A naming convention · Public domain
Alpha Spine
A folder system for creative work. Sort your project folders and preserve your project timeline — for free, from the dumbest sort your operating system knows how to do.
- AAdmin
- BBrief
- CContext
- DDirection
- EExploration
- FFabrication
- GGate
- HHandoff
- IIndex
Both arrows point the same way. That is the idea: the sort order and the timeline are the same object.
Scroll the diagram sideways →
A · Argument
Your folders know nothing
about how you work.
Creative projects move through phases. Admin, brief, research, direction, exploration, production, review, delivery. Every creative person knows this arc. Their folders know nothing about it.
Open any working creative's project folder and you find the same mess. The folder is a pile, not a timeline. To find anything you have to remember where you put it, and you never remember, because where you put it was a decision made at 2am eight months ago.
- assets
- assets_old
- final
- final_USE_THIS
- final_v2
- misc
- references
- refs
- Screenshot 2024-03-04 at 11.42.01 AM.png
- stuff
- A Admin
- B Brief
- C Context
- D Direction
- E Exploration
- F Fabrication
- G Gate
- H Handoff
- I Index
- Naming by topic
Logos,Website,Social— sorts alphabetically, which has nothing to do with when you did the work or what depends on what. - Naming by date
2024-03-04 kickoff— sorts chronologically but tells you nothing about what kind of work it was. - Naming by version
v1,v2,v3— tracks iteration but not phase, and dies the moment two things iterate in parallel. - Adopting a numbering systemSomething like Johnny Decimal fixes the pile, but the numbers are addresses you have to memorise.
32means nothing until you learn it means nothing.
Each fix picks one axis and abandons the rest.
B · Basis
Name each phase so its first letter is its position in the workflow.
That's it. That's the whole system. There is nothing else to learn, nothing to install, and nothing to configure.
Nobody has to memorise anything
Nobody has to remember that "3" means research. The folder says C Context. The label is the meaning and the meaning is the position, all at once.
C · Chronology
The sort order and the meaning
are the same object.
Because A comes before B comes before C, the alphabetical sort your file browser already does by default now reproduces the exact order of your workflow. You did not configure anything. You named your folders in a way the machine was always going to sort — and the sort became a timeline.
Shuffle them into any order you like. Then hit sort, the dumbest operation your computer knows, and watch the project rebuild itself in the order you lived it.
D · Detail
Every phase is an area.
Everything inside gets a number.
A two-digit item number turns any folder into a permanent, speakable handle.
C.04 is something you can say out loud on a call. You can write it in a note. It survives the file being renamed, because the address is the folder plus the number — not the words after it.
If a project is big enough to need depth, group inside a phase:
E Exploration/ E1 Territories/ E1.01 Ordinary Futures E1.02 Sovereign Kit E2 Comps/ E2.01 Round 1 E3 Rejects/
E1.02 reads out loud, sorts correctly, and points at exactly one thing. Same mechanic, one level deeper.
The depth rule
Nothing goes deeper than the item folder. If you need a fourth level, you actually needed a new phase or a new group. The constraint is the feature — it stops the pile from coming back.
E · Elevation
Projects sort against each other
the same way.
Phases sort inside a project. One layer up, projects sort against each other with a date-first address: YY plus a two-digit sequence.
Work/ 2026/ 2601 ACME - Rebrand/ 2602 Beehive - Launch Film/ 2603 ACME - Website/
2603 is the third project of 2026. It sorts chronologically because it starts with the year, and the sequence breaks ties in the order you started them. Zero-pad the sequence so 09 sorts before 10.
You never invent an address. You look at the last folder in the year and add one. The folder tells you what's next. This can be used as a docket number.
F · Framework
Five rules that keep it
from rotting.
A convention without rules turns back into a pile inside a month. These five keep it honest.
Every project gets every phase, even the empty ones.
A project with no research still has an empty C Context/. Consistency beats compression. When you come back in six months, the shape is always the same shape — and you stop thinking.
File where it was born.
A photo shot during Context lives in C Context, even if it ends up used in Fabrication. One home per file. If you need it in two places, that's what a link is for. Never a second copy.
Never renumber to close a gap.
Delete E.07 and there is now no E.07. Good. The gap is information: something was there and is gone. Renumbering to tidy it up breaks every address you ever spoke or wrote.
Ten items per area is a soft ceiling, not a limit.
When a phase hits eleven items, that's usually the folder telling you there were two things happening, not one. Listen to it before you push past.
Contain the apps that fight you.
Premiere, Capture One, Figma exports — anything that generates its own folder tree. Give it one folder inside F Fabrication, treat that folder as opaque, and don't try to impose the spine on its guts. Some tools own their own mess. Fence the mess, don't fight it.
G · Grammar
The words are yours.
The mechanic is the product.
A product studio's phases are not an agency's phases. A photographer's are not a developer's. Change the words, keep the property: pick phase names whose first letters run in workflow order, so the sort becomes the timeline.
Two constraints when you redesign
The letters must ascend without gaps. A, B, C, D — not A, C, F. Gaps make you memorise, and memorising is the thing this kills.
The word must earn its letter. If you have to explain what a phase means to a collaborator, the word is wrong, not the collaborator. Gate and Exploration are the two most people pause on. Pick words a stranger reads correctly on the first try.
H · Heritage
None of this is new.
Alpha Spine is a recombination of four systems that each solved one piece of this decades ago. It points four old ideas at the specific mess a creative project folder becomes.
Johnny Decimal
Proved that a short, speakable address beats a descriptive name, and that a hard ceiling on items per area is a feature, not a limit. Alpha Spine keeps the address and swaps the memorised number for a self-explaining letter.
ATA-100
The aviation maintenance standard has meant "Chapter 32 is landing gear" to every aircraft mechanic on earth since 1956. The largest working proof that spoken addresses scale across thousands of people who never met.
Cutter numbers
From library science: two orthogonal codes running on one spine, one for subject and one alphabetical. Direct precedent for pairing a letter with a number and letting each carry a different job.
ISO 8601
The YYYY-MM-DD date format is arguably the best naming decision ever made, for exactly one reason: it sorts. The project layer of Alpha Spine is ISO 8601's lesson applied to folders.
What this is not
Not an app
There is nothing to install. If someone builds tooling on top, good — but the methodology is complete without it.
Not a sync strategy
Alpha Spine names folders. Where those folders live and how they sync is your decision, and orthogonal to this.
Not a note system
Notes go in the phase they were born in. How you write them is entirely up to you.
Not opinionated about tools
Finder, Explorer, an IDE, a browser on a NAS. Plain folders and plain names — everything can read it, including software that doesn't exist yet.
I · Install
Ten minutes, once.
- Download the empty spine below, or copy it out of the repo.
- Duplicate it for your next project and rename the copy with a
YY##address. - Put things where they were born.
- Don't renumber. Don't skip letters. Don't go deeper than the item.
Six months from now, open a project you forgot you had. The shape will be the shape it always is.