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Forven is a free, open-source, self-hosted quant research lab for retail quant traders. You build a trading idea, prove or disprove it against out-of-sample data, kill what does not survive, and promote only what does. You run it on your own machine — clone the repo and start it — and nothing leaves your machine unless you wire up an exchange yourself.

This is the documentation landing page. If you are new, read How Forven works for the big picture, then Install and run the Quickstart. If you already have it running, the pipeline and the gauntlet are the two concepts worth understanding first.

The core idea

Most retail strategies look good on the data they were tuned on and fall apart everywhere else. Forven's answer is a single, opinionated process: build → test → kill → promote. A strategy only advances when the evidence survives a battery of out-of-sample and robustness checks. The process is the product.

A strategy moves through fixed lifecycle stages, each with a gate it must pass:

researching → backtesting → quick_screen → gauntlet → paper → live → retired

• researching / backtesting — the idea is written as code and run against historical data.
• quick_screen — the first triage gate, catching overfitting and implausible metrics. The public site calls this stage "screen."
• gauntlet — the robustness battery: walk-forward analysis, Monte-Carlo, parameter jitter, cost stress, and regime split.
• paper — simulated execution against the live feed with no capital at risk. The public site calls a strategy at this stage a "candidate." Paper (optionally validated on the HyperLiquid testnet) is the supported mode.
• live (live_graduated / deployed) — the real-order code path, gated behind a strict promotion gate and operator approval. Live / mainnet is not a supported feature; paper is where Forven stops by default.
• retired / archived — the end state for anything that stops earning its place.

See the pipeline for what each stage tests and how a strategy advances or gets demoted.

How the pieces fit

Forven is server-first software you run on your own machine. The major parts:

• The local stack — a FastAPI backend (port 8003), a SvelteKit web UI (port 5173), SQLite for state, and a ChromaDB-backed memory layer. Everything lives under FORVEN_HOME (defaults to ~/.forven).
• The brain — the sole orchestrator. Every agent's output returns to the brain; it routes decisions, drives stage transitions, and enforces the gates. Agents never task each other.
• The research daemon — an autonomous background loop that invents hypotheses, runs their child strategies through the gauntlet, retires losers, and surfaces a shortlist.
• The scanner — a live multi-strategy signal scanner that runs DB-backed strategies against market data with regime filtering and risk gates.

For the full architecture and how a strategy travels end to end, read How Forven works.

Where you'll spend your time

The web UI is organized around a handful of pages:

• Dashboard (/) — system health, equity, the strategy leaderboard, current regime, and alerts.
• Backtest studio (/backtest/new) — pick or write a strategy, set symbol, timeframe, and dates, preview signals, and run.
• Strategy lab (/lab) — the development hub: optimize parameters, run the gauntlet, read the robustness verdict, and check the promotion-readiness checklist.
• Data manager (/data) — download and inspect OHLCV datasets before you backtest.
• Risk (/risk) and Ops (/ops) — the operator surfaces for safety controls and day-to-day system control.

Free and open source

Forven is free and open source under AGPL-3.0-or-later. There is no account, no sign-up, no license key, no paywall, and no tiers — every feature is yours the moment you clone and run it. That includes the full local lab, the research daemon, paper trading, the risk controls, and the AI agent layer (which runs on your own LLM key — bring-your-own-key, never resold). See Everything is free.

A note on safety

Forven is a research tool. Backtest and paper results describe the past and are not predictive of future performance. Any numbers you see in this documentation are illustrative. Nothing here is financial advice.

The supported way to run Forven is paper trading, optionally validated against the HyperLiquid testnet (no real funds). There is no supported live / mainnet (real-money) path — execution defaults to paper (FORVEN_EXECUTION_MODE), and wiring real exchange keys to trade live is unsupported and entirely at your own risk. You cannot skip paper trading.

What Forven is not

Forven is not a signal service, not copy trading, and not a promise of profit. It is a process tool for people who want proof before conviction.

Related

• How Forven works — the local stack, the brain, the daemon, and the scanner.
• Install — clone the repo and run it on your own machine.
• Quickstart — install to your first paper strategy.
• The pipeline — the strategy lifecycle and the gate at each stage.