Feature Request: Selective Multi-User Collaboration with Direct Sharing

[SamGreenwood1]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
obsidian-livesync is excellent for personal vault sync across devices, but it currently lacks multi-user collaboration. There's no built-in way to securely share and collaboratively edit specific files or folders with other users, limiting its potential for shared projects or team notes in a self-hosted environment.

Describe the solution you'd like
I propose adding selective multi-user collaboration features to obsidian-livesync, while fully maintaining its current personal sync functionality.

The core additions would enable users to:

1. Share specific files or folders from their vault with other authenticated users on the same livesync server.
2. Provide a direct, simple method for recipients to join these shared items using a "Collaboration ID."
3. Support real-time or near real-time collaborative editing for shared content, building on a diff-based approach as seen in plugins like relay-md-obsidian-plugin.

Detailed Feature Proposal:

1. Server-Side User Accounts:
* The livesync server would need to manage user accounts and authentication, associating vaults with owners.

2. Initiating Selective Sharing (Sender):
* UI Integration: Access Livesync: Share Current File/Folder via Command Palette, Ribbon, or context menu.
* Sharing Dialog: Set permissions (Read-Only/Read-Write) and then generate a unique, copyable "Collaboration ID" for the shared item. This ID is shared directly with recipients.

3. Joining Shared Content (Recipient via Collaboration ID):
* UI Integration: A new command: Livesync: Join Shared Item by ID.
* Workflow: Recipient pastes the Collaboration ID. Upon validation, the plugin prompts for a local vault location (e.g., a "Shared with Me" folder) to download and begin syncing the shared content.

4. Real-time Collaboration & Conflict Resolution (for shared items):
* For actively collaborated files, implement a granular, diff-based synchronization strategy. This is where concepts from projects like relay-md-obsidian-plugin are particularly inspiring, suggesting a shift towards sending atomic changes (Operational Transformation/CRDTs) rather than whole files.
* This approach enables multiple users to edit concurrently with automatic conflict resolution.
* If conflicts occur (e.g., from offline edits), provide clear in-Obsidian notification and support for manual resolution using standard conflict markers.
* Version History: Server-side granular history of changes for shared items, attributed to users, enabling rollbacks.

5. User Experience Enhancements:
* Presence Indicators: Subtle cues in the File Explorer/editor indicating shared status and active collaborators.

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Full vault sharing: Lacks selectivity and privacy.
• Complex in-app invitation systems: Less direct than ID sharing for ad-hoc collaboration.
• External tools (Git/cloud drives): Miss the seamless, real-time Obsidian integration and self-hosted benefits.

Additional context
This feature would significantly enhance obsidian-livesync by adding powerful, self-hosted, and privacy-respecting collaborative capabilities, extending its value beyond individual sync. The "Collaboration ID" provides a straightforward entry point for this new functionality. The technical inspiration drawn from relay-md-obsidian-plugin's approach to granular changes is key for achieving seamless real-time co-editing.

[ThomasSteinbach]

Hi @vrtmrz ,
I would suggest, obsidian-livesync is not far away from providing this feature. What about starting small and implement following simple concpet:

• Every Obsidian instance requires a single user id (like "johndoe" or "foobar123") in its obsidian-livesync configuration
• Every note in Obsidian should have the tag livesync_with in its frontmatter, which is a list of such user ids.
• Download: obsidian-livesync only download notes, when the local user id is in the livesync_with list of the note.
• Upload: obsidian-livesync uploads every note. If the livesync_with tag is missing, it creates this tag with the current user id as list.
• Attachments: obsidian-livesync downloads all non-notes/attachments, which are linked to at least one note, that is downloaded for the current user id.
• Upload Conflicts: If there already is note with the same name owned by someone else, obsidial-livesync asks to change the upload file name. It also shows the user id(s) of the owners of the current filename, such they can talk to each other for merging their note.
• Every owner of a note can add arbitrary user ids to a note, to share it with others. There can be an obsidian action for this.

I thinks this concpet doesn't need groundbreaking new technologies and could be implemented on the current base of Obsidian and obsidian-livesync.

This could excel https://relay.md/relay :)

[dolence]

Any progress on this? I'm searching for information on how to share and sync a vault between two users. Kinda of lost here.