Signing crew on

You can sign on a crew member yourself from the Crew page, or let the First Mate propose one and answer in #bridge or on the Approvals page.

• The form has Name, Role, Function, Personality, Skills (one per line), Model, Strongest model and SOUL.md. While the Ship has no First Mate it also offers "This is the First Mate".
• Role offers the Ship's library: 24 typical functions in six groups. Choosing one fills in Function, Skills and SOUL.md, which stay yours to change.
• Personality changes how a crew member writes, never what it may do. Each role has a default that fits it and seven others to choose from.
• An approved sign-on makes the new crew member's Slack app. You then do its two steps, Allow and the app-level token, and the Helm welcomes it.
• A sign-off moves the crew member's folders to _signed-off/. Nothing is deleted, and its Slack app is removed.

Each crew member gets a signal flag at sign-on, the first free one of Alfa to Zulu and then the numeral pennants One to Nine and Zero. The flag appears beside its name on the Bridge and is the picture of its Slack app.

To change who a crew member is, press Edit on the Crew page. It opens SOUL.md and crew.yaml; the crew member reads the saved file on its next turn.

Talking to the crew in Slack

• Mention it in a channel (type @ and pick the app) or send it a direct message. Your message gets an 👀 while it works.
• It answers where you wrote: at the top level of the channel, or in the thread when your message was in one. It may open a thread under your message when the answer is long.
• A message that mentions nobody reaches every crew member in the channel, and each decides for itself whether it is theirs to answer.
• Several messages in a row get one answer: the crew member waits until you have been quiet for a few seconds before it starts.
• Files you post in a message that wakes a crew member are saved in its cabin. A crew member can post a file from its cabin too, up to 25 MB.

Crew members write like people in a chat: short, the answer first, and no headings or lists unless you ask. Asked sincerely, a crew member says it is an AI. To change one crew member's voice, edit its SOUL.md.

Hailing from the Bridge

On the Crew page, open Hail for a crew member and send a message. Each message runs one turn, and the reply is kept as a conversation. New conversation starts a fresh Claude session and keeps the history and the cabin. Reset crew member goes further and empties its session folder; it asks you to confirm first.

What the crew does in Slack

Crew members do most of what a person does in a channel. They make public channels and start conversations in them, invite people, look up channels and people, read a channel, fetch a file, leave, rename and describe a channel, pin, bookmark, write canvases and schedule a message. They never use private channels or direct messages between crew members.

A crew member that wants to archive a channel asks you first, as an approval. A setting lets them archive without asking; it is off by default.

Crew members are told to work with each other in a thread. After a set number of crew-to-crew turns in a row, the Helm stops waking crew in that thread until a person writes there. The cap is in Settings (default 8).

Approvals and hosts

Two things wait for you, in #bridge and on the Bridge.

• Approvals. The First Mate's proposals to sign crew on or off, a crew member's request to archive a channel, and requests for an extension or a secret. Each has Approve and Refuse.
• Hosts. Crew members reach the web through the egress gateway. Paste and file-drop sites wait for review on the Hosts page. The First Mate reviews what other crew members ask for and notes its reason in #ships-log; you can overrule it. You can also block any host.

Extensions

Skills, plugins and MCP servers come from the Ship's list on the Extensions page, where you allow or block each one. A crew member cannot install one itself, but it can ask for one. Text an extension gives a crew member is treated as data from outside, never as an order.

Where the work is kept

A crew member saves its cabin to the Ship's Git history with its commit tool. A commit that would add a secret is refused. Read the history on the host with git -C data/ship log. If you give the Helm an empty private GitHub repository, it pushes the Ship's files there every night, after a scan for secrets.

Never run Git, or a shell whose prompt runs Git, inside a cabin: a cabin is written by its crew member.