Organising the sidebar

The sidebar is the list of things you navigate to. Three kinds of thing live in it, and you arrange them the same way.

What can be in it

Inside each space, at the root or in a folder:

• Databases
• Documents
• Views — including dashboards

A view still belongs to its database, wherever you put it. Those are two different facts: “which database’s rows does this show” has one answer forever, and “where do I click to get to it” is something people rearrange weekly. Moving a view around the sidebar never changes what it shows or who owns it, and deleting a database still takes its views with it wherever they sit.

The rail and the panel

The sidebar is two parts. A narrow fixed rail on the far left holds StoryOS’s own places — the workspace switcher, Home, Inbox, My Work, Runs and Settings — as icons with tooltips. It never grows, however much you build. Beside it, a resizable panel holds this workspace’s contents: a combined search-or-ask-Tyron box, a Collections row (Reviews, Business Packs, Personal), then Groups → Spaces → databases and views. Resize the panel to make room; it cuts long names off rather than ellipsising, and widening it is the way to read them.

Group and space headers stay pinned as you scroll — the group at the top, the space right below it — so in a large workspace you can always tell which group and space you’re in.

Groups

A group collects spaces under a heading in the sidebar — “Clients”, “Internal”. It is presentational only: putting a space in a group changes where it appears, never who can see it or what it contains.

• Make one with New group at the top of the panel; rename or delete it from its menu. Deleting a group doesn’t delete its spaces — they fall back to the ungrouped list.
• Put a space in a group by dragging it onto the group’s header, or with Move to group on the space’s menu (the keyboard route); Remove from group, or drag it into the ungrouped area, to take it out. An empty group still shows its header, so there is always somewhere to drop.
• Reorder groups by dragging a group’s header up or down; spaces keep their own order inside it.
• Over MCP: list_space_groups, create_space_group, update_space_group (including position), delete_space_group, and update_space’s group.

Views-only mode

The database-glyph button in the panel toggles views-only mode: every database row is hidden while its views stay, so you see just the views you actually open. It is a personal setting for this browser, not saved on the workspace — nobody else’s sidebar changes. A space with no icon of its own shows a coloured letter mark; one with an icon keeps its icon.

Reordering spaces

Drag a space by its row to move it up or down the sidebar’s top level, the same drag-and-drop every other row in the sidebar uses. This is the space’s own position, independent of what’s inside it — reordering a space never touches the order of its databases, documents or folders.

Moving things

Drag it. Any of the three kinds, into a folder, out of one, or between folders.

• Onto a folder — puts it in that folder.
• Onto the space root — takes it out of whatever folder it was in.
• Onto a row that lives somewhere else — puts it where that row is. This is usually how you drag something out of a folder, because the thing you naturally aim at is a sibling at the destination rather than empty space.
• Onto a row in the same container — reorders.

There is also a Move to… entry in each row’s ⋯ menu, for when dragging is awkward.

Folders

Create a folder in a space and put anything in it. A folder can hold databases, documents and views together — they are not separate lists.

A folder’s ⋯ menu: Rename, Icon, New database, New document, Delete — wherever you have edit access. A folder has no colour of its own (only databases and spaces do), so its icon picker is icon-only.

Create straight into a folder rather than creating at the space root and dragging it in afterwards — New database and New document are right there on the folder menu. An empty folder offers the same two as buttons instead of a dead-end “Empty” label, since there is nothing to drag yet.

Deleting a folder does not delete what is inside it. Everything in it moves back to the space root — the confirmation names how many items and says so.

Databases start collapsed

A database’s views are hidden until you expand it, and StoryOS remembers which ones you had open. Otherwise the sidebar opens at full height every time and you scroll past everything you were not looking for.

Account and workspace admin actions live behind one icon

Settings & members, Integrations, Connections, Webhooks, API tokens, and Keyboard shortcuts — plus Sign out — sit in a menu behind the gear icon next to the workspace switcher, at the top of the sidebar. None of it is a fixed row competing with the Spaces tree below it; each is still exactly one click away, just via that menu instead of a permanent block between the tree and the bottom of the sidebar. Settings & members, Integrations, Connections, and Webhooks only appear there for an admin; API tokens needs at least contributor access; Keyboard shortcuts and Sign out show for everyone.

Who sees what

Access works in two layers, and they answer different questions:

• The space is the door. If you cannot see the space, you do not see anything in it.
• Each source is the room. A dashboard drawing on three databases shows you only the parts you can read — the rest renders as an explicit no-access state rather than a zero.

So putting a view in a space you share does not hand anyone the data behind it. See access & roles for the full guest-scoping model.