Default entity types

When you run firm init, you get a set of default schemas for common business entities. These schemas reflect a design philosophy focused on flexibility, composability, and real-world business modeling.

Design philosophy

REA model foundation

The default entity types are built on the REA model (Resources, Events, Agents), a proven accounting and business modeling framework.

Every entity maps to one of these categories:

• Resource - Things with value (projects, documents)
• Event - Things that happen (interactions, transactions)
• Agent - Things that act (people, organizations)

Fundamental vs. contextual entities

We separate objective reality from business relationships:

Fundamental entities represent things that exist independently:

• person - An individual human being
• organization - A company or group
• file_asset - A file or artifact

Contextual entities represent your business relationships and processes:

• contact - Your business relationship with a person
• lead - A sales opportunity
• project - A body of work

The same person can be a contact at one organization, an employee at yours, and a partner in a joint venture—all simultaneously.

Composition over inheritance

Entities reference each other rather than extending each other. This provides more flexibility:

person john_doe {
    name = "John Doe"
    email = "john@example.com"
}

contact john_at_acme {
    person_ref = person.john_doe
    organization_ref = organization.acme_corp
    role = "CTO"
}

employee john_employee {
    person_ref = person.john_doe
    organization_ref = organization.my_company
    role = "Consultant"
}

One person entity, multiple relationship contexts.

Included default types

Core entities

• person - An individual
• organization - A company or group
• industry - A business sector or classification

Customer relations

• account - Business relationship with an organization
• channel - Communication or marketing channel
• lead - Potential business lead
• contact - Person in a business relationship context
• interaction - Communication or meeting
• opportunity - Potential sale or business deal

Work management

• strategy - High-level, long-term plan or goal
• objective - Specific, measurable goal contributing to a strategy
• key_result - Measurable outcome tracking an objective
• project - Planned initiative to achieve objectives
• task - Single, actionable unit of work
• review - Periodic review or meeting

Resources

• file_asset - Digital file or document

Customization

These default schemas are a starting point. You can:

• Modify them to fit your needs
• Add new custom entity types
• Remove types you don't use

See the Creating schemas guide for details on customization.