Workspaces

Workspaces let you isolate different projects. Each workspace has its own collections, environments, and OAuth configurations stored in a separate directory.

How It Works

A workspace is a directory on disk. When you switch workspaces, the backend reads and writes to that workspace's directory, so collections and environments from one project never bleed into another.

Requesto starts with a built-in workspace named Local Workspace (stored in the Default/ directory). You can create as many additional workspaces as you need.

data/
├── workspaces.json       # Registry of all workspaces
├── Default/              # Built-in workspace ("Local Workspace")
│   └── .requesto/        # All workspace data
│       ├── order.json    # Display order of items
│       ├── collections/  # One JSON file per collection
│       ├── environments/ # One JSON file per environment
│       ├── oauth-configs/ # One JSON file per OAuth configuration
│       ├── mock-endpoints/ # One JSON file per mock server endpoint
│       ├── .gitignore    # Ignores the local/ subdirectory
│       └── local/        # Local-only data (excluded from git)
│           ├── history.json
│           ├── environments.local.json
│           ├── active-environment.json
│           ├── oauth-secrets.json
│           └── oauth-tokens.json
└── workspaces/           # Additional workspaces (created or git-cloned)

Switching Workspaces

The workspace switcher is in the top header bar. Click it to open a dropdown listing all your workspaces. Select one to switch to it.

If a workspace is a git repository, a branch icon appears next to its name.

The search box in the dropdown filters workspaces by name.

Adding a Workspace

Click Add Workspace... at the bottom of the workspace switcher dropdown (or open the workspace manager and click Add Workspace). The dialog offers four ways to add a workspace:

• New — create an empty workspace. Requesto creates the folder and its .requesto/ data directory under data/workspaces/.
• Open Folder — register a folder that already contains Requesto data (for example a project repo with a .requesto/ folder). See below.
• Clone from Git — clone a git repository into data/workspaces/ and register it as a workspace. See Git Integration.
• Import File — restore a previously exported workspace bundle (.json).

When you add a workspace, Requesto switches to it automatically.

Opening an Existing Project Folder

If you've pulled down a project repo that already contains a .requesto/ folder, use Open Folder:

1. Open the Add Workspace dialog and choose Open Folder
2. Select the folder (desktop app) or type its path (web/Docker)
3. Requesto previews what it found — for example "Requesto workspace found — 3 collections, 2 environments"
4. Click Add Workspace

The preview tells you what you're about to open before anything is registered:

• Requesto workspace found — the folder contains Requesto data and will be opened as-is
• No Requesto data here yet — the folder is valid, and a new workspace will be created inside it
• Directory not found — the path doesn't exist on the machine running Requesto

In the desktop app, Browse… opens a native folder picker. In the web/Docker version, type the folder path as seen by the Requesto server — for Docker, mount the host folder first, e.g. -v ~/projects/my-api:/workspaces/my-api, then open /workspaces/my-api.

Older data layouts are migrated to the .requesto/ layout automatically when opened.

Managing Workspaces

Click Manage Workspaces... at the bottom of the workspace switcher dropdown to open the workspace manager.

From here you can:

• Rename a workspace by clicking the pencil icon, which opens a rename dialog
• Remove a workspace from the list (with confirmation). This removes it from your workspace list only - the folder and its files stay on disk and it can be re-added later. You cannot remove the last remaining workspace.
• Export a workspace as a JSON bundle containing all its collections, environments, and OAuth configs
• Import a workspace from a previously exported JSON file (via Add Workspace → Import File)

Renaming a Workspace

Click the pencil icon next to a workspace in either the workspace switcher or the workspace manager. A dialog will appear where you can enter the new name and confirm.

Data Isolation

Each workspace stores its data inside a .requesto/ subdirectory, with one file per item (collection, environment, OAuth config, GraphQL schema profile) so git diffs stay small and merge conflicts are rare:

Data	Location	Shared via git
order.json	.requesto/	Yes
collections/<collection>.json	.requesto/	Yes (one file per collection)
environments/<environment>.json	.requesto/	Yes (one file per environment)
oauth-configs/<config>.json	.requesto/ (no secrets)	Yes (one file per config)
graphql-schemas/<profile>.json	.requesto/	Yes (one file per profile)
mock-endpoints/<endpoint>.json	.requesto/	Yes (one file per mock endpoint)
mock-data/<endpoint-id>.json	.requesto/local/	No
active-environment.json	.requesto/local/	No
history.json	.requesto/local/	No
environments.local.json	.requesto/local/	No
oauth-secrets.json	.requesto/local/	No
oauth-tokens.json	.requesto/local/	No

Older monolithic files (collections.json, environments.json, oauth-configs.json, graphql-schemas.json) are split into this layout automatically the next time the app starts.

The .requesto/local/ directory holds data that should stay local to your machine. Every workspace gets a .requesto/.gitignore automatically (created on workspace creation, clone, git init, and server startup) that excludes the local/ subdirectory from version control. This means Requesto can safely coexist with an existing git project — only the .requesto/ folder is added to your repository.