InsForge – Open-source Heroku for AI coding agents

Hi HN, I'm Hang, cofounder of InsForge (YC P26). InsForge is an open-source Heroku for AI coding agents: a backend platform designed for coding agents to deploy, operate, and debug end-to-end. Open source under Apache 2.0 (https://github.com/InsForge/InsForge). Quick demo here (https://youtu.be/7Bax5qz0IfM).

We started InsForge because we just wanted our Claude Code to handle all the backend / infra stuff for us, instead of us jumping between dashboards doing manual config, or copy paste logs and docs back to agents.

We first tried creating a folder with bunch of .MD files, and installing MCPs like Supabase, Vercel, GitHub, Context7. But soon we found MCPs have their own problems: (a) Tools get pre-loaded into context, before agents even do anything (b) bad design, payloads are returning 10k+ tokens, and (c) a lot of stuff still can’t be done by MCP: e.g. telemetry and configs.

So we think, because coding agents are so good at CLI, why not just put EVERYTHING in CLI and create Skills to teach them how to use it? That’s InsForge: 1 command to install our CLI + Skills, coding agents can run the entire backend platform [1].

We started with authentication and database, but we kept adding more primitives we wanted, so now we have: - frontend hosting - backend servers (microVM based) [2] - database - auth - storage - LLM model router - cron jobs - realtime - edge functions - vector

We have other features to make coding agents more reliable like real backend engineers: - backend branching [3]: agents will 100% mess up, like deleting your database. So inspired by Neon, we branch the entire backend (DB, auth, storage, functions, schedules). Agents work on the branch, you review diffs and then decide to merge or discard. - server telemetry: agents can read logs, CPU, memory, disk to find spikes and root causes themselves. - debug agent [4]: every project gets a dedicated debug agent. So your coding agent can ask questions like “why deployment fail?”, the debug agent will run diagnoses, find the root causes and propose fixes, then send the answer back. - backend advisor [5]: scans your backend daily for security and performance issues, proposes fixes. Then propose remediations, and sends to your coding agent.

What’s next: letting coding agents run your whole backend is scary, they execute fast with no visibility. So we're focused on making it safe:

- Dynamic permissions for agents: agents get API keys with limited scope. Whenever they need to expand the permission, they will ask you for approval. And the expanded scope only applies to the CURRENT task. - Reversible: Git for backend. All the write operations will be snapshotted, so if agents make terrible mistakes, you can always roll back.

Give it a spin here: https://insforge.dev Open-Source Repo: https://github.com/InsForge/InsForge

We're a small team and reading every comment. Tell us what's good, what sucks, what's missing. We love feedback :)

[1] https://insforge.dev/blog/insforge-skills-cli [2] https://insforge.dev/blog/insforge-custom-compute [3] https://insforge.dev/blog/backend-branching [4] https://insforge.dev/blog/introduce-debug-skills [5] https://insforge.dev/blog/backend-health-dashboard