crew

Coding agents working side by side, in panes you can see.

crew runs a session of several coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, or any other terminal agent) on one project, each in its own iTerm2 or tmux pane. Nothing runs hidden: every agent is a normal interactive session you can watch and type into. The agents talk through one numbered stream of Markdown messages in the project's .crew/ directory, which you read as the story of the session, and a coordinator (you, or an agent you pick) can read each pane, type into it, and answer its approval prompts.

It is a few POSIX shell scripts, osascript for iTerm2, and tmux: no daemon, no service, no extension.

• Install
• Quickstart
• A session
• What it costs
• One command, the whole crew
• Ending a crew
• Kinds of agent
• Names and colors
• A clone for a member
• Tabs
• Laying out a table
• The live board
• The gate
• Where things live

Install

curl -fsSL https://github.com/mrfoxes/crew/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

The line downloads the latest release and checks it against the release's SHA256SUMS, unpacks it under ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/crew/<version>/, points crew/current at it, links ~/.local/bin/crew (or --prefix <dir>), prints what to add to PATH and the completion line for your shell, and runs crew doctor; it never asks for sudo. Run again it upgrades in place (--version vX.Y.Z picks a release), and --uninstall removes the link and crew/, nothing else; SECURITY.md says how to read the script first. crew update says which version runs and which release is the latest, and installs the latest unless --check; a checkout is told to git pull.

Or from a checkout anywhere on disk:

git clone https://github.com/mrfoxes/crew.git && cd crew
ln -s "$PWD/bin/crew" ~/.local/bin/crew

Tab completes the commands, their flags, the members, the keys, the message numbers, the presets, and the kinds, in the shell you use:

ln -s "$PWD/share/completions/crew.fish" ~/.config/fish/completions/crew.fish                        # fish
printf 'fpath=(%s/share/completions $fpath); autoload -Uz compinit; compinit\n' "$PWD" >> ~/.zshrc   # zsh
printf 'source %s/share/completions/crew.bash\n' "$PWD" >> ~/.bashrc                                 # bash

They read the commands and flags from crew --help when Tab is pressed, so a new command completes with no edit to them, and the members from the crew that crew dir finds.

Quickstart

In a project you want a crew on, from an iTerm2 or tmux pane:

crew doctor                                 # check terminal, agents, and git/gh
crew up pair                                # claude and codex side by side, watch and board open
$EDITOR .crew/README.md                     # write the goal, lanes, and reviewers
crew send coord all "Plan: read .crew/README.md and send Plan: before editing"

crew up pair writes .crew/Crewfile from share/presets/pair, opens crew watch --all (relaying unread messages and running the gate) and crew board --live (status, file claims, lock, and CI) beside you, spawns claude and codex, and invites both. When a member finishes a slice, it lands only its claimed paths and wakes its reviewer:

crew land claude -m "Fix parser edge case" --check 'sh test/run.sh' -- src/parse.sh
crew send codex claude "Review: a1b2c3d clean" -m "Read it all; no findings."

When the goal is met:

crew down                                   # ask for Done: and Reports, then close panes

A session

Before the first spawn, crew doctor checks what a crew needs under it and changes nothing:

crew doctor                                 # ok, warn, or fail a line, and what to do

It reads iTerm2's version from its app bundle (3.5 or later for --above and crew move; it does not launch it) and whether it runs, tmux's (3.1 or later to even a row); either terminal alone is enough, neither is a fail. It checks crew on PATH and the checkout it resolves to, each kind's agent on PATH with its --version against the one its fixtures were captured from (test/fixtures/VERSIONS; a newer agent may draw prompts the gate no longer reads), the caveman skill of each installed agent, a notifier for owner, gh auth status for the board's CI, and, inside a crew, its Crewfile (and whether a member's budget= has no matching rate in share/rates or .crew/rates), a lock held for 10 minutes or more, whether a relay runs, and members whose pane is gone. A fail makes the exit status 1; a warn does not.

With a Crewfile, crew up does what follows in one command, tabs, members, invites, and layouts, and crew down ends it: see One command, the whole crew. By hand, in the project, from the coordinator's pane:

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗