Spine Schema

Spine Schema defines the canonical data model for all operational truth in SpineWorkspace. Every entity, relationship, event, decision, piece of evidence, work item, and memory entry follows this schema.

The schema is not a single database table. It is a multi-store fabric where each layer owns a specific class of truth.

Governing Rules

1. One Spine per tenant. Role, department, and industry alter projection scope — not storage ownership.
2. No direct UI database reads. The Workbench reads projected shapes through the Projection Platform API.
3. All writes preserve provenance. Every mutation records actor, origin, evidence, confidence, timestamps, and source connection.
4. AI proposes; humans decide. Cognitive output enters a proposal/approval path before operational promotion.
5. Connect once, available everywhere. Connector ownership is tenant-scoped, not frontend-scoped.

Multi-Store Fabric

The Spine is a 6-layer fabric:

Layer	Store	What It Owns	Access Pattern
L1	PostgreSQL / Neon / D1	Structured operational truth — entities, relationships, tasks, approvals, signals	SQL via Projection Platform
L2	Redis / KV	Hot state — projection caches, SLA countdowns, queue positions, session context	Key-value, sub-100ms
L3	R2 / Object Storage	Attachments — documents, recordings, exports, images	Signed URLs, streaming
L4	Conversational Store	Ingested channels — email threads, chat transcripts, call recordings	Append-only, Pipeline-processed
L5	Vectorize / pgvector	Semantic embeddings — similarity, knowledge retrieval, signal detection	Vector search, RRF scoring
L6	Durable Objects	Agent memory — session state, user preferences, workspace context	Per-keyed hot state, snapshot to D1

Rule: No department reads directly from any store. All reads go through the Projection Platform API.

Universal Record Envelope

Every operational table carries this minimum contract:

id                 text primary key,
tenant_id          text not null,
workspace_id       text,
status             text not null,
version            integer not null default 1,
origin             text not null,
confidence         numeric(5,4),
source_connection_id text,
provenance         jsonb not null default '[]',
metadata           jsonb not default '{}',
created_by         text,
updated_by         text,
created_at         timestamptz not null,
updated_at         timestamptz not null,
archived_at        timestamptz

All tenant queries require tenant_id. Sensitive projections additionally require workspace, role, permission, and policy checks.

Core Entity Types

Identity and Tenancy

• tenants — organization, plan, industry, region, schema version
• workspaces — tenant workspace with department, industry, projection manifest
• users — identity with department, manager, timezone, locale
• teams — team with department and owner
• roles — role with scope and governance posture
• permissions — permission key, resource, action, risk level
• memberships — user-workspace-role bindings

Entity and Relationship Truth

• entities — canonical entity anchor with type, name, external keys, attributes, lifecycle
• relationships — typed, weighted, time-bounded entity connections
• entity_versions — append-only snapshots
• timeline_events — append-only operational history with event type, subject, payload, evidence
• evidence — source citations, hashes, document spans, connector references

Work, Governance, and Signals

• tasks — title, assignee, priority, due date, entity, completion state
• work_items — generalized operational item with type, queue, SLA, payload
• queues — routing policy and owner
• assignments — work-item-to-assignee bindings
• approvals — proposal, capability, risk level, approver chain, decision
• proposals — type, subject, recommended action, reasoning, confidence, evidence
• signals — kind, priority, score, detection, resolution state
• policies — approval, retention, write-back, data visibility, capability policies

Communications and Knowledge

• communication_threads — channel, participants, linked entities
• messages — sender, recipients, body, classification
• calendar_events, meetings, calls — temporal coordination
• documents, document_chunks — storage references and semantic embeddings
• knowledge_articles — reviewed organizational knowledge

Memory and Continuity

• memory_items — scope (user|work|org|agent|development|conversation), type, content, importance
• memory_proposals — proposed promotion with classification, confidence, approval state
• continuity_contexts — effective role, workspace, active entities, goals, recent evidence

Capability and Integration

• connectors — provider, category, auth type, supported objects
• connections — tenant-owned installation with health and sync state
• capabilities — key, plane, inputs, outputs, governance policy
• capability_invocations — request, authorization, execution, result, rollback, audit

Department Pattern

Every department defines:

1. Structured operational tables
2. Hot-state keys and projection caches
3. Attachment/object namespaces
4. Conversational ingestion classes
5. Semantic/vector collections
6. User, work, and organization memory scopes

The Workbench shell is constant across departments: Header, Pulse Bar, Main Work Surface, Action/Governance Bar, and contextual Twin surface.

Storage Ownership (Canonical)

From the canonical ontology, storage is divided into four tiers:

Tier	What It Owns	Authority
Spine Fabric	Canonical entities, relationships, Work, events, decisions, evidence, memory, continuity	System of record
Memory	Episodic, semantic, operational, user, work, org, agent, development, conversation scoped	Informs truth; memory is not truth
Fortress	Audit, execution ledger, signed proposals, incident reconstruction	Append-only, tamper-evident
Ephemeral	Session scratchpads, agent working state, transient caches	Disposable, no authority

Rule: Memory informs truth. Memory is not truth. Triage classifies. Governance decides. The Pipeline promotes. Spine owns organizational memory.

Related

• Canonical Ontology §39-40 — storage ownership
• Projection Contract — how schema is projected
• Organizational Memory — memory authority