Parent and child workspaces

Last updated: October 29, 2026

A studio with several games or teams can run one parent workspace with child workspaces under it. Each child is a workspace of its own, with its own library, members and Creative Unit balance, while the parent funds the children, hands teams to them and sets studio-wide rules once.

How it works

A parent workspace sits at the top, usually where the studio buys its Creative Units. Child workspaces sit below it, one per game, team or client, and can have children of their own, up to five levels deep. Work, members and balances stay in the workspace they belong to, and you choose what moves between them. AI controls are the exception: they flow down from the parent to every workspace below it.

We switch parent and child workspaces on for a studio. To set them up, contact the Layer team.

Creating a child workspace

From inside the parent, open the workspace menu at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Create New Workspace. Name it, then tick Create as child workspace of the parent and select Create workspace. You need Manage workspace settings in the parent, and the checkbox only appears when you open the dialog from the workspace that will be the parent. You land in the new workspace, as its admin.

What carries between workspaces

Creative Units

Every workspace spends from its own balance; a child does not draw on the parent's. Move units with Transfer Creative Units on the Usage page, to the direct parent or a direct child. Transferred units keep the expiry and rollover of the purchase they came from. On the parent's Usage page, Child workspace balances shows every child's balance and spend, and Export CSV can cover All workspaces. See Move Creative Units between parent and child workspaces.

Members

Belonging to the parent does not give access to its children. People join a child workspace directly, by invitation, or through a group from the parent assigned to it. If your role in a parent lets you do no more than sign in to it, Layer opens one of your other workspaces instead and leaves the parent out of your workspace switcher.

Groups

Groups stay in the parent and are assigned to the workspace they apply in. An assigned group's members get access to that child with the group's role and usage limit, and every later change in the parent (members, role, limit) follows it there. The child's admins cannot edit it. See Give a group access to a child workspace.

Roles

A custom role created in the parent can be given in every workspace below it, so one definition serves the whole studio. In a child it opens read-only with View permissions; edit it in the workspace that created it. See Create a custom role.

AI controls

A child workspace follows its parent's AI controls as they stand: which models and modalities may run, the Layer agent, content tolerance and sharing. When the parent changes a setting, every workspace below it follows, unless that workspace set its own. A child's admin can override anything the parent did not lock; a value the parent locks holds in every workspace below it. The parent's input guardrails and scoring rules apply in its children too.

Apply to child workspaces, on the parent's Input Guardrails, Output Scoring and Content Policy pages, is a one-off copy: it replaces the selected children's own model availability and content policy with the parent's. It cannot be undone, and only workspaces you administer can be chosen. See Manage AI controls across parent and child workspaces.

SCIM provisioning

One SCIM connection serves the whole studio and is managed from the workspace at the top. In a child, the Security page says SCIM tokens for this workspace are managed in the top workspace. See Set up user provisioning with SCIM.

What it means for you

  • Transfers go one level at a time. To fund a grandchild, send to its parent first, then on from there.

  • A parent cannot be deleted while it still has child workspaces. Delete the children first.

  • Before you delete a child, transfer its remaining Creative Units back to the parent; they do not return on their own.

  • A child starts with none of the parent's members or settings, but it follows the parent's AI controls from the moment it is created. Add its members and fund it before the team moves in, and lock in the parent anything a child must not change.

  • Only Layer can move a workspace to a different parent, or detach it. Contact support if your studio's structure changes.

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