Departments and limits

A department is a division inside an organization — a class, a project team, a cost center. It is an account in its own right: it owns labs, domains, devices and services, and it has its own limits. Those limits are carved out of the organization's, so a department can never be given more than the organization has.

Who can create one

Platform administrators, and the organization's owner and admins.

1. Go to Instances → Workgroups.

2. Select the gear on the organization, then open the Departments tab.

3. Select Add department. A dialog opens.

4. Fill it in:

   Field	What to enter
   Department name	Any name, up to 60 characters
   Slug	3–30 characters of lowercase a–z, 0–9, _ and -. It becomes the department's @handle and cannot be changed later. It fills in from the name until you edit it
   Department owner	Starts as you. Pick someone else to make them the owner; they are added to the organization automatically
   Resource limits	A slider for Devices, Domains, Running labs, Services and Storage (GB), each capped at the organization's own limit
   Per-service caps	Optional: a tighter cap for one kind of service. 0 means "use the Services total"

5. Select Create department.

Add members from the department's own Settings → Members tab — anyone you add is enrolled in the organization too.

When you create a department, the shares of all the organization's departments together cannot add up to more than the organization's limit. If they would, the error message tells you how much is already given to other departments.

The organization's plan and limits

Every organization has a plan and a set of limits, shown under Plan & limits on its page and in Account Settings → Account Limits while you are acting as the organization.

Limit	What it caps
Devices	WireGuard devices registered to the organization
Domains	Domains the organization owns
Running labs	Labs the organization runs at once
Services	Database and broker users the organization creates
Storage	The organization's shared home storage

The organization's plan and its limits are set by a platform administrator. Two more limits exist but are not in that table: VPN interfaces (how many private networks it may own) and per-service caps (a tighter cap on one kind of service).

When a limit is not set

A limit of 0, or one that was never set, is not "none" and not "unlimited". The platform's default for that limit applies:

Limit	Default
Devices	5
Domains	5
Running labs	2 on the Free plan, 4 on Pro
Services	2 on the Free plan, 15 on Pro
Storage	50 GB
VPN interfaces	2

On the organization's page these unset limits show as ∞, and in the settings dialog as ∞ / plan. The defaults above are what is actually enforced.

Giving a department its share

Open the department's Settings → General tab. Each limit is a slider.

Limits subdivide the organization's — changes save when you release the slider or edit the number.

The hint beside each slider shows the organization's own limit, for example ≤ 10 (org cap), and the slider cannot go past it. Besides devices, domains, running labs, services and storage, this tab also has VPN interfaces (how many private networks the department may own) and the Per-service caps.

Only the owner and admins of the organization can move these sliders. The department's own admins, and its members, see the numbers read-only with the note Department limits are set by the organization's owner/admins or platform admins.

Shown on labs.selfmade.ninja, the Selfmade Ninja Academy platform. On your own platform you will see your own domain and data.

Storage

Each organization and department has its own shared home storage, separate from its members' personal storage. The Storage tab of the settings dialog shows the volumes and how much is used; refresh re-reads it.

The tab lists the Shared home volume, plus one more volume for each isolated lab copy the account runs. Sizes are remembered between visits, so select refresh after a large change. Only the owner and admins see this tab.

See Storage for how usage is counted.

Removing a department owner

A person who owns a department cannot simply be removed from the organization — you are asked to pick a new owner for the department first. See Members and roles.

Do it with an AI assistant

You can also do this by asking an AI assistant connected to your account — see Connect an AI assistant to set one up.

Ask	What the assistant does
“Create a department called Design under acme”	create_department
“Give Design 3 running labs and 20 GB of storage”	update_department_limits
“How much storage is Design using?”	storage_usage for the department
“Show me everything Design owns”	org_overview

Only the organization's owner or admins can set limits

A department's own admin cannot change them. Setting a limit to 0 means "not set": the platform's default for that limit applies (see When a limit is not set). It does not mean none, and it does not mean unlimited.

Next steps

• Acting as an organization — create things that belong to the department
• Moving resources — when someone leaves