What happens when a member launches

When you run crew <member>, crew run or pick a member in the menu, crewrota repairs the member’s links, copies in your main setup and its ship’s MCP servers, then starts claude with CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR set to the member’s folder. Claude Code runs in the folder you ran crew from, with the member’s saved model and effort. crewrota adds nothing to Claude Code’s own behaviour beyond the arguments below.

The steps

1. Pick the member. The name you gave, else $CREW_MEMBER, else the current member. With none: No crew member chosen. Pick one with: crew use <member>.
2. Pick the model and effort. The member’s saved ones, else the last ones you used, else Claude’s default. In the menu, what you set on the settings line.
3. Check the permissions answer. If it has never been answered, crew asks once (in a terminal) or stops (without one). See Choose whether Claude asks for permission.
4. Check the member folder. If it is missing: The folder of crew member <m> is missing: <folder>. Log it in again with: crew login <m>.
5. Repair the ship links. For a member on a ship, each of the five history folders is linked to the ship again if the link is missing or wrong.
6. Bring in your main setup. Link skills, agents, commands and the plugin folders to ~/.claude; copy the plugin lists, settings.json and CLAUDE.md. See Use your main setup in every member.
7. Copy the MCP servers. The ship’s mcp.json (or, for an isolated member, the servers in ~/.claude.json) replaces the mcpServers in the member’s .claude.json. See Give a ship’s members the same MCP servers.
8. Add the status line if the member’s settings.json has none.
9. Start Claude Code.

Anything crewrota wants you to know from steps 5 to 7 prints as an [i] line before Claude starts, for example [i] Copied this member's history into the ship. .... If a step fails, nothing is launched and the message says what to move or fix.

The command crewrota runs

claude [--model <model>] [--effort <effort>] [--dangerously-skip-permissions] [<everything after -->]

• --model and --effort only when they are not Claude’s default.
• --dangerously-skip-permissions only when you answered yes.
• Your own arguments come last, exactly as given after --.

For example, with permissions on and Claude’s default model and effort, crew main -- --resume abc starts:

{"args":["--dangerously-skip-permissions","--resume","abc"],"dir":"E:\\demo-crew-inventory\\crew-home\\members\\main"}

That line is the demo stand-in for Claude Code logging the arguments it got and its CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR.

Claude Code’s flags must come after --. crew main --resume abc stops with crewrota: Unknown option: --resume, because everything before -- is crewrota’s.

The environment

• CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is the member’s folder. This is what makes Claude Code use that member’s login, history and settings.
• LAVISH_AXI_TELEMETRY=0 is added when you answered no to lavish-axi’s telemetry in crew setup.
• Everything else comes from your shell as it is.

The working folder is the one you ran crew from, so Claude Code opens that project.

While Claude runs

• Ctrl+C goes to Claude Code, not to crewrota.
• When Claude Code exits, crew exits with Claude Code’s exit code, so a script can check it.
• The model, effort and permissions answer are saved once Claude Code has started, so the next launch reuses them.

Related

• The crew menu and crew run, in full
• Members, ships and your main setup
• Environment variables