Product design · Bobby DB
One governed path from a draft to a delivered release
Status states, kept apart
Every claim on this site belongs to exactly one of these categories, and they all come from one canonical status catalogue so no two pages can disagree.
| State | Meaning | Examples today |
|---|---|---|
| Implemented | Exists now, public, and can be inspected by anyone. | Data Blocks brand system, official assets, brand book and PDF, this public website. |
| Implemented — pilot | Built and operating in the governed pilot. | Email and password sign-in, governed accounts and roles, audit trail. |
| Authorized pilot operators | Built, and reachable only by a pilot operator the operator has admitted. Not generally available and not purchasable. | Workspaces, collections, entries, immutable releases, API keys and REST delivery. |
| Product preview | Approved product design, presented so it can be reviewed before it is built. | Bulk imports, plan allowances, AI proposal review. |
| Not yet available | Not implemented and not evidenced. No behaviour is claimed. | Public registration, billing, AI providers, Bobby ID, real master data. |
The lifecycle
The same path applies to Bobby DB's own public master data and to a customer's private collection.
STEP 1
Draft
Entries are edited freely inside a workspace collection.
STEP 2
Validate
The draft is checked against the collection's JSON Schema mode.
STEP 3
Review
A workspace member reviews the diff before anything is published.
STEP 4
Immutable release
An approved draft becomes a version that never changes.
STEP 5
REST delivery
Clients read the current or a pinned release.
The product vocabulary
Each concept below is part of the approved design, and the governed pilot implements this vocabulary for authorized pilot operators. No production collection, entry or release has been created.
- WorkspacesAuthorized pilot operators
- The tenant boundary. A workspace owns its collections, members, API keys and usage, and nothing crosses that boundary implicitly.
- CollectionsAuthorized pilot operators
- The governed unit of data. A collection is drafted, validated, reviewed, released and served as a whole, and carries its own visibility and schema mode.
- GroupsAuthorized pilot operators
- Named subsets of related keys inside a collection, so a large reference set stays navigable instead of becoming one flat list.
- EntriesAuthorized pilot operators
- One key with one value. The key is the long-lived contract a product depends on; the value changes only through a release.
- Typed JSON-compatible valuesAuthorized pilot operators
- Strings, numbers, booleans, null, objects and arrays. No binary blobs, no code, no opaque types that a JSON client cannot read.
- DraftsAuthorized pilot operators
- All editing happens in a draft. A draft can be validated and discussed repeatedly and never affects what clients read.
- ReviewAuthorized pilot operators
- A workspace member reviews the draft diff before publication. Review is the human gate between editing and delivery.
- Immutable releasesAuthorized pilot operators
- An approved draft becomes a version whose content never changes afterwards. Corrections are new releases, not edits.
- Release pinningAuthorized pilot operators
- A client can follow the current release or pin an exact version, so a data change cannot silently alter an existing build.
- Public and private visibilityAuthorized pilot operators
- Private is the default. Publishing is a deliberate act on a collection, and it changes who may read a release, not who may edit it.
- JSON Schema modesAuthorized pilot operators
- A collection can validate loosely while it is being shaped, or strictly once its structure is settled, so validation strictness is an explicit choice.
- ImportsAuthorized pilot operators
- Bulk content enters through an import that is parsed, mapped and validated into a draft. An import never writes straight into a release.
- API keysAuthorized pilot operators
- Keys authenticate machine access, carry read or write scope, are shown once at creation and can be revoked. Every read, including public data, requires one.
- RESTAuthorized pilot operators
- A versioned HTTP surface for applications: cursor pagination, batch reads, ETag revalidation, idempotency keys for retryable writes and request IDs on every response.
- MCPAuthorized pilot operators
- Deferred. There is no Model Context Protocol interface in service: its address answers one stated refusal and exposes no data. It will be built only under separate authorization and verification.
- MeteringAuthorized pilot operators
- Requests are counted per workspace against the plan allowance, with no silent overage billing.
- AI proposalsAuthorized pilot operators
- AI may draft a schema, suggest an import mapping or explain a diff. It arrives as a draft for review and can never approve, release or change access.
- Bobby CreditsAuthorized pilot operators
- The separate allowance that meters AI-assisted proposal work. Credits are never consumed by ordinary reads or writes.
Delivery and governance boundaries
Where each product surface lives, and who may reach it.
/ · /product · /docs
Public site
ImplementedMarketing, documentation, brand, pricing proposal, legal drafts. Open to everyone.
/console/*
Workspace console
Authorized pilot operatorsCollections, drafts, reviews, releases and key management. Implemented, and opened only to a pilot operator the operator has admitted.
/auth/*
Account security
Implemented — pilotEmail and password sign-in, password recovery and sign-out. Signing in grants no Bobby DB authority by itself.
/api/v1/*
Versioned API
Authorized pilot operatorsThe REST surface, served under one canonical namespace and requiring a key issued by the operator. An agent interface over the same releases is deferred.
Authorized pilot operators
These surfaces are not open to the public: there is no registration, no self-service access and no purchase. The public root stays reserved for marketing, public discovery, documentation, pricing, brand and legal pages.
What Bobby DB is not
Scope boundaries are part of the design. These are deliberate exclusions, not gaps waiting to be filled.
Not a relational database
There are no joins, foreign keys, transactions across collections or ad-hoc query planning. Bobby DB governs reference data; your database stays your database.
Not a secrets manager
Collections are designed for reference data, including data that may become public. Credentials, tokens and private keys do not belong in Bobby DB.
Not arbitrary code execution
Values are data. Bobby DB is not designed to run functions, triggers, scripts or user-supplied code.
Not file storage
Entries hold typed JSON-compatible values, not images, documents or binary uploads.
Not an analytics warehouse
There is no event pipeline, no OLAP engine and no reporting layer. Bobby DB serves current or pinned reference data.
Not authoritative merely because it is public
A public release is designed to carry provenance, licence and changelog so you can judge it. Publication is distribution, not endorsement.