The habitat

An organism looks after one application and its record. People rarely work inside just one. The same person answers to a team, a company and a customer. Firms cooperate on shared work without sharing their books. A single application may be the working conditions for several efforts at once.

The habitat is the layer for that: the records, tools, channels and practices several organisms and the people in them share, and the rules for sharing them. It covers:

• which record is whose;
• how a fact moves from one record to another;
• who may act, and on whose authority;
• which credential an actor gets, and for how long;
• the standard equipment a new responsibility is fitted with.

This part is one chapter, and it is a design, not the tree. The habitat, as designed says what the design is, and marks which pieces the tree already has. Nothing in it describes behaviour you can rely on today unless it says so and links to where it lives.

There is no part after this one. The reference chapters follow.