Lab Note: Peek Into the Project Folders of the Pros
Gary Ritchie, October 15, 2026
I have kept a working interest in how people structure projects for a long time. Here I present a few simple web apps that allow you to peek into the project folders of the pros – and your own!
Why a wizard
I thought it would be interesting to mix a few pro structures with existing patterns for version and deliverable management, so I built PT Wizard: a short questionnaire that generates a starter structure. Answer a few questions about project type, collaboration, versioning, reviews, and deliverables, and it builds the folder structure, ready to download as a ZIP or a pt-cli template. The inspiration, a reading list of pro structures, is included. The wizard was the first attempt at making those structures customizable instead of just readable.
The gallery as survey
The growing number of examples outgrew the wizard page, so the collection moved out and became PT Gallery. Twelve entries at the time of writing. Five come from credited pros (Dan Mall, Alex Bartz, Ben Gill, Veerle Pieters, Anchorpoint), one from Blender Studio, two cover Godot including a modular architecture credit to GDQuest, and four are house entries for 3D animation, 3D model, branding, and book design.
Each example offers the same: source/credit, a tree preview, ZIP download, pt-cli JSON, and a copyable link. Where the preset somewhat aligns, a Start similar in Wizard loads a similar structure for further customization.
Twelve entries cover the survey today, and the gallery has room for more.
Structure can be personal
The collection makes one thing clear. How we organize files is personal and follows the work. A design project, an edit timeline, and a video game have little reason to look alike. Except, in my case, I have tried exactly that. My system attempts to fit my mix of 3D, design, and development work – and shows, for better or worse, how I’ve tried to make one system fit all to help reduce cognitive load.
How to submit a structure
PT Encode can do the capturing: drop in a folder and it returns a template for review.
To propose a gallery entry, send that link with a few short lines: template name, one line description, credit and source, suggested tags, and contact info. Accepted entries join the gallery with credit.