# Mastering the Guild

> What a Guild membership adds, grouped by what you would use it for, with a link to the page that teaches each one.

Your free tier is the whole terminal. Gems, shards, isolated worktrees, split view, history, the workbench, MCP servers, SSH, and the phone app on your home Wi-Fi. All of it, unlimited, forever.

Guild adds one thing, in several shapes. **Agents that run other agents, and work that happens while you are not watching.** Every command that needs Guild does one of three things. It starts a shard, it types into one, or it answers something for you. Once you see that, the list below stops looking like a grab bag.

None of it makes a single agent better at its job, though. If you work one agent at a time and you like it that way, you can stay on free and lose nothing.

This page is the tour. Nothing here repeats a feature page. Each line says what you can now do, then sends you to the page that teaches it.

## start here

Joined this week? Read these three, in order. That covers most of what you paid for.

1. [Orchestration: which way to run more than one agent](/docs/orchestration-guide/). Five ways to run a team, and which one fits the job. Read it first, so you don't start a quest when a fan-out would have done.
2. [Fanout](/docs/fanout/). One agent leads, the others work. This is the one you'll use most.
3. [CLI & Scriptability API](/docs/cli/). Every command your agent can now call, and what each one does to your window.

## agents that run agents

Say four test files are failing. You tell your lead agent to fix them. It opens four shards, gives each one a file and its own git worktree, waits for all four to finish, then merges the branches back. You watched. You didn't type.

That whole loop is Guild. On the free tier your agent can read every one of those shards but cannot open one.

- [Fanout](/docs/fanout/). The lead-and-workers pattern, start to finish. `crystl shard create` for each task, `crystl wait done` to collect them.
- [Anoint a shard](/docs/cli/). `crystl anoint` gives a shard the orchestrator role, so it coordinates the others instead of writing code itself.
- [Isolated sessions](/docs/isolated-sessions/). Each worker in its own git worktree and branch, then `crystl merge` once you've read the diff. This is what keeps two agents in one repo from fighting over the same file.
- [Vigil](/docs/vigil/). When a whole roster goes quiet, it has usually stalled. A watch runs over every fan-out, nudges the lead, and sends you a card when the nudge doesn't work.
- [The gauntlet](/docs/cli/). `crystl gauntlet` opens a release-readiness crew: two Seekers, a Monk, and a Scribe. Worth it before a release, overkill for a bugfix.

## a party with personas

Same idea, more structure. Named agents with their own system prompts, talking in one shared chat.

A quest is slower and chattier than a fan-out, though, and it costs more tokens. Pick one when the work needs the agents to disagree with each other. For four files that need fixing, use a fan-out.

- [crystl quest](/docs/crystl-quest/). The whole system: a party of agents in one conversation.
- [Starting a quest](/docs/starting-a-quest/) and [quest heroes](/docs/quest-heroes/). How one begins, and who you can put in it.
- [Hero shards](/docs/hero-shards/). One specialist on its own, no party needed. The cheapest way to try the idea.
- [Parties](/docs/cli/). `crystl party create` saves a roster you can summon again. Free accounts get the one built-in party; Guild lets you build your own.
- [Court](/docs/court/). A crown and a hand that stay seated between tasks, for work that runs longer than a single quest.
- [Side quest](/docs/side-quest/). A private channel between two shards, so two agents can settle something without filling the main chat.

## work that runs without you

- [Scheduling](/docs/schedule-agents/). Everyone gets 3 schedules free. Guild removes the cap. Three is plenty until the day you want an overnight triage, a morning inbox pass, and a weekly audit all at once.
- [Sequences](/docs/sequences/). Multi-stage pipelines, triggered by hand, by a schedule, by a file changing, or by a poll. Writing one and validating it is free, because the definition is a file in your own repo. Running it needs Guild.
- [Formations](/docs/formations/). Save the arrangement of gems and shards you work in, then put it back with one command. Useful once you keep rebuilding the same four-gem layout. Not much use if you live in one project.

## away from the keyboard

- [Mobile app](/docs/mobile-app/). Free on your home Wi-Fi. Guild sends it through an encrypted relay, so you can watch, steer, and approve over cellular or any other network. Your Mac still has to be awake with crystl running; the relay connects you to it, it does not replace it.
- [Approvals and questions](/docs/approval-modes/). `crystl approve`, `crystl deny`, and `crystl askuser answer` let one agent clear another one's block. That is what lets an unattended fan-out finish, instead of parking on a prompt at 2am.

## the library

- [Plugins & skills](/docs/plugins-and-skills/). Writing and using your own skills is free. Browsing the Skills Library catalog and importing from it needs Guild.
- [The Book of Spells](/book-of-spells/). Prompts that teach your agent to drive crystl.
- [Starter files](/docs/starter-files/). `crystl bundle install` writes a project's starter set for you. `crystl bundle list` is free, so you can see what is in a bundle first.

## small things you'll use daily

- [Facet inserts](/docs/facet-inserts/). One-click insert buttons in your terminal. You can add them yourself in settings on any tier. What Guild adds is your agent offering you one without being asked.
- [Settings and storage](/docs/settings/). `crystl settings set`, `crystl history clear`, and `crystl history compact` from the CLI, instead of clicking through the panel.

## what stays free

Every read is free on every tier. Listing gems and shards, reading a shard's screen, history and history search, `crystl pending`, `crystl events`, `crystl wait`, `crystl search`, `crystl keys scan`, and `crystl optimize`. So is anything that only shows you something you already own: `crystl copy`, `crystl card`, `crystl markdown show`, `crystl report`, and `crystl screenshots`.

The [workbench](/docs/task-backlog/) needs spelling out, because the command table lists Guild beside most of its verbs. `WORKBENCH.md` is a plain markdown file in your repo. An agent on any tier adds tasks, ticks them off, and comments on them by writing that file, and you see each change in the panel straight away. The `crystl workbench` write verbs are Guild, and what they add is race safety. `check` reports the state the server recorded, and exits non-zero when another agent got there first. That only matters in a fan-out, which needs Guild for the shards anyway.

Gems, shards, and facet inserts are unlimited on every tier. [CLI command tiers](/docs/cli-tiers/) is the full 149-command list, built from the same catalog the app enforces, so it cannot drift from what your copy allows.

## the licence itself

- One licence covers up to **3 Macs**.
- Each renewal emails you a new key. Paste it into **Settings > License** on each of your Macs. This one catches people out. [Licensing](/docs/licensing/) has the rest, including what happens when you switch between yearly and monthly.
- A shard carries its tier in `CRYSTL_TIER`, so your agent can plan around it instead of calling a command to find out.
- If a licence lapses, nothing is deleted. Your gems, shards, settings, and history all keep working, and the Guild commands come back the moment you paste a new key.

Not a member yet? [Join the Guild](/crystl-guild/).

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Source: https://crystl.dev/docs/mastering-the-guild/