We capture what a master's hands know, before it is lost.
A multimodal record of expert practice. For craft preservation, and for the future of skilled work.
One capture. Two outputs.
Master craftspeople carry knowledge built over decades. Knowledge that lives in muscle, sense and judgment. Knowledge that has never been written down because it cannot be. When a maestro retires without a successor, that knowledge is gone.
TacitForge captures it before it is lost. We work in the maestro's own workshop, on their terms, recording the full picture of expert practice with a synchronised multi-sensor stack. The capture is permanent, named, and conducted on terms agreed with the craftsperson and their community.
Learn from the master, for decades after retirement.
A named, permanent archive. Apprentices study the craft from the maestro who shaped it, exactly as the maestro practised it.
Mastery, as an enduring asset.
A structured archive of expert practice. Licensed to applications that need the real thing. Returning revenue to the master, their family, and the region that produced them, for the life of the archive.
Built on six years of European research.
TacitForge's methodology is a direct follow-on from the EU-funded Mingei and CRAEFT projects (2018 to 2026), conducted at FORTH, the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, in Crete, across nine European institutions. Those programmes established the academic framework for ethnographic craft capture in Europe.
TacitForge extends that framework with the additional sensor layers and extraction protocols required to reach the moment-by-moment conversation between hand, sense and material that no prior project has reached.
Our first preprint.
We published our first preprint on 9 May 2026. It introduces the Cognitive Action Stream (CAS), a structured representation of expert human cognition, captured alongside multimodal sensor data during skilled manipulation, and designed to be consumed directly by multi-stream action models in robotics.
Vision, language, torque and tactile are addressable streams. Cognition is the missing one. CAS specifies how to capture it.
Cognition-Augmented Dexterous Manipulation: A Structured Expert Knowledge Stream for Multimodal Action Models. Clive Harmsworth, TacitForge Limited. Preprint, CC BY 4.0.
Aotearoa first. Italy next.
TacitForge is incorporated in Auckland, New Zealand. Our first capture pilot is being prepared in Aotearoa, on the terms and protocols of the community whose knowledge we record. The work then expands into the craft heartlands of Italy.
Where the masters are, the value returns.
Investment, partnership, or to join the team.
For investment, partnership, or to discuss joining the team, please write to Clive Harmsworth, Founder.