Organising a space

A space starts with a single tab — Messages — and grows over time as you add canvases. After a few weeks of use it is normal to have a dozen or more canvases attached to a busy space. This guide is about keeping that tab bar useful when it gets long.

Decide what goes in messages vs a canvas#

The default choice for any new piece of content is the channel — that is where most thinking happens. Promote something to a canvas when:

• It needs to be edited over time (a runbook, a spec, a checklist).
• It needs to be scanned rather than read top-to-bottom (a list of customers, a backlog of bugs).
• Multiple people need to collaborate on the same artefact at once rather than reply to each other.

If a piece of content does not fit any of those, leave it in messages. Pinned messages and threads handle most "I want to find this later" needs without paying the cost of a new tab.

Use folder canvases to group related tabs#

A folder is a special kind of canvas that holds other canvases. It appears in the tab bar with a folder icon; clicking it opens a popover listing its contents instead of switching tabs. Folders are how a space stays scannable once it has more than five or six canvases.

Creating a folder#

Use the + button at the end of the tab bar and pick New folder. A folder only needs a name — it has no content of its own. Once it exists you can drag any canvas tab onto the folder tab to move that canvas inside it. The dragged canvas disappears from the top-level tab bar and shows up inside the folder's popover.

Working with a folder#

• The popover lists up to ten of the folder's most recently updated canvases. Click any one to open it.
• If a folder has more than ten canvases the popover ends with a Show more… entry. That opens a search modal scoped to the folder's contents — type any text and it will return matches across the canvases (titles, document content, and database rows) inside this folder only.
• Right-click a folder tab to rename or archive it the same way you do any other canvas tab. Archiving a folder removes only the folder itself; the canvases inside go back to the top-level tab bar.

When to add a folder#

A few patterns that work well:

• Reference / archive folder. Move runbooks, post-mortems, and one-off references into a "Reference" folder once the live conversation has moved on. They stay one click away without crowding the tab bar.
• Per-project folder. If a single space hosts several parallel projects, give each project its own folder so the project's docs and trackers travel together.
• Status / dashboards folder. Group the read-only canvases that people glance at — KPI databases, on-call rosters, deploy calendars — so the writeable workspaces stay first.

A folder with only one or two canvases is usually a sign of premature organisation. Wait until you have four or five before introducing one.

Keep the order intentional#

Tabs are read left-to-right. Put the canvases people interact with most on the left and reference / archive material on the right (or inside a folder). Documents that everyone edits daily belong as their own tab; material people only consult occasionally belongs in a folder.

Choose the right canvas type#

When you add a new canvas you pick its type once — document, database, or folder — and that decision sticks. Some rules of thumb:

• Use a document when the content has a narrative or hierarchy (decisions, specs, meeting notes, runbooks, onboarding guides).
• Use a database when each item has the same shape and you want to filter, group, or pivot the set (projects, tickets, customers, content pipelines).
• Use a folder when you want to group existing canvases under a single tab.

A document with a long bullet list of similar items is usually a database in disguise. A database with one big "notes" column is usually a document in disguise.

Related reading#

• Spaces → Overview for what a space contains and how membership works.
• Canvas → Overview for the difference between document and database canvases.
• Spaces → Organising across spaces for naming, cross-posting, and sharing canvases between spaces.