---
title: Hub and Spoke
slug: hub-and-spoke
kind: ia
summary: A central object with everything else hanging off it — the shape most business software actually is, and the one that decides what "home" means.
problem: >-
  Navigation gets built around record types, so a person working on one client
  visits five sections to assemble what they need. The software's structure
  mirrors the database rather than the thing people actually work on.
family: [orient, find]
principles: [orientation, minimize-distance, surface-dont-bury]
status: stable
visibility: public
related:
  - title: Object Identity Header
    url: /patterns/object-identity-header
    summary: What the hub's page opens with once you have identified the central object.
  - title: Inbox-First Application
    url: /patterns/inbox-first-application
    summary: The alternative front door, when the job is queue-shaped rather than object-shaped.
---

## The shape

```
                    ┌───────────────┐
             ┌──────│  THE CLIENT   │──────┐
             │      │  (the hub)    │      │
        ┌────▼───┐  └───┬───────┬───┘  ┌───▼────┐
        │  Jobs  │      │       │      │Invoices│
        └────────┘  ┌───▼───┐ ┌─▼────┐ └────────┘
                    │ Files │ │People│
                    └───────┘ └──────┘
```

One object is the centre of gravity. Everything else is reached **through** it,
and the hub's page is where a person spends their time.

## Finding the hub

The hub is the noun people say when they describe their work. Not the noun with
the most rows — the one that other things belong *to*.

Ask what someone means when they say "let me pull that up". In a construction
business it is the project. In a law firm it is the matter. In a clinic it is
the patient. In an agency it is the client. Almost every business has one, and
almost every internal tool built without asking gets it wrong — because a
developer looking at the schema sees six equally-important tables.

The consequence of getting it wrong is not subtle: people navigate constantly,
because the thing they hold in their head is not a place they can go.

## What follows once you know it

- **The hub gets a real page**, not a row in a list. It is where people spend
  time, so it earns [tabs](/patterns/tabs) or
  [sections](/patterns/collapsible-section) rather than a form.
- **Spokes appear on the hub**, in summary, with counts — jobs, invoices, files
  — so the hub answers most questions without leaving it.
- **Spoke records link back**, always, so someone who arrives at an invoice from
  search can get to the client in one click.
- **Search prioritises hubs.** When someone types a name, the client should rank
  above the invoice that mentions it.
- **Global lists still exist** — all invoices, all jobs — because
  cross-hub questions are real. They are just not the primary path.

## The failure this prevents

Without a hub, the work of assembling context falls on the person, every time.
They open the client list, find the client, note the name, go to jobs, filter by
that name, go to invoices, filter again. Nothing is broken and the whole day is
made of it.

That assembly work is also where mistakes come from: filter on the wrong
similar name once, and the conclusion is wrong with no error anywhere.

## Where it goes wrong

- **No hub at all.** Navigation is the table list. The most common shape for
  software built from a schema.
- **The wrong hub** — usually the highest-volume table rather than the one
  people think in.
- **A hub page that is just a form.** The central object of the business gets an
  edit form for its own fields and no view of anything attached to it.
- **Spokes with no way back**, so arriving from search strands you.
- **Two competing hubs** with no stated relationship, so people are never sure
  which one to open.
- **Everything on the hub page**, which turns the most important screen in the
  product into a [data dump](/patterns/data-dump). The hub summarises spokes; it
  does not contain them.

## Exemplars

**Salesforce** is the pattern at its most explicit — the Account record is the
hub, and the entire product is organised as things related to it.

**GitHub's repository** is a hub that nobody would describe as one, and it is a
good demonstration of the tabs-plus-counts approach: code, issues, pull
requests, actions, all hanging off one object with a permanent identity.

**Practice-management software** across law, medicine and accounting converges
on the same shape — matter, patient, client — which is strong evidence that the
hub is discovered from the business rather than invented in the design.

The extractable rule: **the hub is a noun your customer already says.** If you
have to explain it to them, you picked the wrong one.