Editor overview

What the editor produces and how it differs from Notion or Word.

The Dalea editor is a real-time collaborative document editor built specifically for life-science work. It produces documents made of structured blocks: paragraphs, spreadsheets, plate maps, charts, registration tables, code blocks. Every block is a typed, schema-validated unit, which means everything you write is also queryable, embeddable elsewhere, and amenable to AI tools.

If you've used Notion or Word, the operating model is familiar but the toolset is domain-specific.

How Dalea differs

vs Notion: You can author plate layouts, registration tables that write straight into a data environment, and in-browser Python natively, without database hacks. Permissions are role-based at workspace level, not page-level.
vs Word: Real-time multiplayer; permanent version history; structured blocks instead of opaque rich-text; AI assistance grounded in your workspace.
vs Benchling: Open data formats and no per-assay licensing. Your schemas are yours; tables can be copied or moved between environments.

Inside any document, type / at the start of a line or after a space. The slash menu opens with five categories:

Text: heading 1, heading 2, bullet list, numbered list, blockquote, divider, section, simple table
Data: registration table, data form, lookup table, inventory lookup
Compute: spreadsheet, chart, AI prompt, addon, Python, code block
Lab: timeline, inventory operation, well plate (6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384 or 1536 wells)
Media: file / image

Blocks you have saved as templates appear in a Your Templates section underneath.

Multiplayer and conflict-free sync

Every keystroke syncs to anyone else with the document open. You'll see their cursors and selections in real time. When two people edit the same paragraph at the same time, both edits land. There is no "merge conflict" notion to interrupt your flow.

There is no save button. There is also no auto-save delay; it's instant.

Comments

Hover any block; click the speech bubble. Comments live in the right margin, anchored to the block. They support threaded replies. Use them for review feedback and questions. Comment text is plain text; to notify a colleague, type @ in the document body instead, which inserts a mention and sends them a notification.

Version history

Every document has an automatic version log. A snapshot is created when the last editor disconnects, and you can also create named manual snapshots ("Submission draft v3"). The diff viewer highlights added, removed and modified blocks inline, in a single view of the document. Restoring a version is non-destructive: it appends the restored content as a new version on top.