How do I know a project made of bug fixes is finished?

Tares tells you a bug-fix project is finished when the orchestrator asks, after the last milestone, whether the project is done and you answer that it is. Tares then marks the project Done with your words and moves it to the finished list on the Crew page. Stopping the crew is a separate step, tares factory crew down.

How it works

A bug-fix project runs through the software factory for Claude Code like any other project. The crew works the tickets milestone by milestone, and you decide when the project as a whole is done.

• The builder takes the tickets one at a time. For each it makes a branch, does the work and opens a pull request. The reviewer posts a verdict, and once the verdict passes and CI is green, the builder merges.
• At the end of each milestone, the orchestrator brings you the choices the crew made on its own, the assumptions, in one question. Each assumption names the tickets it touches.
• After the last milestone, the orchestrator asks whether the project is finished. This question is yours to answer, because only you know whether the fixes work where they matter, for example once they are deployed.
• When you answer that it is done, Tares marks the project Done with your words, with every ticket merged. It moves the project to the finished list on the Crew page.

The project page shows the same progress. Across the top are four steps, Spec, Build, Review and Done, and a progress bar with one segment per ticket. Each ticket shows its state: to do, in progress, in review, merged or blocked. A blocked ticket names the tickets it waits for.

Your answer is recorded in the Decisions fold exactly as you typed it, up to 4,000 characters. In the worked example in A project, end to end, the project fixed bugs in how a household app paid shifts. The person deployed it and answered that it was fully deployed, working and done, and Tares marked the project Done with those words.

Set it up

You do not configure anything to get this behavior. You follow the project to its last milestone and answer the question the orchestrator asks. If you have not yet handed a project to the crew, start with Get started.

1. Open the Crew page in the console (http://127.0.0.1:8787/crew locally). Open projects are listed with their builders, and questions waiting for you appear at the top.
2. Open the project page and check that the progress bar is full, with one segment per ticket, and that each ticket is merged.
3. Answer the milestone questions in the orchestrator’s session. When it asks whether to keep the crew’s own choices, say yes or no. To make an answer stand from now on, say so, for this project or for every project.
4. When the orchestrator asks whether the project is finished, verify the fixes yourself, then answer in your own words, for example that the fixes are deployed and working and the project is done.
5. Check the Crew page. The project now sits in the finished list, folded below the open projects, and its Done step is marked on the project page.
6. If no project is left, the orchestrator asks whether to stop the crew. Stop every station with this command:

tares factory crew down

When you have the next project, run tares factory crew up again. Tares keeps the projects, tickets and answers, so the crew carries on from them.

What you get

• A clear end point. The project is Done only after you say it is, not when the last pull request merges.
• A record in your own words. Your answer is stored in the Decisions fold, newest first, next to every other question the crew asked you.
• A tidy Crew page. Finished projects move to their own folded list, so the open list shows only work in progress.
• A project page that shows the whole build: the spec, each ticket with its builder, pull request and review rounds, and the assumptions you kept.
• Control over the crew. Marking the project Done does not stop any station. You stop them with tares factory crew down when you choose, and nothing is lost when you do.

When something else fits

• If you want to pick up a finished project again, hand it to the crew again, for example with a follow-up spec. Finished does not close the history.
• If a station shows Waiting for you, it asked for a permission, a prompt or an answer and stays stopped until you reply. Answer it in its session before you expect the project to finish.
• If you have more projects coming soon, leave the crew running. Stopping it is optional and separate from marking a project Done.

Related