Collaborating on docs

Docs is built for more than one pair of hands. Open the same document as a teammate and you’ll see their cursor, their selection, and their edits — live, character by character.

Editing together

• Everyone in a doc appears as an avatar near the title.
• Each collaborator gets a colored cursor and selection highlight, labeled with their name.
• Edits merge automatically, even in the same paragraph — there’s no locking and no “someone else is editing” dialog.
• The syncing chip tells you when your latest keystrokes are safely on the server; if your connection drops, the editor says so and reconnects on its own.

Share a doc

New docs are private — only you can open them. To share:

1. Open the doc and click Share.
2. Add people and pick a role for each, or set an access level for the whole workspace.

Role	Can do
Viewer	Read, export, and read comments
Commenter	Viewer, plus add, reply to, and resolve comments
Editor	Read, edit, comment, and export
Owner	Everything, plus sharing and delete — the creator

The workspace-wide setting has the same levels — for example “anyone in the workspace can view, plus these two editors”. Only the owner (or a workspace admin) changes sharing.

Comments

Click the comment bubble in the doc header to open the comments panel.

• Start a thread: select the text you’re commenting on, click + in the panel, and write your note. The thread stays anchored to that text — even while others edit around it.
• Reply and resolve: anyone with comment access can reply in a thread and Resolve it when it’s settled. Resolved threads collapse out of the way and can be reopened anytime.
• Jump to the text: click a thread to select its anchored text in the document. If the original text was deleted, the thread keeps a quote of what it referred to.
• The comment’s author, or the doc’s owner, can delete a thread.

Note

@mentions in comments (which notify the mentioned teammate) are available through the API and CLI today; typing @name in the comments panel is coming with the review sidebar.

Suggesting (track changes)

Turn on Suggest in the editor toolbar and your edits become pending suggestions — green underlined insertions and red struck-through deletions — instead of direct changes, each carrying your name and timestamp.

• Commenters always suggest: someone with comment access can type in the document, but everything they write is a suggestion for an editor to accept or reject.
• Review panel: the diff button in the header lists every pending change by author. Click a change to jump to it; Accept or Reject each one, filter by author, or resolve everything at once with Accept all / Reject all.
• Suggestions imported from a Word file’s tracked changes appear here too, with the original Word authors.
• While suggesting, edits work a paragraph at a time — selections that cross paragraphs ask you to switch suggesting off first.

Versions and redlines

Docs is built for documents that go through rounds of negotiation.

• Pin a version: name the document’s current state (“Sent to opposing counsel, turn 3”). Pinned versions never disappear, no matter how much editing follows.
• Turns: each exchange step — sent, received, or an internal milestone — is a pinned version plus who it went to or came from, forming the negotiation timeline.
• Compare any two versions (or a version against the live document) to get a redline: every difference shown as tracked insertions and deletions. Download it as a Word file with real tracked changes — the counterparty opens it in Word and works with it natively.
• Restore brings the live document back to any pinned version — without erasing anything. A restore is just another edit on the timeline, so you can restore, look around, and restore back.

All of this lives in the review panel’s Versions tab.

Sending a round to the other side

Send (Versions tab) does the whole outbound step in one click: it records a sent turn and downloads two Word files — a clean copy (all suggestions accepted) and a redline with real tracked changes and your comments. Check Scrub to anonymize the redline first: authors become “Author 1, Author 2…” and timestamps are removed, while every tracked change is kept — the usual hygiene step before anything leaves the firm.

Receiving one back

Import takes the Word file the other side returned — with or without tracked changes — and turns it into a received turn:

• Their tracked changes appear as suggestions in the review panel, under their names.
• If they sent a clean file (or your document changed since you sent it), Knobs compares and shows everything they changed as suggestions attributed to them — nothing slips in unmarked, and none of your local edits are lost.
• Their Word comments become comment threads.
• The state just before the import is pinned automatically (“Before …”), so undoing an entire round is one restore.

AI review

Two AI helpers live in the review panel — both work only through suggestions, so nothing changes without a human accepting it:

• Ask AI to revise (the ✦ button next to Accept all / Reject all): describe what you want — “tighten the indemnity clause”, “make the notice periods consistent” — and the proposed edits appear as suggestions authored by the AI, reviewable like anyone else’s.
• Analyze a turn (on a turn card in the Versions tab): AI summarizes what the other side changed in that round, explains each change inline in the changes list, and risk-rates them — high-risk changes are flagged so you read those first.

Working with Google Docs

If the other side lives in Google Docs, skip the file exchange entirely. Connect your Google account once (Settings → Profile → Google Docs), then from the review panel:

• Push sends the document to Google as a native Google Doc — your tracked changes arrive as Google suggestions. The first push creates the file and links it; later pushes update it.
• Pull brings the Google Doc’s current state back: everything changed over there lands as suggestions on a received turn, with the usual pre-import version pinned.

Knobs only ever accesses the Google files it created.

Caution

Push replaces the Google Doc’s current content. If people have been editing on the Google side, Pull first — otherwise their unpulled suggestions are overwritten.

External reviewers (guest links)

Opposing counsel doesn’t need a Knobs account. From Share → External reviewers, enter their email and Create link — you get a private review URL to send them (shown once; create a new one any time). Opening it drops them straight into the document:

• Everything they type is a suggestion under their name — nothing lands unmarked.
• They can read and write comments, which appear under their email address.
• They see this one document only — nothing else in your workspace.
• Links expire after 30 days. Revoking a link cuts access immediately, even mid-session.

View-only mode

If you have view access, the doc opens read-only: the toolbar is hidden, a View only chip shows in the header, and nothing you click will change the document. If someone removes your access while you’re in the doc, the editor switches to an access-removed state rather than pretending you can still type.

Trash, restore, and delete

• Trash: the doc’s owner or a workspace admin can move it to trash. It disappears from lists and search, and open editors are disconnected.
• Restore: from the Trash view, restore brings it back exactly as it was — no edits are lost across a trash/restore round-trip.
• Delete permanently: from Trash, purge a doc (or empty the whole trash) to remove it and its history for good.

Caution

Permanent deletion really is permanent — the document, its images, and its exports are all removed.

Version history

Not yet available — Docs keeps internal snapshots as you work, but a browsable version-history view hasn’t shipped yet. For a point-in-time copy today, export the doc.