Naming Anatomy

Every identifier at Provisionr follows the same structural pattern. Whether you’re naming a Google Group, an AWS role, a shared drive, or a Slack channel, the anatomy is the same.

The Octet Pattern

prv-{team}-{type}-{qualifier}

Read it left to right:

1. Organization — Who owns it (prv)
2. Team / Department — Who operates or is responsible for it (plt, eng, sec)
3. Type — What kind of thing it is (role, mail, admin, dept)
4. Qualifier — The specifics (system, scope, environment, purpose, etc.)

Examples

Identifier	Org	Team	Type	Qualifier
prv-plt-admin-aws	prv	plt	admin	aws
prv-plt-role-wks-admin	prv	plt	role	wks-admin
prv-eng-team-apps	prv	eng	team	apps
prv-plt-alerts-aws-prd	prv	plt	alerts	aws-prd
prv-sal-mail-pipeline-updates	prv	sal	mail	pipeline-updates
prv-flt-infra-monitoring	prv	flt	infra	monitoring

When Team and Type Overlap

Sometimes the second octet (team) and third octet (type) feel redundant. For example, prv-eng-team-apps has eng as the team and team as the type. This is intentional — the second octet always answers “who owns/operates this” and the third always answers “what kind of thing is it.”

When a department group represents the department itself, the type is dept:

prv-eng-dept           → Engineering department group
prv-eng-team-apps      → The "apps" team within Engineering
prv-eng-team-sre       → The "SRE" team within Engineering

Syntax Rules

• All lowercase. Characters allowed: a-z, 0-9, hyphens only.
• Hyphens separate octets. Never use underscores, dots, or spaces in identifiers.
• Optional tokens are shown in [brackets] in pattern definitions and may be omitted.
• Display labels use uppercase (e.g., PRV, PLT) in people-facing names, UIs, and documentation. Canonical identifiers are always lowercase.

prv-plt-role-aws-admin     ✅  canonical (lowercase, hyphens)
PRV – PLT – Role – AWS Admin  ✅  display label (people-facing)
Prv_Plt_Role_Aws_Admin     ❌  mixed case, underscores

Qualifier Depth

Qualifiers can chain to add specificity. Read them left to right as narrowing scope:

prv-plt-role-aws-admin                → AWS admin role, owned by Platform
prv-plt-role-aws-idc-prd-admin        → AWS Identity Center, production, admin
prv-sec-alerts-gl-ci-prd              → GitLab CI alerts, production

There’s no hard limit on qualifier depth, but keep it practical. If a name requires more than 5-6 hyphenated segments, consider whether you’re encoding too much.

Display Names

For UIs, email display names, and documentation, we use a name-first with en dash format:

PRV – Platform – Role – AWS Admin
PRV – Engineering – Team – Apps
PRV – Security – Alerts – GitLab CI (PRD)

The en dash (–, not a hyphen - or em dash —) is the standard separator in display names. This keeps them visually distinct from the kebab-case canonical identifiers.

Next

• Tokens — The full catalog of token variables and their allowed values
• Address Patterns — Canonical patterns for every type of identifier