Show HN: Foremerge – Catch intent conflicts between parallel coding agents

summary

Foremerge is an open-source coordination protocol that prevents AI coding agents from undoing each other's work by requiring them to announce their intent before editing code. While Git detects text-based conflicts, Foremerge identifies semantic conflicts based on the symbols and scopes agents plan to modify. This system allows multiple agents to work in isolated worktrees while maintaining a shared awareness of their goals, reducing wasted effort and architectural contradictions.

key points

1. The protocol uses a shared SQLite database within the Git common directory to track agent intents, claims, and semantic scopes, ensuring all local agents see the same project state.
2. Conflict detection is deterministic and advisory rather than locking, meaning it warns agents of potential clashes without blocking them or relying on an AI model to judge the conflict.
3. A verification-gated lifecycle ensures that work is only marked as accepted after passing trusted local checks, such as build or typecheck commands, rather than relying on agent self-reporting.

who should read it

Developers and engineers building or using multi-agent AI coding workflows who want to prevent semantic merge conflicts in large codebases.

discussion warm