Setting Up the CTO

Walk through the CTO onboarding wizard, configure worker heartbeat schedules, and verify the CTO team is active.

Setting Up the CTO

1. Open the CTO tab

   Click the CTO tab in ADE’s left icon rail. On first launch, the onboarding wizard starts automatically.

2. Complete the onboarding wizard

   The wizard walks through three steps:

   1. Identity creation — give the CTO a name and an initial persona prompt. This shapes how it communicates and what it prioritizes.
   2. Project scanning — the CTO reads your repository structure, existing PRD/architecture docs, recent git history, and .ade/ state to build its initial Project Pack. This takes 30–90 seconds on a typical project.
   3. Integration handoff — optionally connect Linear (OAuth or manual token) and review the CTO team setup.
3. Configure worker heartbeats

   In CTO > Team, edit a worker and enable Timer-based heartbeat. The interval is stored per worker in seconds; the UI defaults to 300.

4. Verify the CTO is active

   The CTO surfaces worker state from the Team and Chat views. If a worker cannot run, check that at least one AI provider is configured in Settings > AI Providers.

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Worker Heartbeat Configuration

Worker heartbeats are per-agent runtime settings. When enabled, ADE wakes that worker on a timer and runs the worker heartbeat service for that agent.

What happens on each heartbeat

ADE creates a worker wakeup request with reason timer, reconstructs the worker’s recent context, and asks the worker to respond with HEARTBEAT_OK when no action is required. Wakeups with explicit prompts, events, changes, or task context are escalated into worker work; quiet timer wakeups can complete without action.

Heartbeat schedule options

Configure heartbeats in CTO > Team on each worker:

Setting	Meaning
Timer-based heartbeat	Enables scheduled wakeups for that worker
Interval (seconds)	Number of seconds between wakeups; the UI default is 300
Wake on demand	Allows ADE to wake the worker immediately for matching work
Active hours	Restricts wakeups to a start/end window and timezone

This state is stored on the worker identity as runtimeConfig.heartbeat. ADE does not parse a project-level .ade/ade.yaml cto.heartbeat block.

Identity Restoration After Compaction

When a CTO chat session hits the compaction threshold, ADE automatically re-injects the CTO’s identity context after compaction completes. This means the CTO’s persona and current operating instructions survive compaction — the CTO keeps its role mid-conversation, even during very long sessions.

This also applies to worker agents that have an identity key assigned.

Manual activation

You can trigger CTO work immediately from the UI:

• Select a worker in CTO > Team and click Wake to create a manual worker wakeup
• Type a message in the CTO Chat to activate the CTO in conversational mode
• Via Automations using a real action such as agent-session for worker sessions or ade-action for a registered ADE action