> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.flasknote.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Workspaces

> Understand the difference between Personal Space and Lab workspaces in FlaskNote.

Workspaces are the main boundary for collaboration, permissions, and billing in FlaskNote.

## Workspace types

### Personal Space

Personal Space is your private, account-owned workspace.

Use it when:

* you are evaluating FlaskNote on your own
* you want private-by-default work
* you are drafting before bringing work into a team setting

Personal Space is the individual entry point into the product. It can stay on Free or be upgraded to Plus, but it is still your personal workspace rather than a shared lab environment.

### Lab workspace

Lab workspaces are the collaborative workspace surface for teams.

Use a Lab workspace when:

* multiple people need to work in the same environment
* your lab wants shared access to notebooks, inventory, and bookings
* one owner should manage seats, billing, and permissions centrally
* you need shared operational pages such as Team, Inventory, Bookings, and Activity

## Roles

The current role model is:

* `owner`
* `admin`
* `member`
* `viewer`

In general:

* owners manage billing, role changes, and high-risk workspace actions
* admins help run the workspace day to day
* members do normal contributing work
* viewers are read-only

Use the smallest role that still lets someone do their job.

## Navigation differences

Both workspace types center on projects and experiments, but they do not expose the same operational pages.

Lab workspaces add team-facing surfaces such as:

* Inventory
* Bookings
* Team
* workspace billing management for the owner

## How to think about workspace boundaries

A workspace should map to a real operating unit, not an arbitrary container.

Good examples:

* one academic lab
* one biotech team
* one CRO delivery team

Less ideal examples:

* a whole department with unrelated groups
* a temporary catch-all workspace for every collaborator

## Workspace lifecycle

Most teams follow this progression:

1. Start in Personal Space or create a Lab workspace once collaboration becomes real
2. Create projects with clean scopes
3. Invite members with the right role
4. Use shared operational pages only in the Lab workspace
5. Reserve seats through active members and pending invitations
6. Keep work readable if billing becomes restricted, but stop expansion until the workspace is back within limits

## Read next

* [Quickstart](/quickstart)
* [Projects](/core-concepts/projects)
* [Lab workspace surfaces](/core-concepts/lab-workspace-surfaces)
* [Sharing and access](/administration/sharing-and-access)
* [Plans and billing](/administration/plans-and-billing)