How do I set up an AI SRE for a cron job that stopped with guided setup?

Tares sets up an AI SRE for a stopped cron job from one sentence: you describe the goal in guided setup, review the plan Tares writes, and click Looks right, set it up. The project exists as a draft from the moment planning starts, so you can edit the plan before anything is set up. If you leave, Finish setting up on the Projects list reopens the draft where you left it. For the wider picture of what an AI SRE does, see AI SRE.

How it works

Guided setup turns a goal into a plan and builds nothing until you approve it.

• Goal. You say what the project should achieve, for example that you want to know when your nightly cron job stops running. You also pick who does the work: Tares agents, which run inside Tares on your model provider, or your own agent, such as Claude Code, which joins with a project key.
• Plan. Tares writes the plan in the background. It reads what is already on your Tares, looks at what a source sends, writes the plan, checks it and fixes what the check found. This usually takes under a minute.
• Draft from the start. The project is a draft as soon as planning begins. Nothing of a draft is set up yet, so deleting it removes nothing else.
• Four cards. The plan shows Watches (the sources to read), Wakes when (when agents wake and how long they wait before waking again), Agents (who looks first and who digs in after a handoff) and Know-how (optional skills). Each item has Change and Remove.
• Reuse. A source, agent, tool or skill already on your Tares is used as it is and stays in the projects that already use it.

The result is an ordinary project. Every part has its own page and stays editable.

Set it up

1. Make sure the instance has a model provider. Guided setup needs one, and without it the goal step links you to Add a model provider.
2. Open Projects, click Create new, and answer What should this project achieve? with a sentence such as “Tell me when the nightly invoice cron job stops running.” You can also click one of the examples under Or start from one of these.
3. Pick Who does the work?, then click Plan it.
4. Read the four cards. Open Show what Tares sets up for you to see every part the plan creates or uses.
5. Edit the plan. Use Change or Remove on any item, change the numbers in the Wakes when sentence in place, or type in Say what to change (for example “only for the invoice job”) and click Update the plan. Tares plans again from your edited plan.
6. If you need to stop partway, leave the page. The draft waits on the Projects list. Click Finish setting up on its row to continue where you left off. Delete draft removes it.
7. When the plan reads right, click Looks right, set it up. Tares creates the project and everything it needs in one go.
8. In Connect, finish what only you can do, such as pointing your system at the endpoint that receives events. The page offers an example event and Send a test event for me. I will connect it later leaves an item for the project page.
9. In Try it, click Run it once now to see a practice result before a real one arrives.

If you drive setup through the API, the first call creates the draft and starts planning. Its body carries the goal and who does the work, where who is tares or own:

{
  "goal": "Tell me when the nightly invoice cron job stops running",
  "who": "tares"
}

Send it with POST /api/setup/drafts. Tares answers with 202 and plans in the background.

What you get

• A project for your stopped cron job that you reviewed in plain words before it existed.
• A draft you can leave and reopen. Planning and editing can span several visits, and Finish setting up brings you back to the same place.
• A plan you can reshape in words or item by item, with every change visible in the cards.
• Existing sources, agents, tools and skills reused instead of duplicated.
• A practice run, marked Practice, that uses your model provider like a real run and is left out of today’s totals. With your own agent, the same button sends your agent a practice wake-up and waits for its finding.
• An ordinary project afterwards, with each part on its own page.

When something else fits

• If you would rather pick the parts yourself, use build it by hand from existing objects on the first step of Create new.
• If a ready-made shape is close to what you need, use Start from a template on the same step.
• If no connector fits part of your goal, the plan says so in a note. You can then connect the source yourself and edit the plan.

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