Personal workspace

Most templates are shared with your team through the workspace's version-control repo, so everyone generates the same components. A personal workspace is the opposite: a private folder of your own templates that only you load, with the components they generate kept out of the shared repo entirely.

Use it for templates and components that are yours alone - a one-off you're prototyping, a personal helper script, or anything you're not ready to commit to the team's workspace.

How it works

Point DataStar at a personal workspace folder and, on top of the workspace's normal templates, it also loads any templates in that folder. DataStar mirrors your workspace's own template layout under the personal folder, so a personal template sits in the same relative place a shared one would.

Personal templates, and the components you extract from them, are:

• Badged "(Personal)" in the component menu, with a purple marker, and grouped under their own category so they stand apart from shared ones at a glance.
• Extracted into the personal folder, under the same relative component path the workspace uses - not into the shared workspace.
• Kept separate in the basket and drafts, so a personal component never slips into a team deployment by accident.
• Kept out of version control. DataStar treats personal components as untracked, so they're never committed to the team repo.

The feature is entirely optional and stays off until you set a folder. Clear the folder and everything reverts to the shared workspace only.

Setting it up

1. Create a folder outside your team repo to hold your personal templates - for example C:\Users\you\DataStar\personal\ on Windows, or ~/DataStar/personal/ on macOS and Linux.
2. In DataStar, open Preferences and set the Personal Workspace folder to that location.
3. Add your personal .xml templates under it, mirroring your workspace's template layout. For a workspace whose templates live in templates/, put a personal template at <personal-folder>/templates/my-thing.xml.

Personal templates load alongside your shared ones immediately. DataStar watches the folder, so adding, editing, or removing a personal template takes effect without a restart, exactly like shared templates.

How it differs from sharing

	Shared templates	Personal workspace
Location	Inside the workspace repo	A private folder you choose
Who sees them	Everyone who clones the repo	Only you
Generated components	Committed with the team	Untracked, never committed
Configured in	workspace.json paths	Preferences (per user, per machine)

See also

• Share templates across a team
• Templates overview
• The Deployment Basket