"Every member has a part to play": Jason Samir Santiago on building FORGE

Jason Samir Santiago, a self-taught systems engineer and inventor, is the founder of FORGE, an AI software platform he built in November 2025, in 48 hours, after the no-code AI platform he had been building on broke his projects. Every business in his portfolio, from the WERCS booth filter service site to BoothFilterPro, Prison Pen Pal Hub, Fox & Santiago, Monster Fighter and CIVIX, was built with FORGE.

---

When did FORGE start, and what problem were you trying to solve?

I built the basic platform in 48 hours in November 2025. Over the next seven days I refined it, and it was usable the whole way through. The problem was simple and it was mine. I run several businesses, and every one of them needs software: a website, a store, tools for the crew, a portal for clients. I am not a trained programmer. For years I could see exactly what I wanted in my head and could not get it built. AI changed that for me, but the tool I was using to do it stopped being something I could depend on.

Tell me about that tool.

I was building all of my apps on a no-code AI platform, and for a while it worked. That meant the WERCS app, Range2Table for Mike, the Wise Suite, Santiago Innovations, Scale Syndicate and more. Then the platform changed underneath me. Projects that had been working broke. When I asked for help with my issues, the only way to get them fixed was to burn through my credits, over and over, paying for the same problems. And when I tried to take my work out and run it somewhere else, the exports were full of flaws. I had real businesses depending on those apps, and I could not trust the place they lived.

So what was the very first thing FORGE had to do?

Take in those broken exports and fix them. That was job one. I needed my apps back in a state where I could keep improving them, on a system I controlled. Once FORGE could do that, I started asking it to build everything else I needed. It went from a rescue tool to the place where all my work gets built.

You describe FORGE as a family. What do you mean by that?

Think about a family where everyone has a part to play in keeping the family safe. Nobody does everything, and nobody is left out. One person makes the big decisions, one keeps the records, one checks the locks, one handles the money. FORGE works the same way. It is a group of parts, each with one job, and the work only moves forward when each of them has done theirs. No single part gets to say "trust me, it's fine." Another part checks.

Walk me through the family.

There is one part that hears the idea and decides what is worth building, and it does not let anything move forward until the plan makes sense. There is one that runs the job from start to finish and remembers every decision, so you can walk away for a week and pick up right where you left off. There is a crew that does the building, and every member of that crew owns one kind of work and nothing else. There is one that keeps the records honest, so what is written down always matches what actually exists.

Where does safety come in?

Safety is most of the family. One part uses everything the way a real person would, every button and every screen, and if something is wrong it does not stop at reporting it, it gets it fixed and checks the fix. One guards the door, so nothing harmful gets into your project. If anything ever looks like trouble, another one freezes everything exactly as it is, so nothing is lost and you can see what happened. And one looks at every single change and asks why it exists. If a change cannot explain itself, it does not get in.

What about cost, and owning what you build?

One member of the family keeps the books. Every bit of work is accounted for, and you cannot spend what you do not have, so there are no surprise bills. And your apps are yours to take with you. I built FORGE around exporting your work, because of what happened to me. You can take what you build and run it on your own, or keep it with us while we keep improving the platform. I never want anyone, including me, stuck inside one company's system again.

What have you built with it?

Everything in my portfolio. WERCS, our booth filter service and maintenance company, runs its site and tools on work FORGE built. BoothFilterPro, our booth filter store. Prison Pen Pal Hub. Fox & Santiago, my consulting firm, including its site and client portal. Monster Fighter, an apparel brand store. CIVIX, a city operations demo. Plus working tools like a PM report studio and a restaurant ordering platform. All of it came out of FORGE.

What number are you proudest of?

Fifteen minutes. In about fifteen minutes, FORGE can have an app built, running and checked for safety. Not a picture of an app. A running app that has already been through the checks. When I think back to sitting there burning credits on the same broken project, that number means a lot to me.

What surprised you most along the way?

How hard it was to figure out all the parts and fit them together so it worked the way I saw it in my head. I could picture the whole thing early on. Getting every member of the family to do its job, hand off to the next one cleanly and catch what the others missed took far more work than I expected. Seeing it is one thing. Making every piece fit is another.

Who is FORGE for?

Anyone who can see the problems in their own workflows and wants to fix them with tools made just for them. You do not need to be a programmer. You need to know your own business well enough to say "this is where we lose time" or "this is what keeps going wrong." If you can see the problem clearly, FORGE can help you build the tool that fixes it.

Where is FORGE going next?

The Room. I have written a book about it. In the book, the Room is bigger than software. It is a set of AI minds that get to know a person over years, help him make better calls while he is here and stand with his family when he no longer can. At the heart of it is one simple rule: each mind thinks on its own before anyone talks. It is like calling in a plumber, a roofer, an HVAC tech and a framer to look at the same water stain, one at a time, before they compare notes. If they all agree, you can trust it. If they split, you have learned the problem sits at the seam between their trades, which is exactly where expensive mistakes hide. Ask them all together and the loudest voice usually wins.

After they have each thought it through, they talk it out. But they do not make the decision for you. They show you what they see, and you choose. A person signs the verdict, because a machine cannot be the one accountable when something matters. FORGE already works this way when it decides what to build. The Room is where I want that whole idea to go, eventually: minds that think independently, argue honestly and then hand the final call to the person whose name is on it.

---

This interview was conducted with Jason Samir Santiago, founder of FORGE, on October 18, 2026. It has been edited for length and clarity.

See FORGE work, start to finish, on the FORGE page, and read more about Jason on his biography.