forgeplan get

Read the full markdown content of an artifact by ID. This is how AI agents and humans pull a single decision document into context. The command reads from the LanceDB-projected view, which stays in sync with the source markdown in .forgeplan/.

When to use

An AI agent needs full context of a PRD / RFC / ADR before coding
You want to review a specific decision in the terminal without opening the file
You want JSON output for piping into other Forgeplan tools

Not to use when

You want a list of candidates → use forgeplan list
You do not know the exact ID → use forgeplan search
You want linked artifacts too → use forgeplan graph or forgeplan tree

Usage

forgeplan get [OPTIONS] <ID>

Arguments

  <ID>  Artifact ID

Options

      --json     Output as JSON for machine consumption
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

Examples

Read a PRD in full — the standard AI-agent fetch:

forgeplan get PRD-001

Read an RFC and pipe through a pager:

forgeplan get RFC-002 | less

JSON output — body plus all frontmatter, ready for jq:

forgeplan get EVID-012 --json | jq '.frontmatter.verdict, .frontmatter.congruence_level'

Output interpretation

Default output is the raw markdown file: YAML frontmatter fenced by ---, followed by the body sections (Problem, Goals, FR, etc.). This is the same text a human would see opening the file in an editor.

With --json, the envelope is:

{
  "id": "PRD-001",
  "kind": "prd",
  "status": "active",
  "frontmatter": { "title": "...", "tags": [...], "created": "...", ... },
  "body": "## Problem\n..."
}

If the ID does not exist, the command exits with status 1 and prints Error: artifact not found: <ID>.

How it fits

get is the “detail view” to list’s “index view”:

list (find it) → get (read it) → validate / reason / link / score (act on it)

For AI agents using MCP, get maps 1:1 to the read_artifact tool.