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Estate chooser

How to decide whether a Software project should be Prototype, Lab, or Portfolio-org. The estate is decided during Product Build-gate — before Software begins.

Who decides

Product decides the estate. The answer to "should we build this?" depends on "where will it live?" A Portfolio-org product needs different infrastructure than a Lab experiment, so the decision happens during evaluation, not implementation.

Decision table

Prototype Lab Portfolio-org
Idea exploration Tools, MCP, experiments, showcases Revenue or clearly commercial
Local git only GitHub: hector-sanchez-eu GitHub: Konstant-Ventures
No remote, no deploy Deploy to konstant Independent website
No CI/CD, no DNS Catalog entry on /lab Commercial infrastructure
Abandon freely Release piece required Release piece required

Default path

Product Build-gate decides one of:
  ├── Prototype  → Software Frame (local only, no deploy stages)
  ├── Lab        → Software Frame → Deploy → Operate → Editorial release
  └── Portfolio-org → Software Frame → Deploy → Operate → Editorial release

If unclear, default to Lab. If clearly revenue, go Portfolio-org. If just exploring, keep it Prototype.

Role tag

Set during Software Frame, independent of estate:
showcase | tool | platform | library | end-product | agent-runtime | other

Examples: personal Gmail curator → Lab + tool; public calculator → Lab + showcase; billed SaaS → Portfolio-org + end-product.

Guardrails

  • Estate is a Product decision — not re-decided at Software Frame
  • Prototypes never reach Deploy, Operate, or Editorial stages
  • Both Lab and Portfolio-org require a release piece (Editorial) when deployed
  • If estate is unclear during Product, escalate to Portfolio Manager

Prohibited

  • Changing estate without re-evaluating through Product
  • Promoting to Portfolio-org solely because "it needs maintenance"
  • Inventing a fourth estate beyond Prototype, Lab, Portfolio-org