Your workspace grows as you work. At some point a group needs what is in it: a team
picking up a project, a diligence process, an onboarding week.

Fork it. We snapshot your workspace into a separate one, you give that group access
to the fork, and they work in it for as long as the work lasts. When it is over,
shut it down.

Your workspace is not involved at any point after the snapshot.

## The fork is a real separation

The fork is a second workspace with its own organization, its own access list
and its own lifetime.

Nothing the group does reaches back. They can ask it anything, correct it, fill
it with their own questions, break it outright. Your workspace carries on unchanged
because it is somewhere else entirely.

That is what makes this safe to hand out. Not a permission setting you have to
get right, just a different workspace.

## Who gets in, and how they sign in

- **The workspace is the guest list.** Someone is a member of it, or they cannot
  reach the fork.
- **You add people by email.** The invitation is bound to that address.
  Forwarding it lets nobody else in.
- **No passwords.** They sign in with Google or a link emailed to them.
- **You can see who has not accepted.** Unopened invitations sit alongside
  members, so a decline looks different from an unread email.
- **Removing someone removes their access.** Take them out of the workspace and
  the fork closes to them.

## Everyone in the fork can reach everything in it

This is the part to be deliberate about.

A fork is a snapshot of your workspace, not a filtered view of it. There is no
per-person scoping inside a workspace and no way to hide part of one from someone
who has access to it. **The boundary is the workspace itself.**

So the question is never what to strip out. It is who to let in.

> Invite people you would be comfortable handing the whole workspace to. If a group
> should see a different set of material, they get their own fork.

## It answers from your material, and cites it

<figure>
  <a href="/docs/workspace/shared-copy-answer.png"><img src="/docs/workspace/shared-copy-answer.png" alt="Someone asks how much runway the company has. The workspace answers 45 months, lists cash on hand and net burn, then flags that the planned figure is 31 months."></a>
  <figcaption><strong>Asked for runway, it gives the number and the catch.</strong> 45 months at current burn, then it volunteers that the operating plan cuts that to 31, and says which figure actually matters.</figcaption>
</figure>

Ask something that spans several documents and it pulls them together.

<figure>
  <a href="/docs/workspace/shared-copy-sources.png"><img src="/docs/workspace/shared-copy-sources.png" alt="Someone asks who the main competitor is and what they did in February. The workspace names Vantage Group, describes the February carrier bundling, and names the two pages it drew from."></a>
  <figcaption><strong>One question, two documents, sources named.</strong> The competitive picture came from one page, the risk framing from another. Naming them is what makes the answer checkable.</figcaption>
</figure>

Every question is its own thread, history persists, and questions are attributed
to whoever asked them.

## Ask it to search, and ask where the answer came from

Two habits worth teaching the group.

- **Tell it to look.** "Search the workspace and tell me our runway" beats "how much
  runway do we have." A casual question can get answered from general knowledge
  rather than your material, and it sounds equally confident either way.
- **Ask for the page.** An answer it cannot source is an answer you should not
  repeat.

## Rehearse before it matters

Write down the ten or twenty questions the group is most likely to ask, and run
every one yourself a few days ahead.

You will learn quickly which topics are sharp and which are thin, with time left
to fix the thin ones. Nine good answers and a tenth bad one is worse than
knowing in advance where the edges are.

## A fork is frozen at the moment you took it

It knows what your workspace knew that day. If your workspace moves on, the fork does
not follow.

For long-running work, take a fresh fork when the material has drifted enough to
matter, and tell the group which date they are looking at.

## Three ways to end a fork

A fork is disposable by design, so ending one is a choice rather than a cleanup
job. Pick whichever fits, or combine them.

**Shut it down.** Tell us and we freeze or delete it. Access ends with it, and
nothing has to be unwound in your own workspace because nothing ever happened to it.

**Bring back a briefing.** Ask the fork to write up what the group worked
through, then put that one document into your workspace. Usually better than
merging raw changes, because a summary written by the workspace that did the work
is more useful later than a pile of edits.

**Merge selected changes back.** Review what changed in the fork and pull the
pieces worth keeping into your workspace, item by item. Nothing moves back on its
own, and the review is yours.

Whichever you pick, you also keep the record of every question the group asked,
attributed to whoever asked it. That list is often the most useful thing the
work produces.

## Setting one up

Ask us and we will do it with you. Today this is hands-on rather than a button.

1. **Tell us which workspace to fork and when.** The snapshot is taken at that
   moment.
2. **We build it.** A new organization, with the forked workspace inside it.
3. **We check it.** The fork matches your workspace, and it answers a real question
   correctly.
4. **You send the list of people.** They get an emailed invitation and sign in
   with a link.

Give us a few days before you need it so there is room to rehearse.

## What it does not do

- Give the group access to your workspace, now or later.
- Hide part of a workspace from someone who can reach that workspace.
- Update itself when your workspace changes.
- Merge anything back on its own.
- Know what was not in your workspace when the fork was taken. When it does not
  know, the right answer from it is to say so.

Questions about setting one up? Reply to any email from us and we will help.