The install layout a machine should have, seasoned owner or not:
~/officerdev/
platform/ the app
data/ DATA_PATH
dockers/ services the app store provisioned
capabilities/ the file-based item store
One root, everything under it. OFFICER_ROOT derives from DATA_PATH rather than being a second variable
that has to agree with the first.
Deliberately not `~/dockers`, where a seasoned user already keeps their own estate — 47 services on this
machine. That separation buys two things. Containers the app store created are distinguishable from the
user's own structurally, rather than by a naming convention we would have to enforce and they could
break. And we never reason about someone else's compose files: the store does not scan, adopt or modify
anything outside its own directory.
That also simplifies "I already have one of these" — it is answered by the user giving a URL, never by
us finding a directory and guessing whose it is. An earlier draft had the installer adopting existing
directories, which meant reading, and potentially writing over, services Officer did not create.
This development machine predates the convention and derives an ugly-but-correct path, since the project
sits inside ~/dockers/officer.dev. Still isolated, still one root. New installs get the clean shape.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
