Before you come

Do this at home before Thursday 29 Oct. The venue Wi-Fi is shared by everyone in the room, so installs and downloads on the night are slow.

There are two builds: Software factory (Part 1), which everyone does, and AI SRE with a handover agent (the bonus build for early finishers). Do “Everyone” and Part 1. Do the bonus setup too if you want to try the bonus build.

Pick local or cloud

You can run each part against a Tares on your laptop (local) or against a Tares workspace we host for you (cloud).

Local: everything runs on your laptop. The bonus build local needs Docker and your own Anthropic API key.
Cloud: a free Tares workspace with $10 of model credit. You get the join link on the night. No API key needed.

Both are fine. If Docker or the Wi-Fi gives you trouble on the night, switch to cloud.

Everyone

A laptop with macOS or Linux. On Windows, use WSL2.
Python 3.11 or later. Check with python3 --version.

uv:


curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Check with uv --version: it prints uv 0.x.

Tares, version 1.45.0 or later:
```
uv tool install tares
```
Already have it? Upgrade with uv tool upgrade tares. On macOS you can use brew install glassflow/tap/tares instead.

Check it:
```
tares --version
```
You should see tares 1.45.0 or later.
Claude Code, installed and signed in. Open it once with claude and sign in. Check with claude --version: it prints a version number, then (Claude Code).

Part 1: Software factory

Claude Code on a plan that allows background sessions. The factory runs several Claude Code sessions in the background on your own subscription, and each one uses your plan’s usage like a normal session, so a crew uses it a few times faster.
A GitHub account.
The GitHub CLI gh, signed in:
```
gh auth login
```
Check it:
```
gh auth status
```
You should see Logged in to github.com account <you>.
git, jq and curl installed. Check each one prints a version:
```
git --version
jq --version
curl --version
```

If you installed a tares plugin in Claude Code from a marketplace before, remove it, or the factory runs without its skills:


claude plugin uninstall tares@tares

Bonus: AI SRE with a handover agent

Docker running (Docker Desktop or another Docker engine). Check with docker info --format '{{.ServerVersion}}': it prints a version number, not “Cannot connect to the Docker daemon”.

Download the demo stack and pull its images. This is the big download (about 600 MB of images):


mkdir tares-demo && cd tares-demo
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/glassflow/tares/main/demo/docker-compose.yml
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/glassflow/tares/main/demo/inject.sh
chmod +x inject.sh
docker compose pull

You should see api-server Pulled, prometheus Pulled and traffic-generator Pulled. Keep the tares-demo folder. You use it on the night.

Local only: an Anthropic API key from console.anthropic.com . Keep it to yourself; you paste it into your own Tares on the night. The cloud version needs no key.

If something is off

tares: command not found after installing: open a new terminal. If it is still missing, run uv tool update-shell and open a new terminal.
tares --version shows an older version: run uv tool upgrade tares.
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon: start Docker Desktop and wait until it says it is running.
gh auth status says you are not logged in: run gh auth login and follow the prompts.

Still stuck? Pick the cloud version on the night: it needs no Docker and no API key.