Skip to content
AuthorPascal DateAugust 6, 2026 Rev1.0

Shared drives — where files live

How the Binabik Google shared drives are organised, where a given file belongs, and the few habits that keep it that way. This is the one page that owns the drive structure — file it here, not in a channel message.

The five rules that cover almost everything

  1. Every file has exactly one home. Need it somewhere else? Add a shortcut, not a copy.
  2. Don't delete what might be wanted later — move it to 90_archive.
  3. No version numbers in filenames. Drive already tracks versions.
  4. Anything dated is named to sort: YYYY_MM_Name for folders, YYYY-MM-DD_subject for files.
  5. If you can't work out where something goes, ask rather than guess.

The seven drives

Which drives you can see depends on your role — a drive missing from your list is intentional, not a mistake.

Drive Who can see it What belongs there
00_Public everyone, and shareable outside Anything we'd hand to an outsider unedited: logos, brand assets, the public deck, product sheets, press material
10_Company everyone How we run internally: handbook, meetings, templates, facilities and IT, marketing production
20_Tech engineering, management Robots, pilot execution, datasets, research, safety and standards
30_Commercial commercial, engineering, management Customers, partners, funding programmes, market and pricing, working decks
40_Restricted management only Corporate, cap table, finance, people, IP, investor relations
50_DataRoom management, plus named externals per process One folder per financing or diligence process
60_Academy everyone The Academy as a product: curriculum, delivery, its own customers

Why 40_Restricted is its own drive, not a locked folder

Google Drive cannot hide a folder from someone who is a member of the drive it sits in. Access is granted per drive, so anything that must stay with management has to live in a separate drive rather than behind a folder permission.

Where does my file go

Work down this list and stop at the first match.

  • About a specific customer? → 30_Commercial/10_Customers/<Customer>/ — everything commercial: the NDA, the offer, the contract, meeting notes. The technical execution of their pilot goes in 20_Tech/30_Pilots/<Customer>/, with a shortcut linking the two.
  • About a specific partner? → 30_Commercial/20_Partners/<Partner>/ — Agibot, Galaxea, MyBotShop and so on.
  • A grant or funding programme? → 30_Commercial/30_Funding_Programs/YYYY_MM_Programme/. Reusable answers, the standard company description, budget templates and CVs live in 00_Reusable_Answers/ so nobody rewrites them each time.
  • About a robot? → 20_Tech/20_Robots/<Robot>/ — specs, datasheets, manuals, firmware, integration notes.
  • Would we send it to an outsider as-is? → 00_Public/. Before you email a logo, look here first: it's probably already the right one.
  • About money, shares, staff, or legal? → 40_Restricted/. If you can't see that drive, that is your answer — hand it to a founder rather than filing it somewhere visible.
  • None of the above? → 10_Company/, most likely under meetings, templates or facilities. If nothing fits, ask in the channel. A file in the wrong place is recoverable; a file nobody can find is not.

Naming

Folders — NN_Name_In_Snake_Case. Numbered in steps of ten so a new folder slots in without renumbering everything. Dated folders use YYYY_MM_Name, e.g. 2026_09_Automatica or 2026_07_Innosuisse.

Files — YYYY-MM-DD_subject_context.ext. The date is what the content is as of, not the day you happened to save it.

No spaces, ampersands or umlauts in folder names

They break scripts, URLs and Windows sync in ways that only surface weeks later. Write Koerber, not Körber.

And never final. There is no such thing, and final_v2 follows within a week.

Four habits

  • One home, then shortcuts. If a file belongs in two places, put it in one and add a shortcut in the other (right-click → Organise → Add shortcut). Shortcuts work across drives, so a customer folder can point at pilot data in 20_Tech without copying it. A copy is stale the moment someone edits the original, and then nobody knows which one is real.
  • Archive instead of deleting. Anything outdated that might still be wanted goes to 90_archive in the same area, dated. Deleting is the one move that isn't recoverable a year later.
  • Let Drive handle versions. For iterations of the same document use File → Version history → Manage versions. Bump the filename only when the artifact genuinely becomes a different thing — and move the predecessor to 90_archive straight away.
  • Bundles are shortcut collections. Data rooms and offer packs are built from shortcuts, never copies. If a recipient needs flat files, export them at the moment of sending and delete the export afterwards.

Common situations

  • A new customer appears. Create 30_Commercial/10_Customers/<Name>/ with the five standard subfolders — 10_Contact_and_NDA, 20_Offers, 30_Contracts, 40_Delivery, 50_Meetings. Copy the structure from an existing customer so we stay consistent.
  • You made a new version of a deck. Open the lineage folder, e.g. 30_Commercial/50_Decks/preseed_investor/. The live file has no date and no version in its name — move the old one into 90_archive with a date and save yours under the plain name. Anyone asking "which deck do I send" takes the file without a date.
  • Someone sends you a file. Don't leave it in Downloads or in a chat thread; file it the same day using the list above. Attachments that live only in someone's inbox are how knowledge leaves when people do.
  • You're working on a big video or design file. Sources go in 10_Company/50_Marketing_Production/50_Project_Files/. Keep your working copy local while you're actively editing and check it in when the cut is done — live editing against a synced folder causes conflicts. Finished exports go in the sibling 40_Media_Library/, which is where everyone else looks.
  • You need a dataset. 20_Tech/40_Datasets/. Each dataset has a MANIFEST.md beside it saying what it contains and how it was produced — add one if you add a dataset. Also exclude that folder from your local sync (Drive for Desktop → Preferences) unless you specifically need it: it's around 19 GB.
  • Something is sensitive and you're not sure. Ask a founder. Putting something restricted in a visible drive is much harder to undo than the other way round.

What not to do

  • Don't create a new top-level folder without asking.
  • Don't copy a file to share it — share the link, or add a shortcut.
  • Don't rename someone else's file to your own convention without telling them. Links break silently.
  • Don't store the only copy of anything on your laptop.