Thot is a program comprising at minimum a single server and a single client, interacting over any network connection. Thot consists of many interdependent features, which may be characterized as follows:

A Thot server provides a repository for assets. An asset is a logical unit of developer work that has descriptive metadata and is versioned. An asset may comprise a group of assets and therefore provide grouping and hierarchical structure. Also, assets can be shared and reused, so the same assets may be collected into libraries and used in specific projects. As an example, consider a game character asset. The character can be composed of various assets including source code, texture, geometry model, animation, etc. The textures come from a library asset that contains all the textures used by the company.

A Thot client provides the means for creating, revising, and acquiring assets from the server. The organization of asset data on a client is independent of the organization in the repository, so a user may map an asset's content into whatever locations are appropriate for the client. The client keeps no special files for assets and does not require any sort of directory "sandboxing." In addition, a user's revisions are available only on a private branch until the user publishes them. This preserves the user's data in the repository while preventing the problem of code that can't be put in for fear of breaking a product build.

Thot provides customizable workflow through a variety of interlocking mechanisms including user notification, task automation, access control, and custom metadata. To see how these features work together consider the following example. In a given repository all assets must be approved by the producer before being published for others to use. Whenever someone tries to publish an asset, automation rules send a notice to the producer and await a reply. The producer reads the notice and examines the attached changes to the asset. If the producer decides that the asset is ready, then he replies to the notification with an approved message, which automatically completes the publish action. If he replies with a denial then the publish is cancelled. After the publish action completes or is cancelled, the automation rules send a notice to inform the user of success or failure with optional comments from the producer. Thot allows an almost infinite variety of such workflows, which can be customized to a group's particular needs.

The client features two simple user interfaces, graphical and command line, designed to minimize the amount of time and effort required to manage assets. Each interface is adaptable to a user's work habits via customizable action shortcuts for even greater efficiency.

Thot has several features aimed at integrating with a developer's environment. The command line interface allows easy scripting. Both the server and client have plugin interfaces that can be used to extend Thot's capabilities. For example, in the current release the client and server only know how to do scripting with Lua. Writing a plugin gives the user the ability to use other scripting languages, or to provide integration to an external software package.

Currently Thot is available for Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Window XP, and Linux on Intel hardware. Our reference platform for Linux is Ubuntu 6.10, so that is what we currently support, although Thot is likely to work on most recent versions of Linux.

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