When the Workstation Stops

The workstation is a long-running local process. It can stop for several reasons:

  • You closed the terminal or killed the process
  • Your machine went to sleep or restarted
  • The process crashed due to an error

When the workstation stops, your worktrees are preserved on disk. No work is lost — the Git branches and working files remain in .ticket-house/worktrees/.

Restarting

To revive the workstation, run the same command from your project root:

npx ticket-house

The workstation will:

  1. Detect existing worktrees and reconnect them
  2. Re-register with the remote server
  3. Resume the MCP server for AI agents
  4. Restore any container pool if configured

Checking Status

If you're not sure whether the workstation is running, you can check with:

npx ticket-house status

This reports whether the workstation process is active and what worktrees are currently tracked.

Troubleshooting

If the workstation fails to start after a crash:

  • Check for port conflicts — the workstation uses port 3412 by default. Make sure nothing else is using it.
  • Use the --debug flag — run npx ticket-house --debug to see detailed startup diagnostics. See Startup Diagnostics for more.
  • Check the log file — if a logFile is configured in .ticket-house.json, check it for error details.