Project layout

This page lets you find any file in a TRACE-OS project and know whether your coauthors can see it.

• my-research/in GitYour project
• AGENTS.mdin GitThe shared instructions every agent reads
• paper/in GitThe manuscript
• presentations/in GitSlides
• sources/in GitEvidence, judgments and intake records
• ai/records/in GitA trace record per session, and every decision
• workspace/sandbox/in GitDrafts, before their promotion into the paper
• workspace/record-staging/your machine onlyDraft records, before you finalize them
• .skills/in GitThe skills: standing instructions agents follow
• .trace-os/in GitInstallation state; its receipts and backups stay local
• credentials, raw transcripts, bulk datanever committedKept outside the project

Path	What it holds	In Git
paper/	The manuscript (academic profile only). Changes are drafted in workspace/sandbox/ unless you ask to edit paper/.	Tracked
presentations/	Slides (academic profile only).	Tracked
sources/	Durable evidence and judgments, plus intake.jsonl and transitions.jsonl.	Tracked
ai/	Workflow records: trace records in ai/records/, acceptance decisions in ai/records/acceptances.jsonl, review reports in ai/reviews/, the defect ledger ai/defects.jsonl, ai/project.json, ai/SKILLS-IN-USE.md, ai/workflow-log.md.	Tracked
workspace/sandbox/	Drafts and experiments, until you ask for their promotion into paper/.	Tracked
workspace/record-staging/	Private staging where a session’s record is drafted and redacted before it is promoted.	Ignored
.skills/	The canonical skills. Setup copies them to .claude/skills, .agents/skills or .cline/skills for your agent.	Tracked
.trace-os/	The installation state: install.json, the update history, and the lock, originals and receipts of skills taken from another repository. Its receipts/, backups/ and update-backups/ are local.	Tracked, except the local folders
AGENTS.md	The shared instructions every agent reads. CLAUDE.md only imports it.	Tracked
Credentials, raw private transcripts, bulk inputs	Kept outside Git. Bulk inputs go to an approved shared location or a local snapshot selected through TRACE_OS_SHARED_ROOT. From 0.1.0-rc21, the shared location is the shared folder, linked at workspace/shared/; from 0.1.0-rc22, outside material waits in its incoming/ until someone decides on it.	Never

An ignored file is not access-controlled, so keep the working copy outside actively synchronized cloud folders. The core profile omits paper/ and presentations/ in a new project.