What is NetForge
NetForge is an opinionated, feature-rich, AI-extensible starter template for ASP.NET Core 10 + React 19 line-of-business applications. It compresses the first 4–8 weeks of a typical SaaS or internal-tool project into a git clone — auth, roles and permissions, an admin console, a server-driven data grid, theming, internationalization, and a polished app shell are already wired and ready to extend.
Two things make it different:
- It looks like a 2026 product on first run. Every screen has designed loading, empty, and error states, full light/dark parity, mobile layouts, and keyboard navigation — treated as scope, not polish.
- It's built to be extended by an AI assistant. A uniform vertical-slice backend and file-system-routed frontend give an assistant exactly one shape to follow, so a whole feature can land from a single prompt. See Extend with AI.
Who it's for
Developers building line-of-business apps — internal tools, admin panels, B2B SaaS, dashboards — who want a modern, opinionated foundation instead of assembling auth, RBAC, data tables, and theming from scratch. If you've reached for ABP Framework, a Clean-Architecture template, or a generic Visual Studio template and wanted something that already looks finished, NetForge is for you.
How it compares
| NetForge | ABP / Clean-Architecture templates | Generic VS template | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beautiful UI on first run | ✅ designed states, dark mode, mobile | ⚠️ functional, dated | ❌ bare |
| Opinionated, low-ceremony backend | ✅ minimal-API vertical slices | ❌ layers, MediatR, DDD ceremony | ⚠️ minimal but unstructured |
| AI-extensible by design | ✅ one shape, documented for agents | ❌ | ❌ |
| RBAC, audit, settings, dashboard included | ✅ | ⚠️ heavy modules | ❌ |
NetForge deliberately avoids MediatR/CQRS ceremony, AutoMapper, a repository layer over EF, and DDD aggregates. Minimal-API handlers are the handlers; mapping is plain static methods; you use DbContext directly.
What you get
- Architecture — vertical slices + reflection-based discovery, an
IEndpointFilterpipeline, RFC 7807 errors. - Auth & access — authentication (cookie/bearer, 2FA, OAuth, sessions) and authorization (roles + wildcard permissions).
- UI building blocks — a DataGrid, a form layer, and theming + i18n/RTL.
- Product features — search, audit, a widget dashboard, webhooks, notifications, and multi-tenancy.
- Production-readiness — rate limiting, health checks, API versioning, and a PWA.
Editions
NetForge ships as two editions from one codebase: Community (free, MIT) and Pro (commercial). A per-feature configurator scaffolds exactly the subsystems you want. See Community vs Pro.
Next steps
- Quick start — run it in one command.
- Project structure — find your way around.
- Architecture — the five ideas that hold it together.