Attune · the architecture we use

Where Everything Lives

A map of your layers — and two questions that test it.

Half an hour. Then you can answer “where is that?” without opening five apps to find out.

The problem you probably have

Your work is spread across a laptop, a sync folder, one or two clouds, and a handful of tools you signed up for at different times for different reasons. Nobody planned it. It accumulated.

Most of the time that's fine. It stops being fine in exactly two moments: when something is lost, and when you're not at your desk and need something now.

You don’t need everything in one place. You need to know which place, and why.

The five layers

Nearly everyone has all five. Most people have never named them, which is why things end up in the wrong one.

One

The machine

Your laptop or desktop. Where the work actually happens.

Fast, private, and the only layer that disappears completely if the hardware does. Nothing should live only here.

Two

The sync

iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive. Whatever quietly copies your folders.

This is where big things belong — video, images, recordings, anything too heavy for a version-controlled repo. Check what it actually covers: on a Mac, Desktop and Documents may or may not be included, and most people have never looked.

Three

The versioned

A repository, or any system that keeps history. Where anything that changes should live.

The difference from sync is the one that matters: sync gives you the current version, versioning gives you every previous one. If you'd ever want to ask “what did this say last month, and who changed it?” — it belongs here.

Four

The automation

Anything that runs on a schedule without you: scheduled jobs, agents, workflows, automations.

The most commonly forgotten layer. These jobs often exist only inside the service that runs them — no copy, no backup, nothing to rebuild from if one is deleted.

Five

The shared

The place other people look without asking you.

If a colleague has to message you for something, it isn't in this layer yet — and you've become the bottleneck for your own information.

The rule of thumb: if it changes and matters → versioned. If someone else needs it → shared. If it's big and binary → sync. If it runs by itself → make a copy of it somewhere else, today.

The two tests

1 · If this laptop died tonight, what's gone?

Go layer by layer and be specific. Not "it's mostly in the cloud" — which folders, covered by what. The answer is almost never nothing, and the gap is usually something you'd assumed was handled.

2 · Can I get to this from my phone?

Take the five things you'd most likely need while away from your desk — before a meeting, mid-conversation, standing somewhere without a laptop. Can you reach each one right now, on the device in your hand? The things that fail this test are the ones that make you say "I'll send it when I'm back."

These two tests are what the map is for. A map that doesn't change what you do is decoration. These change where things live.

Two failures a map catches

Safe but unfindable

A file can be perfectly backed up and still effectively lost, because nobody — including you in six months — would think to look there.

OursWe found 463 MB of original artwork for a product line: the owned master images, downloaded deliberately so the product wouldn't depend on someone else's service. Properly backed up, because the folder syncs. Also three folders deep inside a directory named DesktopS. Safe, and functionally invisible.

Mixed layers

Business and personal in the same synced folder, because both got dropped on a desktop on a busy day. Not automatically a problem — but it should be a decision, not a leftover.

OursThat same folder held property documents, signed agreements, and a password-manager emergency kit, sitting beside product assets. All syncing to the same cloud. Possibly fine. Never actually decided.

Write the map

WHERE EVERYTHING LIVES — [your name], [date]

THE MACHINE
  What lives only here:
  (Anything on this line is one hardware failure from gone.)

THE SYNC  — service: ______
  Covers:
  Doesn't cover:
  Big things it carries:

THE VERSIONED — where: ______
  Holds:
  Not in it (and why):

THE AUTOMATION
  What runs on a schedule without me:
  Where those jobs are defined:
  Where the COPY of them lives:      <-- usually blank. Fix that.

THE SHARED — where: ______
  What other people can reach without asking me:
  What they still have to ask me for:  <-- these are your bottlenecks

TEST 1 — if this machine died tonight, what's gone?

TEST 2 — the five things I'd need away from my desk. Can I reach each
one from my phone right now?
  1.
  2.
  3.
  4.
  5.

DECISIONS THIS SURFACED:

Re-run it when something moves. New tool, new device, new automation, a big folder relocated. The map goes stale the same way everything else does — and a map you trust that's wrong is worse than no map.

Why this one comes near the end

The other templates give your assistant something to read, somewhere to be reached from, a check before publishing, a memory, and a way to know it's working.

All of that assumes you can find your own things. This is the map underneath the rest of it — and the payoff is small and daily: you stop answering “I'll send it when I'm back at my computer.”