How to build a collaboration app with AI

These are the parts a collaboration app needs before it is useful. Each one is something the plan covers.

• Document and workspace model: Own documents/boards, their metadata, containment (workspace, folder) and lifecycle (archive, restore, delete).
• CRDT sync engine (update log): Merge concurrent edits from many clients without a central lock and without lost writes.
• Update fan-out over SSE: Deliver other editors' updates within a second to everyone in the room.
• Presence and cursors: Show who is in the document, their cursor/selection and which object they are editing.
• Snapshots, compaction and version history: Keep cold-load time and log size bounded; let users name and restore versions.
• Offline edits and reconnect: Editing keeps working without a connection and merges cleanly afterwards.
• Permissions and sharing links: Owner/editor/commenter/viewer roles, workspace roles and revocable link sharing.
• Limits, quotas and backpressure: Keep one hostile or runaway client from degrading everyone else, and keep cost bounded.

• Comments and mentions: Threaded, resolvable comments anchored to a position or object that survive concurrent edits.
• Document search: Find documents by title and extracted text.
• Embedded files and images: Images, attachments and file embeds inside documents.

Each table below becomes part of the Postgres database that belongs to your app.

• documents: visibility: private|workspace|link; head_seq is the last accepted update seq and is only advanced inside the update transaction; state_bytes is the estimate used by the document-size cap; the body lives in doc_updates and doc_snapshots, never here.
• doc_updates: append-only: no UPDATE, rows are only deleted by the compaction job after a covering snapshot exists; payload capped at MAX_UPDATE_BYTES; seq is allocated in the same transaction as the insert, so there are no gaps visible to readers.
• doc_snapshots: kind: auto|named|restore_point; blob in the collab-snapshots bucket, row holds the key; named snapshots are never garbage collected, auto snapshots keep the newest N and one per day for 30 days.
• doc_members: role: owner|editor|commenter|viewer; workspace-level roles are resolved separately; cap on members per document.
• share_links: only the SHA-256 hash of the 256-bit token is stored; link role can never exceed the creator's role; use_count increments atomically and fails closed at max_uses.
• comments: anchor is a serialized CRDT relative position so it follows the text through concurrent edits; body is plain text or sanitised markdown; max length enforced.
• presence_sessions: UNLOGGED table (no WAL cost, may be lost on crash by design); rows older than 30 s are ignored and swept every minute; awareness blob capped at 2 KB.
• collab_usage: feeds quota enforcement and billing; written by a batched rollup, never per update.
• doc_events: share, role change, restore, delete, export: the security-relevant history; insert-only.

• No dedicated websocket tier, Redis pub/sub or message broker in phase 1.
• No server-side interpretation or merge of document semantics (the server orders and stores opaque CRDT bytes).
• No end-to-end encrypted documents in phase 1 (breaks server search, compaction and comments).
• No unbounded rooms: every room and node has a connection cap.
• Dedicated websocket sync tier: plan for it, build it later.
• AI writing and summarisation: plan for it, build it later.

Forge64 matches your description to one of 12 reference architectures, writes the plan and data model into the project, generates the app, and runs a quality gate over the code before you see it. Each app gets its own Postgres database and sign-in with no per-user fee. Hosting on Forge Cloud and Forge Payments are rolling out.

This is a reference design for the category, not a promise that every item is generated today. Built-ins such as email, background jobs, file uploads and search are coming soon, so anything here that needs them is something you add yourself for now.

What does a collaboration app need first?

Document and workspace model, crdt sync engine (update log), update fan-out over sse, presence and cursors, snapshots, compaction and version history and offline edits and reconnect. The plan for a collaboration app covers all of these before it generates code.

What should I leave out of the first version of a collaboration app?

No dedicated websocket tier, Redis pub/sub or message broker in phase 1. No server-side interpretation or merge of document semantics (the server orders and stores opaque CRDT bytes). No end-to-end encrypted documents in phase 1 (breaks server search, compaction and comments).

Which products define the collaboration app category?

Well-known examples include Figma, Notion, Google Docs, Miro and Linear. Use them to decide which features your users expect, then describe your own version.

• Collaboration app architecture
• Example prompt for a collaboration app
• Collaboration app security checklist
• Collaboration app scaling checklist
• Often combined: SaaS dashboard
• Often combined: AI document chatbot
• All app types