Our office: how Life Itself organises shared work

Read Post-its and filing cabinets first, on Way Into AI. It builds up an old-fashioned office (sheets, folders, cabinets, post-its, rooms, pointers) and maps it to digital tools and AI. This page shows how Life Itself does it.

We use text files and git, so our office is a set of repos in the life-itself organisation on GitHub. The repos are private: you need to be a member of the organisation to open the links.

Office	At Life Itself	Example
Room	an initiative	Podcast & YouTube, Gardens of Change (community)
Cabinet	a repo	podcast, sor-community
Folder	a folder, or a single file, for each project	`sor-community/initiatives/global-connection-call/`
Sheet	a Markdown file	`guest-wishlist.md` in the podcast repo
Central office	the planning repo	planning, also as a website
Pointer	a project record or pointer task in planning	the podcast's autumn series, whose tasks are in Asana
Board	Beads in the repo; some teams use GitHub issues or Asana	the podcast's board is in Asana
Note inside the door	`AGENTS.md` in each repo	planning's AGENTS.md
Recipe books	skills and templates	skills and templates in planning
Drafting table	Google Docs	a launch outline drafted in a Doc

Three cabinets up close

The central office, with a record for every room:

 planning/
 ├── AGENTS.md              note inside the door
 ├── initiatives/           a record for each room
 │   └── podcast-and-youtube.md
 │                          "files in the podcast repo,
 │                           tasks in Asana"
 ├── projects/              records for many projects
 ├── skills/  templates/    recipe books
 └── .beads/                the board, with pointer post-its

The podcast cabinet, with a folder for each episode:

 podcast/
 ├── AGENTS.md
 ├── guest-wishlist.md      a sheet
 └── episodes/
     └── sarah-wilson-2026-09-02/
         └── README.md      a folder per episode

The community cabinet, with a folder for each piece of work:

 sor-community/
 ├── AGENTS.md
 ├── initiatives/
 │   └── global-connection-call/
 │       ├── why.md
 │       ├── call-pattern.md
 │       └── call-1.md ...  a sheet per call
 ├── meetings/              dated notes
 └── .beads/                the board

One project, end to end

The Global Connection Call is a new series of community calls. Its pieces sit in different parts of the office:

In the central office, planning has a record for it saying what it is, who leads it, its status, when it's due and where its papers are.
On the drafting table: the launch outline was drafted in a Google Doc, linked from that record.
In the cabinet: its working papers (why, the pattern for a call, a sheet per call) are in the community repo, under initiatives/global-connection-call/.
On the board: its tasks are on planning's board, in Beads.

To work on it, open a session in the cabinet you need and ask: "What's the status of the Global Connection Call, and what's next?"

Your desk

You clone (copy) the cabinets you work on into one folder on your laptop:

 ~/code/life-itself/
 ├── planning/
 ├── podcast/
 └── sor-community/

Where next

AI is the interface: how to use AI for knowledge work, on Way Into AI: working through the AI.
Beads: the board your AI uses.
Set up your computer (with AI), in the Tao onboarding guide: get the cabinets onto your laptop.