Repositories

A repository gives a body of records a public name and a publish button. Where your instance is the private, living copy of your work, a repository is the part you choose to put on the shelf — under a handle like acme/product-notes, signed by you, browsable by others.

The handle

A repository handle is a slash name:

{namespace}/{repository}

acme/product-notes names the repository product-notes owned by the acme namespace. The handle is deliberately thin — a name, its namespace, and its owner. Everything heavy (the records themselves) stays where it already lives; publishing takes a snapshot of it.

spl repo create acme/product-notes
spl repo list
spl repo show acme/product-notes

Creating a handle publishes nothing. It reserves the name and records who owns it — on your own instance, as a record like everything else.

Publishing

spl repo publish acme/product-notes --dry-run   # build the snapshot locally, upload nothing
spl repo publish acme/product-notes             # snapshot, sign, publish

Publishing:

1. Snapshots the repository's records at this moment. Readers see a consistent published state, not your live instance.
2. Signs the snapshot with your identity. Anyone reading it can verify who published it and that nothing was altered.
3. Uploads it to published storage with a signed listing, so it stays readable even when your instance is off.

Publish again whenever you want the public state to advance — each publish is a new signed snapshot.

Choosing how much detail travels

--visibility public (the default) publishes the records as-is. The reduced-detail levels publish progressively less — structure without content — for when you want to share the shape of work rather than the work itself. See the Graph for how readers experience each level.

Reading a repository

A published repository is browsable at its handle on any Graph node that carries it — for example:

https://graph.syncropel.com/acme/product-notes

No account and no credential is needed to read what was published as public. The reader's experience — overview, records, the catalog of knowledge units — comes entirely from the published snapshot.

What repositories are not

• Not sync. Federation moves live records between paired instances; a repository is a signed publication. Use federation for collaboration, repositories for publishing.
• Not a backup. A snapshot of chosen records at chosen detail is not a recovery mechanism — see Backup & restore.
• Not required. An instance can run forever without publishing anything.

See also

• Publishing a repository — the operate guide: create → dry-run → publish → verify
• The Graph — where published work is read
• Namespaces — the ownership boundary handles live under