Teams and remote work

You need a Cairn account and a team only when people or devices need to share Cairn project state. A personal project works without either. Team sync is also separate from Git hosting: it shares Cairn records, while a Git remote publishes repository branches and supports pull requests.

Connect the desktop to an account

In the desktop, open Settings > Workspace > Teams.
Choose Sign in to cairn.computer. Complete sign-in in the browser and allow it to return to Cairn.
Return to Teams. The page lists the teams this account belongs to and the current availability of each team's shared workspace.

The desktop connects one Cairn account at a time. If your sign-in expires, the team remains listed but synchronization pauses. Sign in again to resume it.

To create a team, sign in on the Cairn website and choose Create Organization. Team creation is not available in the desktop. To join an existing team, accept its invitation from the email link or from the pending invitations shown in your web account, then reconnect or reopen the desktop if the membership does not appear immediately.

Know which workspace owns what

Personal workspace is configuration for your installation. Personal projects use the private local database and are not shared through team sync.
Team workspace is the team's shared configuration home for recipes, agents, skills, actions, routes, and responses. It appears in the Settings scope selector after the team is connected and its sync service is active.
Team-connected project is a project whose Cairn records belong to a team. Its issues, comments, execution state, transcripts, and project configuration are replicated to that team's members. The selected execution host needs the repository material; members using the web/mobile view do not each need a clone.

The team workspace and team-connected projects may have Git remotes, but those remotes are not the sync service. Attaching a remote makes repository content publishable through Git; it does not enable team database sync.

Invite and manage members

Member management is on the website, not in the desktop:

Open the organization and select Members.
An owner or admin can invite an email address as a member or admin.
Owners and admins can change a non-owner's role, cancel a pending invitation, or remove a non-owner member. Removal ends team access immediately.

Invitation and seat limits depend on the team's current plan. The page reports a plan or seat error when another invitation is not available.

Enable sync for a team

Creating a team does not enable remote sync automatically.

On the website, open the organization and select Sync.
If the team needs a subscription, open Billing and complete that first.
As an owner or admin, choose Enable remote sync.
Keep the page open while it reports setup. It updates automatically when the service becomes active.

Only an owner or admin can enable sync. A deployment where hosted sync is not configured reports that it is unavailable instead of offering a local fallback. If setup remains in progress for longer than expected, an owner or admin can use Retry. There is currently no self-service control to disable a team's hosted sync or repair its stored data.

In the desktop, Settings > Workspace > Teams distinguishes an active team from one that is still being prepared, is not configured, or needs you to sign in again. A team workspace becomes selectable only when its replica can be opened on this machine.

Share a project

For a new project:

Choose Add Project in the desktop and select the local repository.
In Team, choose an active team instead of Personal (local).
Create the project. Cairn opens the team's replica before writing the project; it does not silently create a personal project if that connection fails.

For an existing personal project, open its Settings > Project scope and use the project scope control to move it to an active team. Stop active work first: the move is unavailable while jobs or other live project processes could write to the old scope. Moving a project changes where its Cairn records live; it does not create or attach a Git remote.

Team writes commit to the local replica first and synchronize in the background. Another member may temporarily see older state while a runner is offline or a sync retry is pending.

Use the web and mobile view

After signing in on the website, open a team's mobile project view to browse its synced projects and issues. The current view can read project and issue state, comments, active execution status, and current run events. It can queue supported comments, prompts, permission responses, and messages for the runner that owns the work.

This is not a complete browser version of the desktop. The view reads the hosted team replica, which may be stale while the owning runner is offline. A queued action waits for that runner and is not executed by the website. Some archived transcript data is available only in the desktop, and project creation, repository setup, full settings, and local execution still require a desktop or runner host.

Run on another or headless machine

An enrolled executor can run work without that machine displaying the desktop window. Choose the machine in the execution composer or through an automation surface that supports executor selection. The selected host must be online, enrolled, and able to access the required toolchains and repository material.

Headless operation today means a Cairn runner on a machine you or your team controls. It is not a general hosted agent service. The selected runner receives the checkout and object material needed for the run and may receive the selected provider credential in the agent process environment. Model prompts and supplied context then leave from that runner to the configured provider. See Privacy and data boundaries before enrolling a machine you do not fully trust.

Work without GitHub

Cairn can create issues, run agents, commit branches, show diffs, and keep local history without a GitHub account. You can also attach an existing Git remote and use the credentials already configured for Git on the runner.

Without the GitHub App, Cairn does not provide its GitHub pull-request, webhook, review, or in-app merge workflow. It also does not offer a general replacement publish-and-merge workflow for other Git hosts. Publish or merge with your normal Git tools, or connect the GitHub App for the workflow described in GitHub. Do not treat a completed Cairn branch as merged until you have landed it through one of those external workflows.

Disconnect or recover

To disconnect this installation, open Settings > Workspace > Teams and choose Sign out. Local account authorization is removed and team sync pauses. Signing in again resumes synchronization for replicas this machine can open.
If authentication expired, sign in again.
If team provisioning is stuck, an owner or admin can choose Retry on the website's Sync page.
If a team workspace says it is waiting to download or was not prepared on this machine, reopen Cairn; the desktop may explicitly ask for an app restart.

There is no visible disconnect-one-team, disable-sync, or self-service data-repair workflow today. Removing a member ends that person's hosted access, but it should not be described as deleting copies already present on their machines.