What happens when the last milestone of a crew project is finished, and how do I stop the crew afterwards?

When the last milestone of a crew project is finished, the orchestrator asks whether the project is finished, and Tares marks it Done and moves it to the finished list on the Crew page. With no project left, the orchestrator asks whether to stop the crew. Run tares factory crew down to stop every station. Tares keeps your projects, tickets and answers, so a finished project can be picked up again by handing it to the crew again.

How it works

Finishing a project follows a fixed sequence once the crew completes the last milestone:

• The orchestrator asks if the project is finished. You answer in the orchestrator’s session, the same place you answer every other crew question. In the worked example, the person deployed the project and answered that it was fully deployed, working, and done.
• Tares marks the project Done. It records your answer’s words on the project, with every ticket merged. The project page shows the steps from Spec, Build and Review through to Done.
• The project moves to the finished list. On the Crew page, the Projects section lists open projects with their builders and folds the finished ones below.
• The orchestrator asks whether to stop the crew. This question comes when no project is left.

The Decisions fold on the project page keeps every question the crew asked you and your answer, newest first, so the finishing answer stays on the record. For the full walk through one real project, from spec to eight merged pull requests, read A project, end to end.

Set it up

1. Open the Crew page in the console, http://127.0.0.1:8787/crew on a local Tares, to watch the project’s stations and see where it stands.
2. When the last milestone is merged, answer the orchestrator’s question about whether the project is finished. Tares then marks the project Done and moves it to the finished list.
3. When the orchestrator asks whether to stop the crew, answer it, then stop every station from your terminal:

tares factory crew down

4. When you have the next project, bring the crew back up. The setup order is the one in Get started, where tares factory crew up comes before tares factory spec:

tares factory crew up

5. To work on a project that is already finished, hand it to the crew again, for example with a follow-up spec:

tares factory spec "what you want to build"

The crew carries on from the projects, tickets and answers Tares kept.

What you get

• A clear end state. The project is marked Done with your answer’s words, every ticket merged, and it sits in the finished list on the Crew page instead of mixing with open work.
• A record that stays. The project page keeps its docs, tickets, GitHub pull requests, decisions, assumptions, crew and sessions after it is done.
• A clean stop. tares factory crew down stops every station in one command, so nothing keeps working once the project is finished.
• Nothing lost on stop. Tares keeps projects, tickets and answers, so stopping the crew does not erase what it learned about your project.
• A way back. A finished project is picked up again by handing it to the crew again, for example with a follow-up spec, and crew up brings the stations back when you have the next project.

When something else fits

• If you are not ready to call the project finished, answer the orchestrator’s question accordingly, because the Done mark and the move to the finished list follow your answer to that question.
• If you are setting up the software factory for Claude Code for the first time, start with Get started, which lists the steps in order.
• If you want to see what a whole project looks like from spec to done, read A project, end to end.

Related