What will the crew ask me while it works on test coverage?

Tares has the crew ask you two kinds of questions while it works on test coverage: steps only you can take on your machine, and a keep-or-change question at the end of each milestone. You answer them in the orchestrator’s session. Each answer is recorded as you typed it, so you can see later what you decided.

How it works

The crew works through milestones, and each milestone has acceptance checks. In the project walked through end to end, a pull request had no tests and a few bugs. The first milestone added Vitest, unit tests for the logic and a CI check on every pull request. The crew asked five questions over the whole project.

Steps only you can take on your machine. Two questions in that project were of this kind:

• Trust the repo folder in Claude Code once, so the builder can start.
• Give Tares a GitHub token, so it can read pull request, CI and merge state.

The second one matters for test coverage because CI state is what tells the crew whether a pull request is green.

Questions at the end of each milestone. When the crew meets something the plan does not cover, it picks the sensible answer, writes it down as an assumption and carries on. At the end of the milestone, the orchestrator brings you all its assumptions in one question: keep the choices the crew made on its own? In the example, assumptions included:

• Using vitest.config.mts because vitest.config.ts failed to load on the repo’s Node version.
• Running the database-test CI job on the same Node version as the unit tests.
• Turning the reviewer’s smaller findings into one extra ticket.

The person kept all five assumptions.

Two more questions can come. Depending on what you chose at crew up, the crew may wait for your yes before every merge. After the last milestone, the orchestrator asks whether the project is finished, and then whether to stop the crew.

Set it up

1. Bring up the crew and plan the project. Run these in order. Your spec is split into milestones, each with acceptance checks, such as tests and CI on the branch.

tares factory crew up
tares factory spec

2. Answer the spec session’s questions, then say yes to handing the project to the crew. The orchestrator picks it up and starts a builder for the first milestone.
3. Keep the orchestrator’s session open. Questions arrive there, and you answer there. A long pasted reply works too, and Tares matches it in full.
4. Watch the Crew page in the console, at http://127.0.0.1:8787/crew on a local Tares. Questions waiting for you appear at the top. The project page lists them under questions waiting for you.
5. When a station shows Waiting for you, it asked for a permission, a prompt or an answer and stays stopped until you reply. Open its session in a terminal and answer there, or say “continue”.
6. At the end of each milestone, review the assumptions the orchestrator lists. Say whether you keep them. To make an answer stand from now on, say so, for this project or for every project.
7. If a station goes Quiet, run tares factory crew watch to bring it back. If you are new to the factory, start with Get started.

What you get

• A short list of questions, each tied to a real need: something only you can do, or a choice you should approve.
• A record of every question and your answer, in your own words, in the project’s Decisions fold, newest first. A recorded answer holds up to 4,000 characters.
• A list of every choice the crew made on its own in the Assumptions fold, with whether you kept it. Each open assumption names the tickets it touches and the builder that made it.
• Control over how far the crew goes. The Crew page shows what you chose at crew up, such as whether the crew merges on its own once the reviewer passes a pull request and CI is green.

When something else fits

• If you want to steer the work itself, talk to the orchestrator, which answers the builders and brings you only what needs you.
• If you want to approve every merge, choose that at crew up. Each approval then becomes a question in the Decisions fold.
• To see what moved without answering anything, open Standup on the Crew page for a report of what is done, in review, blocked and waiting on you.

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