Default spiral application suggest placing your DAO models into separate namespace Database. Both entity and repository class can be located in it.
Let's review such approach by example:
namespace Database;
use Spiral\ORM\Record;
class User extends Record
{
const SCHEMA = [
'id' => 'primary',
'name' => 'string'
];
}
class UserRepository extends RecordSource
{
const RECORD = User::class;
public function findByName(string $name): RecordSelector
{
return $this->find(compact('name'));
}
}
Consider "Source" to be equal to "Repository".
You can use repositories in your controllers and services using DI:
public function countUsersAction(string $name, UserRepository $users): array
{
return [
'status' => 200,
'countUsers' => $users->findByName($name)->count()
];
}