Joining a Library, and Where It Is Searched

In plain terms: your own precedent banks, and any a colleague hands you, are on every desk in the office automatically. A bank you find in the Marketplace you join, and say which offices it goes to; you can change that later, and taking it out of every office means leaving it.

Decision

Superseded in part 2026-10-09 by /docs/decisions/library-use-in: the Join dialog's Workspace ticks, Manage workspaces, and the Active Libraries amendment below give way to the Join | Use in modal.

Owner rulings, 2026-10-02, settled by grilling. They replace the Library page's Use this Library in… button and the per-Workspace list as the way your own Libraries reach a search.

1. Member is the word for anyone with a seat on a Library: owner, Builder or reader. The Share dialog's people are its members.
2. Invited means everywhere. A Library you own, or were added to by name (Share → Invite), is searched in every Workspace you work in, with nothing to connect. Goldie judges which Libraries are relevant before searching their contents.
3. Joined means where you chose. A free Marketplace Library (stored public) shows Join library. It opens a 480 square: "Goldie will search its documents and blocks as you work in:", then the Workspaces. With one Workspace it is named, no tick box; with several, tick boxes, and the button counts them (Join and add to 2 workspaces). Confirming gives a reader seat, recorded as joined, and adds the Library to those Workspaces' search.
4. Manage workspaces on a joined Library's menu reopens the same dialog, the current Workspaces ticked. Unticking every one is Leave library: the seat goes and the Library drops off your list.
5. Invited wins. A joined member later added by name becomes invited: the Library is then searched everywhere.
6. By approval Marketplace Libraries (stored shared) show Request access, disabled, "Coming soon". Their owners add people by email meanwhile.
7. Paid is not built. "Join" stays the word; a price would sit beside it.

Amended 2026-10-04: Active Libraries (GB-347)

Owner ruling. Active is the app's word for which Libraries a search draws on, and it is set where a lawyer would look: the Libraries entry on the Home card's menu ticks the Workspace's list, and the same entry on a Project card's menu narrows it for that matter, inheriting Home's until changed. The search card's chips and Keep selection go. Rules 2 and 3 above become the default: with nothing saved, own and invited Libraries are active everywhere and a joined one where it was joined. A saved list is exact, so an invited Library can be switched off, and the last tick cannot come off. A joined Library stays active wherever its Workspace's list names it, whatever a Project saves: one member's narrowing never takes it from another. Share stays off the Home card: the Project is the sharing grain.

Consequences

• A seat records how it was reached: invited or joined. A Workspace's search list (librarySearchScopes) holds only joined Libraries; invited ones are searched without it.
• The Library page's Use this Library in… button and its picker card go. The search card's chips still filter one search; Keep selection no longer applies to invited Libraries — folded 2026-10-04 into Active Libraries, above.
• Deleting a Library still drops it from every Workspace's list.
• Libraries → Search scope is superseded by this record where they differ.