Coworkers

When several of you work on the same repos, each in your own offtrack project, you can hand tasks to each other and see how the shared work is going. Nobody can touch the other side's threads or items. This page walks through one team: Neo the developer, Trinity the business analyst (BA) and Morpheus the project manager (PM). General use is in the user guide.

Concepts

• Nickname: a short name you choose. It is all your coworkers see of you: never your email address or your name.
• Coworker: a user with a nickname who works on the same repo as you, or one you already cowork with.
• Cowork: an agreement between one of your projects and one of your coworker's, at task or project level. It belongs to the two of you: the other members of your projects don't see your coworker's side. You can cowork with the same person in several project pairs, at a different level per pair.
• Shared task: an item you handed to a coworker or got from one, or an item of yours you shared with them, together with the items linked to it.
• Repo label: the repo name shown on an item, such as “api · web”: the repos the item concerns.

Nickname

Set your nickname on the Your account page or with offtrack nick neo. It is 2–24 characters, unique on the server, and case doesn't matter. With a nickname you agree that people working on the same repo can find you: you show up in the output of offtrack coworkers. It has no other use. Without a nickname nobody finds you.

offtrack nick "" clears it. You then drop out of the lookup. Your existing coworks stay, and your pending requests can still be accepted: the recipient sees the nickname you had when you sent them. Nobody else can take a cleared nickname, so your old coworkers never mix up two people.

Only someone who works on a repo can ask who else works on it: the client asks with the repo's fingerprint, and the server only answers for a fingerprint the asker knows too. The answer lists nicknames only, and whether you already cowork.

Task level: shared tasks

Trinity has specified the new billing endpoint in her own project. In her session she asks: “hand this to Neo for development”. Claude hands it off with the to: "Neo" field of offtrack_report. The item lands on the main thread of Neo's project, Trinity's item closes, and a task-level cowork starts between them.

• Who you can hand to: someone who works on one of the task's repos, or someone your project already coworks with. An item without a repo label goes only to an existing coworker.
• Which of their projects: the one already coworking with your project; otherwise the one whose roots include the task's repo. The recipient can move it between their projects, and the cowork follows: Trinity still sees it, even on an archived thread, along with the items linked to it before the move.
• Progress: while Neo's session keeps the task in progress, its further reports (milestones, new open branches) link to the task. Trinity sees them in Neo's band, on the thread where Neo reported them. For new open branches and manual to-dos she also gets a note on her source thread; only Trinity gets it, not the other members of her project. Work by other members of Neo's project never links to the task, even if they set it in progress. Claude can also link explicitly with the parent_item_id field.
• Where it came from: next to the item Neo sees “← Trinity: #12”: Trinity's nickname and the source item's id, without the project name.
• Closing: when Neo finishes or drops it, Trinity's source thread gets a note, just like a hand-off between projects.

Neo gets stuck: he doesn't know how to round the invoice amounts. He asks: “hand this back to Trinity as a question: how do we round?”. That is a new shared task, this time with Trinity.

At task level you both see only the shared tasks, none of the other's work. To show an item of yours without handing it off: offtrack share-item <item-id> <nickname>. The item stays yours; your coworker can only see it.

Project level: the whole picture

Morpheus wants to see who works on what. He asks both of them for a project-level cowork: “ask Neo for a project-level cowork on my billing project” (offtrack cowork Neo project --project billing). This needs no common repo and no earlier cowork.

Neo accepts on the Your account page or with offtrack cowork accept Morpheus. If the server suggests no project, he picks his own when accepting (--project). Neo also gets an email with the commands to accept or decline (he can turn it off on Your account). A pending request shows as one line on the Your account page and in the session's [offtrack] block at startup; a session that's already running doesn't show it.

At project level each side sees every thread and item of the other's project, except private ideas. It works both ways: Neo sees Morpheus's project too. The work of the project's other members stays hidden.

What you see, and where

• At task level: the shared tasks and the items linked to them.
• At project level, also: every other thread and item of your coworker's project.
• Never: your coworker's private ideas, email address or name.

• Map: in your project's column your own threads come first, then a dashed divider, then one faintly hatched band per coworker, with a pale blue line and Neo's badge: his profile picture if he has one, his initials otherwise. When there's a coworker band, your own nickname badge sits above your threads.
• List: per project, your own cards first, then one section per coworker. A coworker's card has a pale blue stripe on the left and their nickname.
• Filter: the “Only mine / Everyone” switch in the toolbar hides or shows your coworkers' work, on the map and the list alike. The “Inactive” switch also shows coworkers with no open session in the shared project: after the others, with an empty band if they have no visible work.
• Command line: offtrack list prints a coworker's threads in a separate block, with their nickname.

Your coworker's threads and items are read-only: you can't close, reopen or rename them, or add notes. The server enforces this, not just the interface. To give Neo work, open the menu of your own open branch or manual to-do and pick “Hand off to Neo…”: you can edit the text and due date, your item closes, and the new one shows up on his side. On both your maps an arrow links the source thread's link to the handed-off item. When Neo closes the task, it stays in his band within the time window, faded and ticked. Click your coworker's item or milestone to see its full text and time, read-only.

Changing level and ending a cowork

• Up, to project level: with a request the other side has to accept (see above).
• Down, to task level: either side, alone, at once: “Task level only” on the Your account page, or offtrack cowork Neo task.
• Ending: either side, alone: “End cowork” on the Your account page, or offtrack cowork Neo end. Handed-off tasks stay with the recipient, but the source side no longer sees their progress. The source thread still gets a note when they close.
• Several project pairs: if you cowork with the same person in several of your projects, --project <own project> picks the pair.

Repo labels

One session can touch several repos: Neo starts Claude Code in his backend repo but works in the web repo too. So every item records which repo or repos it concerns.

1. Claude sets them when reporting, with the repos field of offtrack_report; for an open branch, also the repos the to-do will touch.
2. If Claude gives none, the client works them out from the files edited since the last report, and failing that, from the session's directory.
3. The label shows in the item's meta line, for example “api · web”. The owner can fix it from the item's menu (Repo labels…).

Per repo the client sends two things: a salted fingerprint of the remote address and the name of the repo's root directory (that is the label). The repo address never leaves your machine. Details are in the install guide.

Ask Claude

Claude touches coworks only when you ask.

Say this	Claude does this
“who else works on this repo?”	offtrack_coworkers: the list of nicknames
“hand this to Neo for development”	offtrack_report with to: "Neo"
“share #412 with Trinity”	offtrack share-item 412 Trinity
“ask Neo for a project-level cowork on my billing project”	offtrack_cowork request
“accept Morpheus's request”	offtrack_cowork accept
“show my coworks”	offtrack_cowork list
“keep it at task level with Morpheus”	offtrack_cowork task
“end the cowork with Trinity”	offtrack_cowork end

The same from the command line: in a terminal, or in Claude Code with the ! prefix.

offtrack nick [<nickname>]	show or set your nickname ("" clears it)
offtrack coworkers [<directory>]	who else works on this repo
offtrack cowork list	your coworks and pending requests
offtrack cowork <nickname> project --project <own project>	request project level
offtrack cowork <nickname> task | end [--project <own project>]	back to task level, or end the cowork
offtrack cowork accept <nickname> [--project <own project>]	accept a request
offtrack cowork decline <nickname>	decline a request
offtrack share-item <item-id> <nickname>	share an item of yours without handing it off