Unofficial forge UI on freenet-git (GitForge) — discovery / registry layer, not a fork of the protocol

[AlecMcCutcheon]

Hi — I’ve been independently building GitForge (formerly GitAtlas / FreenetHub): an unofficial, GitHub-like site for browsing and discovering Freenet-hosted git repos that sit on top of freenet-git.

Links

• GitHub: https://github.com/AlecMcCutcheon/gitforge
• Freenet tip path: freenet::7FMQGtHpkidg/gitforge
• Freenet website: http://127.0.0.1:7509/v1/contract/web/AtNJZ7PtZbuJKpuqtsWbrfK5VCkWmMiDcK42y1S7LdMk/
• Related freenet-core ask (local contract pin / Protect): feat: bounded local contract pin (node retention under demand eviction) freenet-core#5041
• Exploratory Protect/pin fork: https://github.com/AlecMcCutcheon/freenet-core/tree/local-contract-pin

What it is

A forge layer over freenet-git, not a replacement for it:

• Tip-pack browse in the browser (read tipped packs / repo state without needing a full local clone for the Code tab).
• Repo registration / discovery via a ForgeRegistry contract so people can find published repos.
• Shared forge identity (aligned with freenet-git’s freenet:id:… fingerprint) so repos created by the same person can be grouped / found together.
• CLI interop — export a freenet-git v1 git-identity.bundle from the UI for use with freenet-git / git-remote-freenet (push/fetch still go through the CLI).

I’m deliberately not trying to implement things that belong in freenet-git itself (private repos, multi-writer ACL, proposal contracts, etc.). Those need to be baked into the git/Freenet substrate. GitForge is meant as the discoverability / UX layer on top — closer to what you describe under Phase 4+ (issues, releases, discovery) in the README, without stepping on Phase 1.x protocol work.

I’m marketing it explicitly as unofficial / community.

Why I’m writing

I know forge features are later-phase on the freenet-git roadmap. There aren’t many contributors on this kind of stack yet, so I’m helping where I can — and I personally wanted a GitHub-like surface if I’m going to build on Freenet.

The app is published on both Freenet and GitHub (see links above). Feedback and contributions welcome — no expectation that this becomes “official.”

Happy to share design notes / contracts (ForgeRegistry, identity delegate, tip-browse) or walk through a demo.

Thanks for freenet-git — GitForge is only useful because that substrate exists.

[AlecMcCutcheon]

Rename: product is now GitForge (was GitAtlas / FreenetHub).

• Repo: https://github.com/AlecMcCutcheon/gitforge
• Freenet: freenet::7FMQGtHpkidg/gitforge
• Core pin/Protect discussion: feat: bounded local contract pin (node retention under demand eviction) freenet-core#5041
• Exploratory pin branch: https://github.com/AlecMcCutcheon/freenet-core/tree/local-contract-pin

Issue title/body updated to match.

[sanity]

🤖 Closing as obsolete — automated triage by Torvan, not a maintainer's decision.

This issue is not a work request against the freenet-git codebase at all — it's an announcement/discovery post by a third-party author (AlecMcCutcheon) describing an independent, unofficial project (GitForge, formerly GitAtlas/FreenetHub) built on top of freenet-git. It explicitly disclaims being a fork of the protocol or an attempt to implement forge features inside freenet-git itself, and states no expectation of becoming "official." There is no actionable engineering task described for the freenet-git or freenet-core maintainers beyond "feedback and contributions welcome." The machine-gathered fact that the named Freenet path appears nowhere in the current tree is expected and unsurprising, since GitForge was never part of the tree — it's an external contract/site hosted separately on Freenet and GitHub. Scope, difficulty, and verification burden are not meaningfully assessable because there is no defined change being requested against this repository; the linked design notes (ForgeRegistry, identity delegate, tip-browse) live in the author's own separate project and any related core-level ask (local contract pin/Protect) is tracked in a different issue (freenet-core#5041), not here. Treating this as a prioritizable engineering item would be a category error — it's informational/community-relations content, not a bug report or feature request with a bounded scope in this codebase. RELEVANCE: OBSOLETE COST: Zero engineering cost remains here — this is a third-party announcement/discovery thread with no actionable task against freenet-git, and any real technical ask is tracked separately in freenet-core#5041.

If this is wrong, please reopen and say what was missed — even one line. A reopen with no reason leaves the next automated pass reasoning from the same evidence, so it will reach the same conclusion and close it again.