How many Claude Code sessions does a crew need for dependency upgrades?

A Tares crew is an orchestrator, a reviewer and one builder per milestone and repo, and a small upgrade can run in one session. The number of builders follows how you split the work, not the kind of work. If the upgrade is small, skip the crew and use tares factory session to plan and build it in your own Claude Code session.

How it works

Every member of a Tares crew is a Claude Code session running in the background on your machine. The roles are:

• Orchestrator: hands out work, answers the others and brings you what needs you. It is the only session you talk to.
• Reviewer: reviews every pull request to a fixed bar and posts its verdict on the pull request.
• Builders: one per milestone and repo of a project, started by the orchestrator. Each takes a ticket, works on its own branch, opens a pull request, and merges it once the reviewer passes it and CI is green.
• Releaser: only if you ask for one. It tags and deploys. Without it, tickets end at merged on main.

So the session count for your dependency upgrades depends on how you plan them:

• One repo, one milestone: one builder, so the crew is an orchestrator, a reviewer and one builder.
• Several repos or milestones: one builder for each milestone and repo, started by the orchestrator, up to the number of builders you allow.
• A releaser: one more session, only when you ask for it.

When you first run tares factory crew up, Tares asks how many builders may run at once. You set that limit yourself, and the answers are kept on Tares.

The crew serves every project you hand it, all at the same time. The reviewer reviews every pull request for all of them, and a project that waits for you does not hold up the others. Tares keeps the plan, the tickets, every review and your answers, so a session that restarts carries on where it stopped.

Set it up

Pick the shape that fits the size of the upgrade.

Option 1: a small upgrade in one session

1. Check that Claude Code is signed in, gh is signed in with write access to the repo, and git, jq and curl are installed.
2. Install the CLI and start Tares locally:

uv tool install tares     # or: brew install glassflow/tap/tares
tares up

3. Open one Claude Code session bound to a Tares project and describe the upgrade as the idea:

tares factory session "<idea>"

The session asks a few questions, writes a short spec and a ticket list on Tares, then builds it. If the plan turns out big, it offers the full spec and the hand-over to the crew instead.

Option 2: a crew for upgrades across repos or milestones

1. Do the checks and the install from Option 1.
2. In a second terminal, start the MCP endpoint every crew session shares. On Tares Cloud, run tares login instead and skip this step.

tares mcp --transport streamable-http

3. Give Tares access to GitHub: Settings > GitHub on a local Tares, or Connect GitHub on Tares Cloud.
4. Bring up the crew and answer the settings questions, including how many builders run at once:

tares factory crew up

5. In the repo, or a folder that holds its repos, plan the project:

tares factory spec "what you want to build"

6. Say yes when asked to hand the project to the crew, then answer its questions in the orchestrator:

tares factory crew attach orchestrator

See Get started for the full walkthrough. Run tares factory crew status to see the stations and a line per project, and tares factory projects to see each project’s builders and repos. Run tares factory doctor at any point to check everything the crew needs.

What you get

• A session count that follows your plan. One builder per milestone and repo, plus the orchestrator and the reviewer, so you can see the number before you start.
• A single session when that is enough. tares factory session keeps your shared AGENTS.md and memory, and the session’s record lands on the project.
• One place to talk. You answer questions in the orchestrator’s session, one at a time, each with a recommendation.
• Review on every pull request. The reviewer holds each change to a fixed bar, and nothing merges until it passes and CI is green.
• A record that outlives the sessions. The plan, tickets, reviews, assumptions and your answers stay on Tares.
• A live view. The Crew page in the console shows each project’s progress, its builders and the pull requests waiting for review.
• A way to move up or down. If you start in one session and the work grows, the session can hand the project to the crew. If the crew already holds a project, a session can take it over when you say yes. Its builders push what they have and write their progress first.

When something else fits

• Use tares factory session when the upgrade is small and fits one repo and one milestone. You get the Tares project and record without a crew running.
• Use the crew when you have several repos or milestones, want a separate reviewer on every pull request, or want to hand over more than one project at once.
• Plain claude has no Tares tools, so start sessions that work on a project with tares factory session.

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