Introducing Provenance — immutable lineage from heat code to delivery

Provenance is the lineage system inside Forge. Once a mill processes and places a lot of steel, it is assigned a heat code — the unique identifier from which each individual parcel can be traced back to its origin. But heat codes are not universal: their generation differs between mills, they can clash, and they can be misappropriated. Every downstream process — treatment, forging, certification — adds traceability of its own, sometimes through new heat codes, sometimes through paper trails that disappear with the next inventory transfer.

Provenance exists to solve this problem of traceability — to make the full life of a lot, and every branching by-product, an operating-layer feature rather than an audit-time scramble.

What Provenance is

Each lot added to a distributor's inventory creates a new provenance ledger:

• A ledger is owned by exactly one entity at a time (one distributor or one buyer)
• A ledger is an append-only database log designed to capture the full life of the lot and its branching by-products (assets, listings, downstream consumption)
• Each new ledger entry is immutable and does not overwrite the past
• Only the current ledger owner can add new entries

Provenance is the system that makes "where did this steel come from, and what has been done to it" a single-query answer rather than a multi-week paper hunt.

How it works

Ledger entries. The current ledger owner can add:

• File attachments — PDFs, images, Word docs, Excel files. Examples: certifications, API licenses, compliance records, mill reports.
• Categorical entries — pre-defined entries for common industrial operations (e.g., annealing).
• Text descriptions — free-form description on any entry at the time of creation.

Once committed, an entry cannot be altered or removed. The ledger grows monotonically.

Transfers. A ledger transfers from one operator to another upon receipt of the underlying product, verified by closing the tracking record associated with the transaction. Alternatively, a transfer link can be sent at any time from the current ledger owner to any user.

A transfer is irreversible. When accepted, ownership passes from the transferrer to the transferee at the time of acceptance. A transfer creates a pending transfer request record, which must be accepted by the transferee within an expiration window. If unaccepted, the transfer cancels.

This is distinct from closing a tracking record. Closing a tracking record automatically accepts the pending transfer request — the close itself is proof of acceptance. A transfer record linked to a tracking record (or not linked to a transfer link) does not expire.

Timeline view. Operators view the ledger as a scrollable timeline showing every entry tied to the owner who created it, in time order. Any file in the timeline can be downloaded or viewed.

Hot-link sharing. Any ledger owner can share a hot link to a specific provenance ledger at any time. Viewers do not need a Forge account to view the ledger — the hot-linked ledger is viewable in the browser. To run ledger analytics, query the ledger, or browse the originating company, viewers must create a Forge account.

How operators use Provenance daily

For a distributor, Provenance is the surface that:

• Captures every certification, treatment record, and compliance document at the moment of action — not weeks later in an audit response
• Anchors every listing to a verifiable origin chain that buyers can inspect before inquiring
• Transfers ownership cleanly at delivery with no parallel paper trail

For a buyer, Provenance is the surface that:

• Surfaces the full origin of a SKU before any commitment — no inquiry-then-discovery cycle
• Receives a fully-formed lineage on receipt, without separate document handoff
• Can be hot-linked to procurement leadership or compliance reviewers without requiring them to onboard

For a compliance or audit function, Provenance collapses the historic month-long audit cycle into a query.

Why it matters

Traceability has historically been a tax — work performed at audit time, against documents stored in inboxes and filing cabinets. Provenance flips that posture. Traceability becomes a side-effect of normal operations: every action commits a ledger entry, every entry is immutable, every transfer is verified. The audit answers itself.

For industrial markets where regulatory, certification, and counterparty trust requirements are tightening, this is not a feature — it is the substrate beneath every transaction.

Provenance is live for early-access Forge operators. Request access at /access/request to begin building your first ledger.