A company of several repositories

Most companies live in one repository. When part of the company needs a repository of its own (a studio, a product, a team with its own reviewers), it can join the company as a division: the company stays one company, and the division keeps its own history.

The root and its divisions

One repository is the root. It holds the company's steering documents: its mission, its values, its policy. Every other repository joins it as a division, declared in the root's structure.yml by a name:

divisions:
  - name: studio
    path: ../studio

Here path: says where the studio's checkout sits beside Northwind's. A division can instead be declared by the address its repository is cloned from, so that every machine finds its own copy.

A division is an ordinary repository with Structure in it. It has its own structure.yml, its own AGENTS.md, its own gate and its own approvals, and joining the company changes none of them.

What you see

Open the root and you open the whole company. In the IDE the Company section shows each division after the root's folders, with the counts of its own check, and a division's documents sit beneath it in their own folders, never mixed into the root's.

You see the divisions your keys can clone. A division you cannot reach says not on this machine, and nothing else changes: the rest of the company opens as it always does.

Addresses and links

A document in a division is addressed <division>:<path>. In Northwind, studio:docs/brief.md is the studio's brief and docs/brief.md would be a document of the root. One document has one address.

A relative link is followed inside the repository it was written in. From studio:docs/brief.md, a link to ../README.md opens the studio's README.md, never Northwind's. A link never crosses from one repository into another.

Changes and approvals

A division's document opens in place, and the division's own rules govern it. Its gate says who approves, and its instructions are the ones its agents follow. The top bar names the repository the open document belongs to: Northwind › studio › Brief.

A change to a division's steering document is an approval request in that division, approved under that division's own rules. Its working material is saved there as it would be in any company. The review loop is the same in every repository.

A division opened alone

A division can be opened on its own, like any company. Its structure.yml may say which company it belongs to:

company: northwind

That line is a claim, never a permission. When the company lists the division too, the division can point back at it; the line grants nothing. A repository that declares divisions of its own keeps no such line.

structure check checks the repository it runs in, so run it in a division to check that division. Opened in the IDE, the root shows every repository's counts side by side.