Real-time collaboration

Every Dalea document is multiplayer by default. There is nothing to enable, no "share" toggle: anyone in the workspace with the right role can open the same document and edit alongside you in real time.

What you'll see

• Cursors: coloured carets with your collaborators' names hover where they are typing. Each person's colour is derived from their account id, so the same collaborator is always the same colour.
• Selections: when someone selects text, you'll see the highlighted region in their colour.
• Presence indicator: an avatar stack in the document header shows who else is here right now: up to five initials, then a +N badge for the rest.
• Connection status: a coloured dot and label in the document header, between the page-width toggle and the avatar stack, reads Synced, Syncing…, Connecting…, Reconnecting… or Disconnected. The last two also offer a Reconnect link.

How it works

Conceptually, every edit is an atomic operation that commutes with every other edit. Two people can simultaneously bold the same word while a third deletes it, and all three operations land in a sane final state: no merge prompt, no overwrite, no lost work.

Edits reach the other people in the document immediately. Writing to durable storage is throttled rather than instant: the document is persisted about two seconds after the last keystroke, and at least once every ten seconds while typing continues. There is no save button.

Comments

Comments live in a right-hand margin gutter that is off by default. Turn it on with the Comments button in the document header (or the comment button in the editor toolbar). Dalea opens it for you automatically when a document is In review or Changes requested.

With the gutter on, hover any block and a small round button appears beside it in the margin. Click it to write a comment. The comment is anchored to the block, so if the block moves, the comment moves with it. Comment bodies are plain text.

Comments support threaded replies and resolve/unresolve. A resolved comment stays in the margin, dimmed with its text struck through and a "Resolved" note underneath; click the same control again to unresolve it. Comments are not covered by workspace search.

Version history

Click History in the document header (the clock icon, next to Comments).

• Manual snapshots: give a version a name like "Submission draft v3" or "Pre-IACUC review". Each snapshot stores a full copy of the document and counts against your workspace storage quota, so on a large document they add up, and a snapshot can be refused when the workspace is at quota. Taking a snapshot when nothing has changed since the last one is a no-op rather than a new version.
• Auto snapshots: Dalea creates one whenever the last collaborator disconnects, preserving "what we left off with".
• Show Diff: every row has a Show Diff button that compares that version against the one immediately before it. You cannot pick two arbitrary versions to compare. The diff renders inline on a single copy of the document: additions in green, removals marked with a red indicator, modifications in amber, with a legend and a + / − / ~ count in the header. Blocks such as spreadsheets, charts and data tables are flagged as modified as a whole.
• Restore: non-destructive and owner-only. Restoring an older version appends it as a new head version rather than rewriting history, and if the current live state was never snapshotted, Dalea mints a "Pre-restore snapshot" first so nothing is lost.

Permissions and the read-only mode

If your workspace role doesn't grant edit permission on documents, the editor opens in read-only mode: blocks render normally, but typing does nothing, the slash menu is hidden and a banner below the editor explains the situation. Comments are still available to Commenters and above.

A document that is In review or Approved is locked the same way, for everyone.

If a document is created from a locked template, the lock configuration further restricts what even Editors can change. See Templates and locking.

What's next