Introduction

Forest is the operational infrastructure for regulated operations. It runs alongside your existing systems and gives your team, and your AI agents, one place to execute workflows with full governance and decision traces. You keep control of your data and infrastructure: the Forest back-end runs in your environment and your data never leaves your network. Forest hosts only the UI and configuration. This guide covers the self-hosted Node.js back-end, the recommended path for most teams.

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How it works

Forest runs through a back-end, a lightweight service you deploy alongside your application. The Forest back-end connects to your databases, exposes your business logic and workflows, and serves the API that the Forest UI (and any AI agents you connect) consume. The Forest back-end does three things:

1. Connects to your data, SQL, MongoDB, ActiveRecord, Mongoose, Sequelize, APIs, custom datasources. Multiple sources in one back-end are supported by default.
2. Runs your business logic, custom actions, computed fields, hooks, validations. Defined in code, executed where your data lives.
3. Exposes everything safely, to your operations team via the Forest UI, and to AI agents via the built-in MCP server. Same permissions, same audit trail, regardless of who or what is asking.

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What you’ll build in this guide

By the end of this guide you’ll have:

• A self-hosted Forest back-end running in production, connected to your database
• A configured Forest UI your team can use daily
• Custom actions and computed fields tied to your business logic
• Workflows and workspaces formalizing your operations
• An MCP server exposing your data and actions to AI agents under the same governance
• Your team invited with the right permissions

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Prerequisites

Before you start:

• Node.js 18+ installed
• A database with a connection URI ready (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, SQL Server, etc.)
• A Forest account, sign up here if you don’t have one
• Comfortable with a terminal