How do I limit what a Claude Code crew can touch while it does dependency upgrades in a Node/TypeScript app?

Tares gives you five levers over a Claude Code crew: the repos your gh login can write to, the merge setting, the reviewer bar, halting the crew, and leaving the releaser off. Together they decide what the crew can push, merge and ship during dependency upgrades. You set most of them once, when you run tares factory crew up from Get started.

How it works

The crew is a set of Claude Code sessions on your machine: an orchestrator, a reviewer and builders. Each lever limits a different part of what they do.

• Your gh login. Builders push and open pull requests with your gh login. The crew can write only to the repos that login can write to.
• Tares’s own GitHub access. Tares reads the pull request, CI and merge state of every ticket with its own access. On Tares Cloud you pick the repos under Connect GitHub. On a local Tares you add a token or App under Settings > GitHub.
• The merge setting. A builder merges its pull request once the reviewer passes it and CI is green. You can instead make the crew wait for your yes. A single project can wait for your yes before every merge, even when the rest of the crew merges on its own.
• The reviewer bar. The reviewer reviews every pull request to a fixed bar and posts its verdict on the pull request. Nothing merges until it passes. If you have the Codex CLI, a second model can also check every commit.
• Halt. tares factory crew halt stops merges, pushes and new sessions until you run tares factory crew resume.
• The releaser. The releaser, which tags and deploys, exists only if you ask for one. Without it, tickets end at merged on main.

Set it up

1. Sign in to gh with an account whose write access covers only the repos you want upgraded. Builders push with this login, so it sets the outer boundary.

   gh auth login

2. Give Tares access to only those repos. Use Connect GitHub on Tares Cloud, or add a token or App under Settings > GitHub on a local Tares.

3. Bring up the crew. The first run asks how far the crew may go.

   tares factory crew up

4. Answer the settings questions with the tight choices:

   • Have the crew wait for your yes instead of merging on its own after review and green CI.
   • Say no to a releaser, so tickets stop at merged on main.
   • Turn on the second model check if you have the Codex CLI.
   • Set a low number of builders running at once.
   • Allow only what you want the crew to do without asking.

   Tares keeps the answers.

5. Plan the upgrade as a project, then hand it to the crew. If you want a yes before every merge on this project only, keep the rest of the crew on its own merge setting.

   tares factory spec "what you want to build"

6. Watch the work. The orchestrator is the only session you talk to, and it brings you questions one at a time.

   tares factory crew status
   tares factory crew attach orchestrator

7. Stop the crew the moment an upgrade looks wrong, then restart it when you are ready.

   tares factory crew halt "<reason>"
   tares factory crew resume

8. Run tares factory doctor after crew up to check everything the crew needs, including which key the stations use.

What you get

• A crew that can write only to the repos your gh login reaches, so a dependency upgrade in one app stays in that app’s repos.
• Pull requests that merge only after the reviewer passes them and CI is green, or only after you say yes.
• A reviewer that holds every pull request to the same fixed bar, with an optional second model checking each commit.
• One command that stops merges, pushes and new sessions, and one that lets the crew carry on.
• Work that ends at merged on main, because no releaser tags or deploys.
• A record on Tares of the plan, tickets, reviews, assumptions and your answers, so a halted or restarted crew continues where it stopped.

When something else fits

• If you want to work on one upgrade yourself, run tares factory session instead. It opens your own Claude Code session bound to the project, with no crew.
• If you only want to stop everything for now, tares factory crew down stops every station. Tares keeps the projects, tickets and answers.

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