Documentation
Core concepts
How Databitat is organized
Learn how Places, Accounts, Contacts, and Cards keep information together with the context needed to understand it.
The Place is the center
A Place can be a building, a house, a home, or a physical group of places. It has its own identity and memory: address, profile, related people, documents, notes, chats, and history.
Places can form a hierarchy. Viewing a building can bring together information from the homes it contains, but only information you already have permission to see.
12 High Street
├── Flat 1A
├── Flat 1B
└── Flat 2A
The Account is the team you work with
An Account brings together people who work as a team. It organizes members, working identity, access to places, internal information, invitations, and billing. One person can belong to several accounts.
The Account and the Place are not the same thing. Keeping them separate lets the memory remain with the place even when the team working there changes.
- Account
- Answers who is working, under which identity, and what they can see.
- Place
- Answers what the work is about and where its memory should remain.
Contacts is your team's directory
Contacts brings together people and organizations related to the Account's places: contact details, affiliations, time-bound roles, information they appear in, and internal notes. A role always belongs to a context and a period.
Every Account keeps its own private directory. Linking a contact to a verified identity can keep shared identity details up to date, but it never opens internal notes or information without permission.
Every piece of information has a Card
A Card is the record that accompanies every piece of information. It keeps the shared context of a note, document, chat, dossier, or project.
Content lives in its corresponding element; the Card preserves its context, governance, and traceability. This lets every kind of content share rules without forcing it into the same shape.
- Title
- Roof refurbishment
- Authorship
- Laia Puig · Serra Studio
- Status
- In progress
- Visibility
- Project team
- Dates
- March–June 2026
- Related to
- Owners' association · North Roofing
Where each piece of information lives
Most information lives with the Place because it documents its history: a repair, meeting minutes, a site photograph, or an inspection. Some data, such as a company's professional insurance policy, still belongs to that entity after a project ends.
The useful question is: if the person or company changes, should this information stay with the building? If so, it lives with the Place. If it still belongs to the entity after the relationship ends, it lives with the entity.
Words worth keeping distinct
- Place
- The physical space this memory is about.
- Account
- The team or identity you are currently working with.
- Entity
- The real person or organization represented in the system.
- Contact
- The private relationship your Account keeps with an entity.
- Card
- The context, permissions, and history of a piece of information.
- Element
- The actual content: note, document, chat, dossier, or project.