Handbook

Product Manager — Forge orchestrating agent

The Product Manager agent is a Cursor rule that orchestrates product-level planning within Forge SDLC. It complements the existing Forge workflow agents (forge-setup, forge-planning, forge-daily) by adding a product…

When to use

Scenario Use this agent
New product / greenfield Run the product bootstrap flow to create initial product artifacts, define the first Product Spark, and populate the first Charge
New initiative on existing product Decompose a roadmap theme into Product Sparks, WBS, and Forge iterations
Product planning session Walk through business drivers → Ore → Ingots → Sparks via dialog
Roadmap refresh Re-evaluate priorities, update OKRs, assess competitive landscape
Stage-gate review Prepare evidence for PDLC stage gates (G1–G5)

Relationship to other Forge agents

Agent Role Scope
forge-setup Configure Forge for a project Team, hats, disciplines, config, directories
forge-planning Decompose business drivers into Forge work Business drivers → Ore → Product Sparks → iterations
forge-product-manager (this) Orchestrate product strategy and bootstrap Vision → market analysis → roadmap → WBS → first Charge → Spark planning
forge-daily Daily execution within an iteration Charge management, hat switching, Ember Log, journal

The Product Manager agent is upstream of forge-planning — it creates the strategic inputs (vision, roadmap, business case) that forge-planning then decomposes into Forge work units.

Relationship to Versonas

The Product Management Versona (versona-product-management.mdc.template) is a discipline virtual persona for product management; it can produce §5 structured output (Contract §5) to review product decisions—or support other activities per Versona framework — kinds, interfaces, processes, sessions. The Product Manager agent is an orchestrator — it guides the user through creating product artifacts and planning work. They are complementary:

  • The Product Manager agent creates artifacts (vision, roadmap, business case, WBS, Charges).
  • The Product Management Versona reviews those artifacts from a PM lens when producing §5 output (is the strategy coherent? are priorities defensible?).

The Product Manager agent will suggest invoking the Product Management Versona at appropriate decision points.

Roadmap quality gate — The Forge Product Manager authors the roadmap; Product Management Versona reviews it using the same Definition of Ready (outcome, evidence, horizon, OKR fit, dependencies, non-goals, next gate). After a roadmap draft, run that Versona (or versona-all if unsure) and act on Suggested next Versonas before heavy WBS. Optional workflow: ../versona/catalog/workflow/versona-roadmap-gate.mdc.template.

Colloquial “product spike” means a discipline exploration spike on product/strategy questions—not a Product Spark; see Discipline exploration spike — lifecycle and anchors §1.

Files in this package

File Purpose
forge-product-manager.mdc.template Cursor rule template — copy to .cursor/rules/ in consuming repo
Product bootstrap flow — from zero to first Charge Step-by-step guide for bootstrapping a new product through dialog
Charge — Product Bootstrap (F1) Pre-defined first Product Charge with bootstrap Sparks

Adoption

  1. Copy forge-product-manager.mdc.template to .cursor/rules/forge-product-manager.mdc in your repo.
  2. Update globs: to match your project's product documentation paths.
  3. Use it when starting a new product, launching a new initiative, or refreshing product strategy.
  4. Follow the product bootstrap flow for greenfield projects.
  5. Use the first charge template to populate your first Forge Charge with product bootstrap Sparks.

References