What waits on my desk while the crew works on internal refactors?

Tares keeps the questions the crew cannot answer itself on your desk, and tares factory crew desk shows each one in full. You answer them in the orchestrator’s session, one at a time, each with a recommendation. While a question waits for you, the rest of the crew carries on with other work.

How it works

The desk is the list of questions waiting for you. It does not hold tickets, pull requests or logs. The crew is a set of Claude Code sessions: an orchestrator, a reviewer and builders. The orchestrator is the only session you talk to. It hands out work, answers the other sessions, and brings you what needs you.

The same desk applies when you hand the crew a project for internal refactors. You plan the refactor as a project with tares factory spec, and the crew builds it into pull requests merged on main.

• Questions arrive one at a time. Each comes with a recommendation, so you can accept it or say something else.
• Every project shares one desk. If you hand the crew several projects, their questions all reach you through the orchestrator.
• Other work continues. While one project waits for you, the other projects keep moving.
• Tares holds the record. It stores the questions the crew asked, your answers in your own words, and the assumptions the crew made on its own. If a session restarts, the crew carries on where it stopped.
• Merge approval is a setting. tares factory crew up asks whether the crew merges on its own after review and green CI or waits for your yes. A single project can also wait for your yes before every merge.

The reviewer checks every pull request to a fixed bar, so reviews do not sit on your desk. The decisions the crew made without you are written down, and you can check them at the end of each milestone.

Set it up

Reading the desk needs a running crew. Steps that you have already done can be skipped. The order stays the same. For the full setup, see Get started.

1. Check that Claude Code is signed in, that gh is signed in with write access to the repos the crew works in, and that git, jq and curl are installed.
2. Install the CLI and start Tares. On a local Tares, run tares up, then start the MCP endpoint in a second terminal with tares mcp --transport streamable-http. On Tares Cloud, run tares login and pick your workspace in the browser. There is no MCP endpoint to start.
3. Give Tares access to GitHub. Use Settings > GitHub on a local Tares, or Connect GitHub on Tares Cloud.
4. Bring up the crew with tares factory crew up.
5. Plan the refactor with tares factory spec, and say yes when it asks whether to hand the project to the crew.
6. Look at the desk, then answer in the orchestrator’s session.

tares factory crew desk
tares factory crew attach orchestrator

7. To see the desk in context, run tares factory crew status. It lists the stations, the questions for you, and a line per project.
8. On the Crew page of the Tares console, at http://127.0.0.1:8787/crew locally, the question waiting for you sits at the top. Below it are the stations, each open project with its builders, and the pull requests waiting for review.

If something does not answer, run tares factory doctor. It prints a line for each thing the crew needs, and the command that fixes each problem.

What you get

• One place for what is yours. The desk holds only the questions that need a human, so you do not watch terminals.
• Full questions on demand. tares factory crew desk prints each waiting question in full, and tares factory crew status gives the short version next to the stations and projects.
• A recommendation with every question. You can answer with a quick yes or give your own direction.
• A durable record. Your answers are kept on Tares in your own words, next to the assumptions and the reviews, so a restarted crew does not ask again from scratch.
• No stalled crew. Questions from several projects reach you in one session, one at a time, while the other projects keep working.
• A check at each milestone. You review the choices the crew made on its own when a milestone ends, not at every step.

When something else fits

• If the refactor is small, work on it in your own Claude Code session with tares factory session. You plan and build it there, with no crew and no desk.
• If you want to close a project yourself, use tares factory finish with a few words on why.
• If you need everything to stop, tares factory crew halt pauses merges, pushes and new sessions until tares factory crew resume.

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