How an organization works: units, roles, processes, policies, systems and measures.
10 classes, 14 relations, 1 rules, 0 actions, extends oto-core. oto registry add https://github.com/Cynergis/oto-registry, oto ontology add organization-process, then oto init --ontology organization-process.
| Class | What it is | The question it answers | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document | A source document in the corpus. | Where is this written down? | Every fact needs a checkable source with its own date. |
| Action | Something that can be done about an entity, described the way an MCP server describes a tool and bound to the graph. Oto lists it; the caller invokes it; the recorded run is evidence. | What can be done about this, and how? | The binding between an entity, the tool that acts on it, its inputs, its credentials by name and its preconditions is otherwise tribal knowledge in an agent's prompt; as a fact it is versioned, reviewed and shared. Oto never invokes it. |
| Unit | An organizational unit: a division, a department, a team. | Which part of the organization does this belong to? | Units nest, and ownership and measurement are usually reported along that nesting. |
| Role | A defined function someone performs. Attach work to a role, not a person. | Who is accountable, without naming a person? | Roles are stable while people move, so work attached to a role keeps its history correct. |
| Process | A repeatable way of getting something done, made of steps. | How does this actually get done here? | A process is the unit people improve and measure, and it persists while its steps change. |
| Step | One action within a process, with an owner and an input and output. | What is the sequence, and where does it stall? | Bottlenecks are found at the step, not the process, and sequencing needs steps to be things. |
| Policy | A rule that constrains how work is done, internal or imposed. | What rule constrains this, and where does it come from? | A rule that constrains work is separate from the work, and it changes on its own schedule. |
| System | A tool or application the work runs on. | What tool does this depend on? | Dependence on a tool is what makes a process fragile, and it must be visible without reading the steps. |
| Measure | Something the organization tracks to know whether the work is working. | How do we know this is working? | A measure names what the organization actually watches, which is often not what it says it cares about. |
| Decision | A choice made, with its reason and date. Superseded by a later one, never overwritten. | Why did this change, and when? | Process changes lose their reason within months unless the reason is a dated thing in its own right. |
| Relation | From | To | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
cites | Document | Document | This document refers to that one, so a fact traced to it can be traced one step further. |
acts_on | Action | The entity a recorded run of this action read or changed. | |
executed_by | Action | Who is accountable for invoking this action: a team, never a person. | |
part_of | Unit|Step | Unit|Process | A containment relationship: a unit within a unit, a step within a process. |
owns | Unit|Role | Process|Measure|Policy|System | Accountability for something. |
performs | Role | Step | The role that carries out a step. |
belongs_to | Role | Unit | The unit a role sits in. |
precedes | Step | Step | Sequencing between steps. |
uses | Step|Process | System | A system the work depends on. |
constrains | Policy | Process|Step|System | What a policy applies to. |
measures | Measure | Process|Unit | What a measure is about. |
changes | Decision | Process|Policy|Unit|Role|System | What a decision alters. |
supersedes | Decision|Policy|Process | Decision|Policy|Process | This replaced that. Use with the temporal fields, never by overwriting. |
documented_in | Process|Policy|Measure|Decision|Role | Document | Where this is written down. |
