PRD: Shared Workspaces
Status: Draft · Author: Product · Last updated: 2026-07-23
Problem
Teams using the app today hit a hard wall: notes are siloed per account. Sharing means copy-pasting into Notion, emailing raw text, or screen-sharing — all of which break the moment someone edits. Power users report spending 10–15 min per meeting just reconciling versions. This friction pushes collaborative work to other tools, eroding daily active use and weakening retention for teams.
Goals
- Enable real-time co-editing so two or more users can work in the same note without conflicts.
- Give workspace owners meaningful access control — invite, remove, and set role permissions without IT involvement.
- Preserve individual note-taking habits — personal notes stay private by default; nothing is shared without an explicit action.
- Close the retention gap for teams — target a measurable lift in 30-day team retention vs. the current solo-user baseline.
Non-Goals
- Not building a full document-management system (no versioning history UI in v1).
- Not supporting guest/anonymous access — all collaborators must have verified accounts.
- Not replacing or integrating with third-party collaboration tools (Notion, Confluence, Google Docs) in this release.
- Not adding AI-assisted conflict resolution — manual last-write-wins suffices for v1 scope.
User Stories
| # |
As a… |
I want to… |
So that… |
| 1 |
Team lead |
Create a shared workspace and invite my 5-person team by email |
Everyone can access meeting notes without me forwarding anything |
| 2 |
Team member |
See live cursors and edits from colleagues as they type |
I know who's working in the note and don't overwrite their changes |
| 3 |
Workspace owner |
Set a colleague to "view only" on sensitive project notes |
I can share context without risking accidental edits |
| 4 |
Individual user |
Keep my personal notes completely separate from any shared workspace |
My private journal and drafts are never visible to teammates |
Scope
In
- Workspace creation and naming (one workspace = one team unit)
- Email-based invite and accept/reject flow
- Role model: Owner, Editor, Viewer
- Real-time collaborative editing with presence indicators (live cursors, avatar badges)
- Shared note library within a workspace (browse, search, create, delete)
- Notifications: invite received, note edited by teammate (digest, not per-keystroke)
- Mobile read access for shared notes (edit on mobile: v2)
Out
- Version history / change log UI
- Public sharing links (no-login access)
- Cross-workspace note sharing
- Workspace-level AI features
- Mobile collaborative editing
- SSO / enterprise directory sync
Success Metrics
| Metric |
Baseline |
90-day Target |
| Team 30-day retention |
41% |
≥ 52% |
| Workspaces created in first 30 days post-launch |
— |
5,000 |
| Notes created inside workspaces (share rate) |
0% |
≥ 18% of daily note creations |
| Invite acceptance rate |
— |
≥ 65% |
| P99 co-edit latency (keystroke → peer sees) |
— |
≤ 300 ms |
Key Risks
| Risk |
Likelihood |
Impact |
Mitigation |
| Conflict resolution causes data loss on poor connections |
Medium |
High |
Implement CRDT-based merge (Yjs); test under simulated latency ≥ 500 ms |
| Users accidentally share private notes |
Medium |
High |
Default all notes to private; sharing requires an affirmative "Move to workspace" action with a confirmation prompt |
| Invite spam / abuse vector |
Low |
Medium |
Rate-limit invites per account (20/day); require email verification before invite delivery |
| Performance degradation for large workspaces (100+ notes, 10+ simultaneous editors) |
Low |
High |
Load test at 2× expected peak before launch; set hard cap of 20 simultaneous editors in v1 |
| Low invite acceptance hollows out team value prop |
Medium |
Medium |
Send reminder email at 48 h; surface "pending invites" nudge in the inviter's dashboard |