Committed To
These are the principles that govern how we work with clients, collaborators, and the community. Updated May 2026.
I started Forge because I believed design could be done differently. Not just the work itself, but the way people do the work together.
I have ADHD. I'm neurodiverse. I've known this most of my life, and I've spent most of my career learning to work with a brain that doesn't always cooperate with the environments that professional life tends to create. Meetings that move too fast or too slow. Communication norms that reward a kind of clarity I have to work hard to produce. The assumption that intensity means aggression, or that a wandering thought means a weak one.
What I've learned is that the same brain that makes communication hard makes really hard things possible. Pattern recognition across systems that most people see as unrelated. The ability to hold ten variables in the air at once and find the connection nobody else noticed. Genuine, almost inconvenient curiosity about everything. A low tolerance for adhering to the status quo only because it's the way things have always been done.
I've also learned that none of that potential gets realized in an environment where people are afraid to say the wrong thing, ask the obvious question, or admit they don't understand. Psychological safety isn't a nice-to-have. It's the condition under which good work becomes possible at all.
So when the team wrote our values, and when I read things like we feel safe showing up as our authentic selves and we ask questions to gain clarity, I recognized something I'd been trying to articulate for years but couldn't quite say out loud. This is what I've always wanted Forge to be. A place where the way your brain works isn't a liability to manage. Where the dumb question is the one nobody asked. Where being wrong early is better than being confident late.
I'm telling you about my ADHD not because it's a disclaimer, but because I think leadership sets the ceiling on vulnerability in any organization. If I'm not willing to say it, I can't expect anyone else to. And if nobody says it, we end up with a culture that performs psychological safety instead of practicing it.
This document is our attempt to practice it. Hold us to it.
Scott Perket, Founder, Forge Studio
Our values are the behavioral foundation of everything on this page. Read them in full here.
Grounded openness is not a policy. It is a practice. It is the condition Forge commits to creating in every engagement, every conversation, and every relationship.
Grounded openness means being rooted in experience and conviction while remaining genuinely open to being wrong. It means creating environments where people feel safe enough to think out loud, change their minds, admit uncertainty, and ask the question nobody else is asking.
The best work Forge has ever done came from moments of grounded openness. When a designer said I think we're solving the wrong problem. When a client said I don't actually understand why we made this decision. When someone asked the obvious question that unlocked the whole engagement.
These moments don't happen by accident. They happen in environments where leadership models vulnerability first, where no question is too basic, where being wrong early is celebrated rather than penalized. This is what we're building at Forge.
Forge's founder has ADHD and is neurodiverse. This is not a footnote. It is a foundational fact about how this company was built and what it values.
Neurodivergent brains are disproportionately represented among the most original thinkers, systems architects, and creative leaders in the technology industry. The same cognitive wiring that makes certain professional norms difficult also makes certain kinds of thinking possible: pattern recognition across unrelated domains, deep hyperfocus, unconventional problem framing, and a genuine inability to accept because that's how it's done as sufficient justification.
Forge treats neurodiversity as a feature, not a bug. We do not expect neurotypical communication styles as the standard. We separate intent from delivery. We ask what someone means before assuming we know.
Communication style is not a proxy for capability, commitment, or character. We do not penalize disclosure. A collaborator who shares that they are neurodivergent is owed accommodation, not scrutiny. If you are neurodiverse and working with Forge, you are welcome as you are.
Forge is an AI-native studio. AI assists with research synthesis, content drafting, code generation, project management, and strategic analysis. AI does not replace human judgment on decisions that affect clients, team members, or the public. Every significant output has a human approval gate.
All client data processed through AI systems operates under zero data retention via enterprise API. Client IP is never used to train models. Each client engagement operates in complete data isolation.
We do not misrepresent AI-generated work as purely human-authored when the distinction is material. We do not use AI to deceive, manipulate, or misrepresent. We recognize that AI systems carry biases and apply human judgment to evaluate outputs before using them in client-facing or public contexts.
AI accelerates our work. It does not lower our standard for it.
Version 4.0, May 2026. Questions: hello@forge.is