A weak artifact goes in (a two-line stub that satisfies nothing). The forge works its weakest article each pass — adding the real piece that article demands — and hands back a new, stronger artifact. Press the button and read the manifest grow, line by line, until it meets all six constitutional articles and is forge-complete. No dependencies; it runs anywhere.
WHAT THIS IS: the heart of Hephaestus, made to run and made to show its work. Each pass takes the lowest-met article and adds the concrete thing it requires — a pinned seed, a fenced boundary, a chained receipt, a restore point, a stated limit, a destructive-action gate — minting a new artifact each time. The output is a complete, constitutional manifest you can copy and use. The forge is itself an artifact (one file) that, given an artifact, returns a better one — that recursion is what Hephaestus is. The Python engine and a strictly-improving score proof live at forge/hephaestus_forge.py (39/39 self-tests green).