing and moves it on.
Step 6
Software
The output is produced in the format you need.
Step 7
Recorded
Every stage carries who moved it and when.
A contract arrives. Rather than one person reading it and typing the results somewhere else, it follows a path your organisation defined once.
FORGE
- Projects
- Workflows
- Documents
- Approvals
- Audit Log
- Settings
Q4 Contract Review
Governed Workflow- Document uploadedcontract_acme.pdf
- PII redacted23 fields hidden
- Analysing with AIExtracting key terms...
- Rules and validationsChecking dates, totals, clauses...
- Human review2 items need approval
- Output readySummary + extracted data
ACME
Three ways to work with your documents, one set of rules over all of them.
Then talk to the records
in plain language.
Ask what you would ask a colleague. Which vendors are still missing bank details. What came in from this customer last quarter. No filters, no formulas, no report to request.
Try It Yourself4 vendors are missing bank details:
- Northbridge LtdVendor onboarding12 Oct 2024
- Carter & ColeSupplier update03 Oct 2024
- Rivermere GroupNew vendor28 Sep 2024
- Hawthorne IncContract review21 Sep 2024
Three things do the work, not one
Three parts. One governed workflow.
Most real work needs all three, and a chat box only has one. Forge brings them together and records which of them did what.
AI
for understanding
Reading a document written for a person, classifying it, summarising it, reasoning about what it says.
- Date format
- Totals add up
- Required fields
Software
for certainty
Calculation, validation, data processing and rules. The things that must give the same answer twice.
People
for judgement
The decisions somebody has to be accountable for, and the exceptions no rule anticipated.
On a bank statement the rules sort every row they recognise, the model is asked only about the remainder, and each record says which of the two decided it.
Why it is built this wayThree ways to work
Same governance.
Different ways to work.
Which one you use depends on how often the work comes back. The governance does not change between them.
Workflows you set up
from a template.
Vendor onboarding and bank statement reconciliation ship ready to use. Start from one, change the fields to match how you work, and the process is repeatable from then on instead of being re-invented by whoever picks it up.
Browse Templates- Vendor Onboarding
- Bank Statement Reconciliation
- Custom Document TypeSoon
And when the document type is particular to your business, describe the fields you want out of it and Forge reads them. A new process does not wait on us to build it.
The model will change.
Your workflow should not.
Forge sits between your people and the model. Every request passes through it: sensitive details are removed, the call is made, the activity is recorded, the answer comes back with the real values restored. The governance lives in that layer, not in the model.
Which means the model underneath is a choice rather than a commitment. Point Forge at the provider your organisation has already approved, or at your own account with your own key, and change it when something better arrives. The rules you wrote, the approvals you set and the record you keep do not move, because none of them were ever in the model.
Delivering work
to clients.
One more thing the same seal makes possible, if you do client work. Register your method as a program and your client runs it on their own data and gets the analysis back, without ever seeing the source. You sell the method instead of licensing it away.
Learn MoreYour organisation
(registers the method)
Your method
(sealed)
The client never sees the source
Your client
(runs it on their data)
Getting started,
in three steps.
Governance first, then the work, then the workflows. Most software is adopted the other way round.
- 01
Set up the workspace and the rules, before anyone uses it.
Invite your people, decide who can reach which projects, add your organisation’s own AI provider key, and turn on the privacy policies you want enforced, including redaction that no member can switch off.
- 02
Bring the documents in.
Your people ask questions of them and generate work from them, in projects. Sensitive details never reach the model and everything is recorded. This is the part that protects the data.
- 03
Turn the work that repeats into a workflow.
Start from a template, and at each step say what should do the work: an AI model, one of your own programs, a rule, or a person. This is the part that controls the process.
Questions we are asked.
How is this different from Microsoft Copilot?
Copilot is an assistant. Forge is a process.
Copilot sits inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, answers from what is already in your Microsoft estate, and works for whoever holds the licence. It is good at that: draft this, summarise that, what did we agree on Tuesday. The output is a draft, and the session ends.
Forge is for the work that comes back every week. Vendor onboarding, statement reconciliation, contract checks. You define how it should be handled once, and every document after that takes the same path, and what is left behind is a record rather than a conversation.
Most organisations should have both. Ask Copilot to help you write something. Ask Forge to handle two hundred invoices the same way twice.
Does Forge sit in front of the AI?
Two questions get asked in one there, and the answers are different.
In front of the model, yes. That is what Forge is. Nothing goes straight from your person to a provider. The message arrives here first, sensitive details are swapped for placeholders, the call goes out on your key or ours, the answer comes back, the real values are put back into what your person reads, and the whole exchange is recorded.
In front of another company's product, no. When one of your people types into another vendor's app, that product owns the path from their keyboard to its own model, and there is no place in it for us to stand. Intercepting that would mean inspecting traffic on your employees' devices, which is a different kind of product and not one we are.
How is this different from an AI agent that does tasks for me?
An agent works out its own steps from the goal you describe. That is the right design for work you cannot specify in advance, and the wrong one for work that has to come out the same way every time, because the steps can differ on the next run and nothing records which were taken.
Forge asks you to define the steps once. After that the model is one step among several rather than the thing choosing them, and each record carries which step decided what. Use an agent to explore. Use a process for the work you would have to explain to an auditor.
How does the pricing work?
Two parts. The model cost, which you can cover with your own provider key so it is between you and the provider. And a platform fee for the governance, the privacy and the workflows, charged to the organisation and scaled to how large it is and how much it uses. There is no per-person licence, so you never have to decide who gets access.
Why does Forge not use AI for everything?
Because not every task needs a model. AI is useful for understanding, classification and reasoning. Software is better at calculation, validation and rules. People are essential where judgement and accountability matter. Using a model for arithmetic is how organisations end up with confident wrong numbers.
Read more: Private AI for business · Vendor onboarding · Bank statement analysis · ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot
Bring the work you cannot
put anywhere else.
Thirty minutes. Bring the work you cannot currently put into an AI tool, and we will tell you whether Forge helps. If it does not, we will say so.