Real-time collaboration

Several people can edit the same draft at the same time. Everyone sees everyone else’s changes as they happen, and the edits merge automatically when editors reconnect.

Presence and cursors

When someone else is in a draft with you, you see their cursor in the text with a colored label showing their name. Each person gets a distinct color. Cursors appear when people connect and disappear when they leave. If someone stays connected but idle, their cursor rests at its last position.

Saving and connection states

Ramble saves as you type. The indicator at the bottom of the editor shows where your changes stand:

BadgeMeaning
In syncThe editor is connected and caught up with the collaboration session
Syncing…Reconnecting and merging changes
Working offlineNo connection; changes are kept in local recovery storage

You never need to save by hand. When a connection drops and returns, Ramble reconnects and syncs your changes.

Local recovery while disconnected

For an already-open draft, Ramble keeps a browser-local recovery copy in IndexedDB. When your connection drops, the editor keeps working. Your changes are stored in this browser as you make them, and the indicator reads Working offline.

When you reconnect, local changes sync automatically with the server. If someone else edited the same draft while you were disconnected, changes are merged — not overwritten.

This is local editor recovery, not an offline-first app shell. Opening new pages or loading Ramble from a cold browser still requires a network connection.

Until they sync, offline changes live only in the browser where you made them. Open the same draft on another device and you will not see them there until you reconnect.

Why there are no merge conflicts

Ramble stores each draft as a conflict-free replicated data type (a CRDT). In practice, that means edits combine predictably no matter who typed what, or in what order:

  • Two people typing in different places: both edits land.
  • Two people editing the same line: both edits are kept, merged character by character.
  • One person deleting a passage while another edits inside it: the deletion removes the surrounding text, and the characters the other person added are kept.

There is no conflict dialog and no “yours versus theirs” choice to make. Everyone converges on the same text.

Who can edit

Editing access comes from your role, not from a link:

  • Workspace owners and editors can edit any draft in the workspace, together, at the same time. See Workspaces & roles.
  • Workspace viewers can open and read drafts but cannot change them.
  • Anyone with a published link reads a fixed, read-only page and never joins the live editing session. See Sharing & access.