Multi-user support — what should it mean for Open Notebook?

[Kandog]

What are you trying to do?

Currently, it only supports single-user use. It would be nice if it could support multiple users and teams. If the notebook is private, then only the user themselves can see it. For team notebooks, all team members can see them

What feels difficult or missing today?

Currently, there is no user management. Anyone can see any notebook

What outcome would help?

Separate private notebook and team notebook

How do you handle this today?

No response

Additional context, examples, or possible directions

No response

How would you like to participate?

• I can add use cases or join the product/design discussion.
• I can help explore the technical approach.
• I can help implement an approved work item.
• I can test or validate a proposed solution.

Before posting

• I searched existing Discussions and Issues for related proposals.

[lfnovo]

Thanks — and good timing. Let me be transparent about where this stands, because it's more deliberate than it may look:

Open Notebook is single-user by explicit decision, not by accident: PDR-001 records that posture — and it also commits every new feature to not preclude multi-user (data models that can carry an owner scope, no hard-coded single-identity assumptions). The door is being deliberately kept open.

What hasn't been made yet is the vision call: what should multi-user mean for a privacy-first, self-hosted tool? The space ranges from household sharing, to team collaboration with shared trust (your private/team notebooks fit here), to SaaS-style multi-tenancy — with very different auth, scoping, and permission consequences. #712 is the execution umbrella (with #607 and #710), but it's been waiting on exactly that decision.

So I'm broadening this Discussion into the canonical home for that question. Your framing is the first evidence entry; another came via #1215, where volunteers reviewing the same papers want to compare annotations — a shared-trust team scenario too.

To sharpen the design space, can you describe your context?

• How many people, and do they trust each other (same team/household), or do you need real isolation?
• What needs to be private: just notebooks, or also sources, API keys, and costs?
• Would per-user logins with shared infrastructure be enough, or do you need admin/member roles?

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If you run — or want to run — Open Notebook for more than one person (family, lab, class, team, small org): describe your scenario here. The most useful format:

• who shares the instance, and how much they trust each other;
• what must stay private (notebooks? sources? API keys? usage costs?);
• what auth you'd expect (simple logins, OIDC/SSO, something else);
• if you've rigged a workaround today (reverse-proxy auth, separate instances per person), what breaks with it.

Every scenario posted here directly shapes the vision call — this is the decision input, not a wishlist.

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Housekeeping: #607 (OIDC) and #710 (refactor proposal) were consolidated into this Discussion as evidence — OIDC is noted as a strong auth candidate once the vision is decided. #712 stays open as the execution umbrella that will receive scoped work items after the call is made.

Status: exploring — this thread gathers the use cases that will shape the multi-user vision; the Issues graduate once that call is made.

[mydeveloperplanet]

Our multi-user scenario would like:

• similar to Open WebUI (keep notebooks entirely private, share them with a group, share them with everyone)
• groups can be created within the application by users which have this authorization
• Auth would be done by means of LDAP