The "Work Locally" Button

When your workstation is running, each ticket in the Ticket House web UI shows a "Work Locally" button. Clicking it tells your local workstation to set up a workspace for that ticket.

What Happens

When you open a workspace, the workstation:

  1. Creates a Git worktree at .ticket-house/worktrees/<worktree-name>/ with a new branch based on the ticket ID
  2. Runs any post-create hooks defined in your .ticket-house.json (e.g., installing dependencies)
  3. Caches the ticket data in a .ticket-cache.json file inside the worktree so agents can access ticket details offline
  4. Updates the ticket status to "In Progress" if it was previously "Open"

Navigating to the Workspace

After the workspace is created, you can navigate to it in your terminal:

cd .ticket-house/worktrees/<worktree-name>

You can also open the directory in your editor. The worktree is a full working copy of your project — you can build, test, and run it normally.

The Ticket Cache

Each worktree contains a .ticket-cache.json file with the ticket's current data (title, description, status, comments, etc.). AI agents read this file to understand what they're working on. The cache is updated when the ticket changes on the server.

Container Workspaces

If your project has a container configuration in .ticket-house.json, the workspace may also provision a container from the idle pool. The container gets the worktree mounted and runs the seed command (e.g., npm install). See Project Configuration for container setup details.