Starting as a Forge App/Rovo Agent and expanding later

[Shahpur Khan]

Hi all, 

I'm considering using Forge, slowly learning about it, and was hoping to gather some general thoughts and advice before committing. My team and I are wondering about the transferability of Forge apps and Forge Rovo agents. If we develop a Forge app, put it up on the Marketplace, and then one day decide we want to expand it into a standalone web application outside of Atlassian -- how complex is it to do so? What steps, broadly speaking, are involved? Would we need to start basically from scratch? Are there stories about apps that get started on Atlassian and expand out later, or is it mostly the other way around? In the case of an AI-infused application, would model training need to be done all over again?

These questions may be silly -- I'm aware. It's also multiple questions, I'm aware. Please don't feel urged to answer all of them. More than anything, I'm just looking to spark a discussion about transferability, since I couldn't find any. Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

[Sarp Egemen]

Hey @Shahpur Khan

Forge developer here. First of all, there’s no such thing as a silly question—unless you’re asking just for the sake of asking. That said, while I’m not an expert on the AI-Rovo side, I can give you an overview of Forge.

If you use Custom UI when creating your app, you’re essentially writing a React app. So in the future, if you decide to reuse the same UI in a standalone app, it’s quite easy and reusable.

On the backend, to summarize: Forge works with resolvers, which are functions that wrap API calls to Jira, Confluence, etc., retrieve data, and handle all the business logic. You then invoke those resolvers on the frontend to fetch data and update states.

The famous manifest.yml file assigns your app to Atlassian modules, displays the UI, and grants the necessary permission scopes. So, all of this backend logic can be transferred to a new standalone app, but it would still require some modifications and won’t be as straightforward as the UI (since it’s React-based).

However, I’m not sure if Atlassian guidelines allow you to turn a marketplace app into a standalone app in the future. It’s best to check the legal docs (which I hate to do🫣).

I’ve been reading a lot of Forge docs lately, and I’m happy to try to answer any other questions you might have.

Good luck!