How often does the crew check for new work when nobody is at the keyboard?
Tares wakes the orchestrator on a schedule every 20 minutes, so an idle crew checks for new work without anyone at the keyboard. Each check lets the crew notice a new project, a stalled ticket or a merged pull request that unblocks the next one. The software factory for Claude Code keeps moving while you are away.
How it works
The software factory for Claude Code is a crew of Claude Code sessions that run in the background on your machine. Claude Code stops an idle session after about an hour, so Tares plans for that with two mechanisms.
- The watch.
tares factory crew upstarts the crew and a watch in the background. The watch brings back any station that stops, under the same name. Its log is~/factory/watch.log. - The orchestrator schedule. The orchestrator wakes every 20 minutes and checks for work. An idle crew still notices three things: a new project, a stalled ticket, and a merged pull request that unblocks the next one.
When the orchestrator finds work, it hands it out and starts builders itself, one per milestone and repo of a project. A builder takes its tickets, opens pull requests and merges its own once they pass. The reviewer reviews every pull request to a fixed bar and posts the verdict.
A revived session reads its notes and the project on Tares, so it carries on from where the last one stopped. Tares keeps the plan, the tickets, the reviews and your answers, so nothing depends on one long-lived session. The page Run autonomous, self-running Claude Code sessions covers this in more detail.
Set it up
Start the crew once and plan a project. After that you do not assign anything, and the 20-minute checks pick up the work. Get started has the full setup for a local Tares and for Tares Cloud.
- Check that Claude Code is signed in, that
ghis signed in with write access to the repos the crew works in, and that git, jq and curl are installed.
gh auth login- Install the CLI.
uv tool install tares # or: brew install glassflow/tap/tares- On a local Tares, start Tares, then in a second terminal start the MCP endpoint every crew session shares.
tares up
tares mcp --transport streamable-http- On Tares Cloud, sign in and pick your workspace in the browser. There is no MCP endpoint to start.
tares login- Give Tares access to GitHub: in Settings > GitHub for a local Tares, or with Connect GitHub on Tares Cloud.
- Bring up the crew. This starts the stations and the watch.
tares factory crew up- Plan a project with Claude. Tares keeps the plan as tickets, each with the repo it changes.
tares factory spec "what you want to build"From here the orchestrator checks for work every 20 minutes. To stop every station, run tares factory crew down. Tares keeps the projects, tickets and answers, and tares factory crew up starts fresh sessions that carry on from them.
What you get
- Work that continues while you are away. A new project, a stalled ticket or a merged pull request that unblocks the next one is noticed on the next check, at most 20 minutes later.
- Sessions that come back. The watch restarts any station that stops, and the revived session carries on from its notes and the project on Tares.
- A crew that asks before your decisions. Questions wait on the desk until you answer them. The orchestrator is the session you talk to, and it brings you what needs you, one question at a time and with a recommendation. To answer, attach to it:
tares factory crew attach orchestrator- Merging on your terms. At
L4-ship, a builder merges once the reviewer approves and CI is green. AtL3-review, every merge waits for your yes.
When something else fits
- Releasing is off unless you ask for it. Without a releaser, the crew stops when work is merged to main, so plan your own release step.
- If a decision is yours, such as a question on the desk or a merge at
L3-review, the crew waits for your answer however often it checks for work. - If you want the crew off, use
tares factory crew down. Your projects, tickets and answers stay in Tares.