Standardized Repository Layouts for Multi-Project Operations

AI-assisted development has dramatically increased code velocity, enabling solo devel-opers and small teams to maintain dozens of repositories. However, operational overheadspanning backups, secrets management, deployments, and environment configuration scaleslinearly with the number of non-standardized projects. As part of our broader Built-inOps architecture [1]—which aims to compress annual manual toil below 8 person-hoursacross 60+ repositories—this paper focuses on its foundation: the unified directory layout.We introduce stdlayout, the first open-source tool of the Built-in Ops suite, designed toautomatically enforce directory conventions and multi-language ignore configurations acrossrepositories from day one.