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Version: 0.2.3

How collaboration works

A project can be shared: the director on a laptop, the assistant director on a tablet on set, a producer at home, all working on the same project, each on their own device. This page explains what that means before you open the sharing screens themselves.

Every device keeps the whole project​

There is no server holding "the real" project that your device only borrows from. Each device that joins a shared project keeps a complete copy of it — the screenplay, the breakdown, the resources, the schedule, the budget, all of it — and stays fully usable with that copy alone, with no connection at all.

This is what makes the application work on a set with no signal: you keep writing, tagging shots, moving people on the schedule, and every change is saved locally exactly as it would be in a project you never shared.

Edits queue and merge when you reconnect​

While you are offline, your edits simply queue on your device. As soon as a connection to the shared project's relay comes back — wifi, a mobile hotspot, a set network — your device sends its queued edits and receives whatever the others made meanwhile. Both sides end up with the same project.

Two people can safely edit different fields of the same record at the same time — the director adjusting a shot's framing while the assistant director sets its shooting day, say — and both changes survive; neither one overwrites the other. Two edits to the very same field are resolved automatically, without asking you to choose, so sharing never blocks your work waiting for a decision.

The one exception is the screenplay text itself: two people typing in the same passage at the same time are merged line by line, the way a version-control tool would. On the rare occasion the two edits genuinely conflict, you are shown the conflict so you can settle it — this is the only place sharing ever asks you anything.

The sync status indicator​

Once a project is shared, a small indicator sits in the workspace's status bar, visible from every mode. It tells you, at a glance, where your device stands with the rest of the project:

  • In sync — everything you and everyone else has done is reconciled; there is nothing waiting.
  • Syncing — edits are being sent or received right now.
  • Offline, with a count of your own edits still waiting to go out — normal and expected whenever the device has no connection to the relay; nothing is lost, it simply has not left yet.
  • Error — something the relay itself refused, worth a look rather than a simple connection drop.

Click the indicator to open a panel: sync right now, show the invite again, or point the project at a different relay (see The on-set server). The indicator, and its panel, only appear once a project is shared — an unshared project shows neither.

Presence: who else has it open​

A cluster of small avatars in the top toolbar shows every other device that currently has the project open — never people who merely have a copy of it somewhere, only the ones open right now. Hover or click the cluster to see, for each one, roughly what kind of device it is and which mode it is working in (Screenplay, Schedule, Budget…), which is often enough on its own to know whether it is safe to, say, re-order the schedule.

There are no accounts and no names to type in: each device is told apart by a small coloured dot, consistent for that device across a session, with yourself always shown first and highlighted. Presence is entirely live — it says nothing about who has edited, only who is currently on the project — and disappears with the sync indicator on an unshared project.

Where to go next​