forgeplan tree

Render the artifact hierarchy as an ASCII tree. Use this to understand how work is decomposed: Epic → PRD → RFC → ADR, plus attached Specs, Evidence, and Notes. Parent/child relationships come from the parent frontmatter field and typed forgeplan link edges.

When to use

Onboarding a new contributor — “show me the decomposition”
Auditing an Epic before a sprint — see all children in one view
Preparing a release summary — all PRDs grouped by Epic
Spot-checking orphans — artifacts without a parent float at the top

Not to use when

You need cross-link edges (not just parent/child) → use forgeplan graph
You need execution order → use forgeplan order
You need a flat list → use forgeplan list

Usage

forgeplan tree [OPTIONS] [ID]

Arguments

  [ID]  Root artifact ID (shows all roots if omitted)

Options

      --depth <DEPTH>  Maximum depth (default: unlimited) [default: 99]
      --json           Output as JSON
  -h, --help           Print help
  -V, --version        Print version

Examples

Full forest — every root artifact in the workspace:

forgeplan tree

Just one Epic and everything under it:

forgeplan tree EPIC-003

Shallow view — only direct children:

forgeplan tree EPIC-003 --depth 1

Output interpretation

The tree uses standard box-drawing characters. A typical fragment:

EPIC-003 [active]  Search, Discovery, Intelligence
├── PRD-039 [active]  BM25 production search
│   ├── RFC-004 [active]  Layered search architecture
│   │   └── ADR-007 [active]  Choose bm25 crate v2.3.2
│   └── EVID-018 [active]  Benchmark results
└── PRD-040 [active]  Scoring intelligence
    └── RFC-005 [draft]   Graph expansion

Each node shows: <ID> [<status>] <title>. Children are indented under their parent. A child linked to multiple parents appears under each — that is expected and reveals shared dependencies.

Orphans (artifacts without a parent) appear at the top level — if you see a PRD-007 floating next to EPIC-003, it is a candidate for either parenting under an existing Epic or a new one.

How it fits

tree answers “what is the shape of this project?” — the static structure. Use it together with:

graph — for arbitrary typed edges (not only parent/child)
order — when you need to know what to build first