Switched off until you say otherwise.
Plenty of shops don't want AI anywhere near their operations data — and plenty of vendors make that impossible to avoid. Forge takes a position: every AI feature ships disabled, each one is a separate opt-in switch, and when you do turn one on, it runs on your hardware, on open models, with your data never leaving the building. Forge is a complete MES + ERP with all of it off. That's not a degraded mode — it's the default.
Three promises, enforced by architecture.
Opt-in, not opt-out
AI is a capability switch like any other module in Forge — disabled on install, enabled feature-by-feature by your admin, every flip recorded in the audit log. Leave it off and there are no AI buttons, no prompts, no nags. The app doesn't know what it's missing.
Local means local
Models run in a container on your own gear, next to the rest of the stack — open, inspectable models, sized to your hardware. Nothing is sent to OpenAI, Google, or anyone else. Air-gapped shop? Works fine. Your parts, pricing, and customer list stay yours.
Advisory, never authoritative
Where money and records are involved, AI in Forge can read and explain — it can never post, approve, or change anything. The books are written by deterministic, auditable code. An AI suggestion is a suggestion; a person makes the entry.
What it actually does.
No moonshots. Each feature is a narrow assistant for a real task, and each one degrades gracefully — if the model is off or unreachable, the feature steps aside and the app keeps working.
Ask your own data
Plain-English search and Q&A over your jobs, parts, and documents — with live numbers (stock on hand, order status) pulled fresh at answer time, not from a stale snapshot.
Explain this entry
One click on any journal entry produces a plain-language read for a reviewer — what it appears to record and anything worth a second look. Reading glasses for the books, not a hand on the pen.
Flag the odd ones
Review-flags on unusual activity — a large manual entry, a hand-post to an account that should only move through its sub-ledger. Deterministic rules raise the flag; you decide what it means.
Read the paperwork
Structured extraction from PDFs — tax and compliance forms parsed into fields with a verification pass, instead of an afternoon of retyping.
Domain assistants
Scoped helpers for HR, procurement, and sales questions, answering only from the modules you point them at. Admins define what each assistant can see.
Sized to your gear
A built-in advisor recommends what your hardware can actually run — from a fanless mini-PC running a small model to a workstation with a GPU running larger ones. Start small; upgrade only if it earns it.
Your data. Your hardware. Your call.
Want a sober walkthrough of what local AI can and can't do for your shop — including "nothing, skip it"? That's a conversation Armory Works is happy to have.