# Scopes

A scope is the namespace segment in `protos.rip/<scope>/<module>` — every module belongs to exactly one scope.

A claimable scope belongs to exactly one organization. Curated mirror scopes are the read-only exception and have no owning org.

Two kinds of claimable scope exist: personal scopes (one per user) and organization scopes (one per team). The buf CLI doesn’t distinguish between them — both expose the same module operations under `protos.rip/<scope>/<module>`.

Every user gets exactly one personal scope, created during sign-up onboarding when they pick their handle. The scope slug is the handle the user picks; it’s also their username for the rest of the product.

The personal scope is owned by an internal “personal org” with the user as the only member, set up during onboarding.

Personal scopes are free and include unlimited public modules; the private-module limit comes from the user’s default plan.

Create an organization scope from the dashboard at [/dashboard/new-org](/dashboard/new-org) with a chosen display name, slug, and plan. The scope slug is independent of the display name — the slug appears in module URLs, the display name appears in the dashboard.

Multiple users belong to an org via memberships, and all members can publish under the org’s scope.

Billing happens at the org level, not the scope level — a paid org with multiple scopes pays once.

Scope slugs follow the same validation as user handles: 2-39 characters, lowercase alphanumeric with single hyphens.

Some slugs are reserved as current or future product paths (for example `dashboard`, `pricing`, `tags`, `sdks`) and cannot be claimed. A separate banned list (offensive words, sourced from web-mech/badwords) is rejected.

Reserved and banned status is checked at the slug-availability call before submission; rejection surfaces in the dashboard as “this name is not available”.

Scope slugs cannot be changed after creation — pick something you can keep.

Claiming a personal-scope handle is part of sign-up; org-scope claims happen at [/dashboard/new-org](/dashboard/new-org).

A small set of scope slugs is reserved for curated mirrors of widely-used upstream proto modules (for example `googleapis`, `bufbuild`, `protocolbuffers`). Those are granted to the protos.rip team’s internal org via an admin-only RPC and cannot be claimed by other accounts.

See [/registry](/registry) for the current curated mirror set.