Install and first run

Untar bench into .task-manager/, run start.sh, and answer the three questions the first run asks.

mkdir .task-manager && curl -L \
  https://github.com/12vectors/bench/releases/latest/download/bench.tar.gz \
  | tar -xz -C .task-manager
./.task-manager/start.sh        # wires the project (idempotent) and serves

No token, no clone: releases are curated artifacts that never contained bench's own cards or settings, so the board starts empty by construction.

The first run asks the two questions it cannot answer for you — solo or team, and which agent adapter — and writes manager/local/.env from the documented example, so every other setting is discoverable in your own copy. What runs your tests is read off the project rather than asked (package.json → npm test, and so on); nothing recognisable leaves BOARD_AGENT_COMMANDS empty, and that is the key to set before an agent can run them. Bare Enter takes the default throughout; with no terminal (CI, a script) it asks nothing and install.py --setup asks later.

Commit .task-manager/ into the host repo — core is vendored on purpose, so clones work offline and updates show up in the host's own diffs.

The workflow brief ships as .task-manager/AGENTS.md — the cross-vendor name coding agents read natively — with CLAUDE.md beside it as a one-line compatibility pointer. Both live inside .task-manager/, so a host repo's own root AGENTS.md is never touched.