Signing in

Open the address the installer printed, http://localhost:43560 for the first Ship, and sign in with your passkey. There is no password. Use localhost, not 127.0.0.1: a passkey is tied to the address. The Bridge is published on 127.0.0.1 of your machine only; to reach it from another device, see Reaching the Bridge from another device.

Several Ships on one machine each have their own Bridge, on their own port, and you can be signed in to all of them at once. A passkey carries its Ship's name, so pick the one of the Ship you are opening.

The top bar

• The order telegraph shows the Ship's state on every page. All stop is one press. Getting Underway again asks first.
• The pages: Overview, Crew, Approvals, Hosts, Safe, Extensions, Ship's log and Settings, and Database while the developer features are on. A count beside Approvals, Hosts or Safe says how many things wait for you there.
• The theme switch changes between light and dark; the browser remembers your choice.

Overview

The Ship's state as a headline, Underway or Halted, and beside it Claude's state (Claude: paused until … during a Claude pause, with Resume now) and Slack's.

• Fit out the Ship lists what is left to do on a new Ship, in order: the Claude token, Slack, the First Mate. It goes once the Ship is fitted out.
• Today's watch draws the Ship's day: a lane a crew member, a bar a turn, and a line for the time now. Right of the line, dashed marks show what the Helm will do later today at a known time: a night watch, a task of a crew member's TASKS.md, a message it scheduled. A dashed mark is a plan, not a result, and none is drawn while the Ship is halted.
• The crew at a glance, the latest entries of the ship's log, and a line of what the Ship holds: the database, the ship's log, its archive and the Ship's repository.
• Until you save a time zone, a notice says the Ship uses UTC.

Crew

The crew members signed on, each with its signal flag, its function and its state: on watch, off watch or busy. Press a name, then Hail, to talk to it from here.

Sign on

Name, Role, Function, Personality, Skills, Model, Strongest model and SOUL.md, and the extensions it starts with. Role offers the Ship's library of 24 roles; while the Ship has no First Mate, the form offers "This is the First Mate" (see The crew and Slack).

Edit

Opens a crew member's SOUL.md or crew.yaml. Save writes the file shown, and the crew member reads it on its next turn. If the file changed since you opened it, nothing is written and the panel says so.

Limits

Memory (256 to 65 536 MiB), CPUs (0.25 to 32), processes (64 to 8 192) and the size of the home folder (64 to 8 192 MiB) of one crew member's containers. The defaults are 1 GiB, 1 CPU, 256 processes and 512 MiB. A change applies from its next turn and is in the ship's log.

Slack app

The crew member's own app: Create Slack app, the install link and its app-level token, and whether Slack asks for it to be installed again.

Software

The packages a crew member was given, with Add software and Drop. Off in this version: the panel says "Software is not available on this Ship." (see Software).

Hail

A conversation with one crew member from the Bridge: each message runs one turn. New conversation starts a fresh Claude session and keeps the history and the cabin. Reset crew member also empties its session folder, after asking. Night watch now runs its night watch at once, after asking.

Sign off

Asks for a reason, then stops its turn, archives its folders under _signed-off/, takes it off CREW.md and removes its Slack app. Nothing is deleted.

Approvals

Waiting for you lists every decision that is yours, the same ones as the cards in #bridge; answer in either place. Answered keeps what was decided, by whom and where.

• A sign-on or a change the First Mate proposed can be edited before you approve it. The Helm carries out what you approved and tells the First Mate what you changed.
• For a request for a secret you can change the hours before you approve it.
• A request for an extension or for software has Approve and Refuse and block, which asks first: what is blocked cannot be asked for again until you lift the block.
• Nothing can be answered while the Ship is halted.

Hosts

The paste and file-drop sites a crew member asked for and that wait for review, with who asked; the decisions made, by you or by the First Mate, which you can change; Block a host for any host and its subdomains; and the recent destinations of the crew's web traffic since the Helm started. The ship's log has every destination.

Safe

The secrets, what each one opens and who may use it until when: requests that wait, Add a secret, Grant directly, the grants that hold and their history. The page never shows a value. See The safe.

Extensions

The Ship's list of skills, plugins and MCP servers with what each brings and its decision, the blocks, each crew member's set, Add an extension and the crew's requests. See Extensions and software.

Ship's log

The Helm's append-only record of every action on the Ship: who, what and when, and every host a crew member reached. It never holds a secret, a prompt, a reply or the text of a Slack message. Search it for a word. It keeps the crew's web requests for 90 days and everything else for 730, then archives them (see Settings).

Settings

A change applies at once and nothing restarts. Each one is in the ship's log with the old and the new value. Nothing on the page is secret.

Ship's name

1 to 40 characters, shown in the top bar, the browser tab and stuurman list.

Time zone

The Ship's zone, such as Europe/Amsterdam, for tasks, the night watch and the monthly logbook archive. UTC until you save one.

Night-watch time

When each crew member that worked folds its day into memory (default 03:30).

Minimum free disk space

Below this many MiB free, no turn starts (default 1024; 0 turns the check off).

Crew-to-crew turn cap

How many crew-to-crew turns in a row one thread, or the top level of a channel, may have before the Helm stops waking crew there, from 2 to 20 (default 12). A person's message lets them go on.

Wakes an hour by crew members and apps

How often crew members and other apps together may wake one crew member in an hour, from 1 to 600 (default 90). A person's message always wakes.

Wait for more messages

The shortest and longest wait, in seconds, before a crew member answers you, so a thought written as several messages gets one answer (default 2 and 20; both 0 turn it off).

Archiving channels

"Let crew members archive channels without asking me", off by default: a crew member asks you first.

Largest software the First Mate may allow alone

In MiB, from 0 to 1048576 (default 2048; 0 sends every package to you).

Ship's log

How long to keep the crew's request entries (default 90 days) and every other entry (default 730 days); 0 keeps them for ever. Older entries are written to data/helm/log-archive/ and taken out of the database once a Ship day.

Slack

The three parts of Connect Slack once the Ship is fitted out: the configuration token, the Helm's app and the Ship's Slack settings. When Slack no longer accepts the configuration token, this is where you enter a new pair.

Ship's repository

The SSH address of an empty private GitHub repository, its deploy key, Push now and the last push (see Where the work is kept).

Developer features

A switch, off by default, that adds a Database page (below).

If a stored setting ever keeps the Helm from starting, settings reset puts them back to the defaults (see By hand, in the Ship's folder).

Developer features and the Database page

For extreme situations only. Turned on, after your passkey is asked for again, the Database page lets you look at the Ship's own database and change a row, and the Helm does not check what you change. A thin amber line says so on every page. It turns itself off after 4 hours and at every start of the Helm. The ship's log is not there, the safe's tables are read-only, and a secret's value is never shown.