Writing together, live
One link, one session, two people in the same script — and a relay in the middle that carries words it cannot read.
Starting a session
Press Share in the header. A panel opens with an invite link; send it to whoever you are writing with, by whatever means you like. They open it, say yes and give a name, and from then on you are typing in the same script, each with your own coloured cursor.
While a session is live the button carries the faces of everyone in the room, and says how many are here. On your own it says Waiting…, because nobody has arrived yet. Stop sharing ends it.
Joining one
Open the link and the app asks Join this writing session? — it never joins on its own, because joining starts relaying your edits to everyone else in the room. It asks your name at the same time: that name signs any notes you leave and labels your cursor for the others, so give the one they will know you by.
If you had unsaved work of your own open, Save my draft first… is offered in the same dialogue. Take it — joining replaces what is on your screen with the host’s script.
What the relay can see
Two browsers often cannot reach each other directly, so edits travel through a relay as encrypted text. The catch a relay usually brings — a server that can read your script — is closed off here.
- Every update is encrypted before it leaves your machine (AES-GCM).
- The key is in the link, after the
#— and browsers never send that part of a URL to any server, so the key never reaches the relay at all. - What the relay does see: a random room name, how many people are in it, and when each edit happens and how big it is — never the words, and never who wrote them. Each browser signs in anonymously, so it also has an id for that session and, like any server anywhere, your IP address.
- The script exists in the clear only in your browsers. While a session is running the encrypted edits sit in the room, which is how somebody joining halfway through catches up on what you have written. When the last person leaves, the room and everything in it is deleted — a few seconds, and we check it.
Which is also the warning: anyone with that link can edit the script. It is the key as well as the address. Send it to the people you mean to write with, and start a fresh session if it goes astray — a new session is a new room and a new key.
While you are in a session
Everything about writing is the same: the same keys, the same elements, the same notes. Two differences are worth knowing.
- The review tools step aside. Suggest changes, merging a draft and the review links are for passing a script back and forth, which is the opposite problem — they are hidden while everyone is in the same room.
- You can see who is here, and where they are: coloured heads on the button, coloured cursors in the script, each with a name on it.
When it ends
Everyone keeps what is on their own screen. If the host stops sharing, a guest is told the session ended and can carry on with that script alone. Save the file as you would any other: a session is a way of writing together, not a place your script lives.
Stopping ends it for good. Sharing again starts a new session, with a new room and a new key, so everybody needs the new link — an old invite can never let somebody back in, which is the point of it. A connection that merely drops is the other case entirely: that one rebuilds itself, and the session carries on.