UnmarkdownDocs

Sharing and Collaboration

Share published pages and collaborate on documents with view and edit permissions, conflict detection, and realtime awareness.

Sharing a Published Page

Every published document has a unique URL you can share directly. Copy the URL from the publish settings panel or from your browser's address bar. The URL works for anyone, subject to your visibility settings.

  • Copy the URL to share via messaging, email, or social media
  • Public and link-only pages are viewable by anyone with the URL
  • Specific-people pages require an invitation and Unmarkdown account
  • Published pages include Open Graph metadata for rich previews when shared on social platforms

Collaborative Editing

Beyond sharing the published page, you can invite others to edit a document directly. Collaborative editing lets multiple people work on the same Markdown source through the Unmarkdown editor.

To invite a collaborator, open the sharing panel in the editor and enter their email address. They receive an email invitation with a direct link to open the document.

Note
Collaborators need an Unmarkdown account to accept an invitation and access the editor. They do not need a Pro plan unless they want to use Pro-only features like Graphviz or Chart.js insertion.

Sharing Limits

The number of people you can share a document with depends on your plan:

  • Free plan: up to 3 shares per document
  • Pro plan: unlimited shares per document

Shares count both view and edit collaborators combined. The document owner does not count toward the limit.

Permission Levels

When sharing a document for collaboration, you assign one of two permission levels:

View

View permission lets the collaborator open the document in the editor in read-only mode. They can see the Markdown source and the rendered preview but cannot make changes. The formatting toolbar is hidden, and the title field is read-only. This is useful for reviewers or stakeholders who need to see the content without editing it.

Edit

Edit permission gives the collaborator full access to modify the document content. Edit collaborators can change the title, Markdown content, template, and theme mode.

Important
Only the document owner can change publish settings, visibility, URL slugs, sharing settings, and template customizations. Edit collaborators can modify content but not publishing configuration.

Conflict Detection

When multiple people have edit access, Unmarkdown uses optimistic locking to prevent one person from overwriting another's changes:

  • The document owner's saves always succeed (last write wins)
  • Shared editor saves include an expected_updated_at timestamp
  • If the document was modified since the editor's last known save, the server returns a 409 Conflict response
  • The editor shows an amber conflict banner with a Reload button so the collaborator can fetch the latest version

Realtime Awareness

Unmarkdown uses Supabase Realtime to notify collaborators of changes made by others. When a remote save is detected, the editor shows a "This document was modified by someone else. Reload." banner. Your own saves are filtered out using a short time window so you do not see false alerts.

Note
Unmarkdown does not provide true real-time collaborative editing (simultaneous cursors, character-by-character sync). Collaboration is save-based: each person works independently and saves their changes, with conflict detection preventing data loss.

Invite Flow

The invite process works as follows:

  • Open the sharing panel from the editor toolbar
  • Enter the collaborator's email address
  • Select the permission level (view or edit)
  • The collaborator receives an email notification via Resend
  • Existing users: the document appears in their sidebar immediately
  • New users: the invite link includes a signup flow, and the document appears after account creation

You can revoke access at any time from the sharing panel. Revoking access removes the document from the collaborator's sidebar immediately.

Sharing vs. Visibility

Sharing and visibility are independent controls. Sharing determines who can access the editor, while visibility determines who can see the published page. A document can have collaborators with edit access while the published page is set to specific-people or even link-only.