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 strategy layer — guiding the user from business drivers through product bootstrap, roadmap decomposition, and Product Spark planning.

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.md. 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 ../versona/DISCIPLINE-SPIKE.md §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.md`	Step-by-step guide for bootstrapping a new product through dialog
`first-charge.template.md`	Pre-defined first Product Charge with bootstrap Sparks

Adoption

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

References

PRODUCT-MANAGEMENT.md — body of knowledge
PRODMGMT-SDLC-PDLC-BRIDGE.md — lifecycle bridge
PLANNING-FLOW.md — Forge planning pipeline
FORGE-SDLC-PDLC-BRIDGE.md — Forge lifecycle bridge
versona-product-management.mdc.template — Product Management Versona

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