The operations checkout

A Hostwarden checkout that administers servers is an operations checkout, and the workspace is what makes it one.

memory/ is the workspace (bin/hostwarden-init). Once it exists, Hostwarden's own files are read-only: the auto-update keeps working, and any change to Hostwarden itself goes through review rather than an edit in place. A checkout without a workspace, and every git worktree, is a development checkout instead: it works on Hostwarden's own source and reaches no server. See Working on Hostwarden.

Where production comes from

Production runs a clone — of hostwarden/hostwarden itself, or of a mirror of your own.

• Straight from GitHub is the default and needs nothing else.
• A mirror of your own is optional. It is worth it when Hostwarden has to come from your internal git hosting, when an update should reach production only once your mirror has taken it (the mirror job is the gate), or when you carry local patches. Name it hostwarden-mirror. Its main stays an exact copy of upstream's so the mirror job can keep it current; patches of your own go on a branch of their own, and a checkout on that branch gets no auto-update. See Your own mirror.
• A GitHub fork is not a production copy. It exists to send pull requests: a fork of a public repository cannot be private, and an owner gets one fork of a repository, which pull requests need.

These names are recommendations. Nothing checks them: the workspace alone decides whether a checkout runs production, as described above.