4 ms·

Show HN: Moxn – Git-like version control for collaborative docs

6 points by mark-weiss 6mo ago

mark-weiss 6mo ago
Moxn is a collaborative editor with git-like version control for documents and a filesystem interface for agents. Even before AI, I wanted docs to behave more like repos for two reasons: - With multiple users live-editing in the same doc, the content I was working on would bounce around in the UI. - I'm naturally iterative and I don’t one-shot prose well. Collaborating with AI added two more pain points: - Multiple agents live-editing the same doc leads to clobbers and deadlocks or file replication and name-based versioning. - Lack of granular agent-specific permissions. The common options helped, but came with tradeoffs: - Git + markdown works well for agents and individual work on a machine, but teams lose multiplayer editing. - Notion and Google Docs work better for teams, but agents have to go through APIs that weren't designed for filesystem-style exploration. The versioning of the docs is revision-based, not branch-based, and search is flat. Moxn is an attempt to combine the git + markdown and Notion/Google Docs worlds to support iterative development and collaboration on content. For humans: a multimodal editor with comments, backlinks and real-time multiplayer. Humans can set branch and section-specific AI permissions. For agents: a filesystem interface with `find`, `search` and `read` tools for content organized by paths, tags, and databases. The part I care the most about is the version control. Docs have branches, commits and merge requests. Merges are common-ancestor aware and conflicts resolve at the section grain. Edits flow into the CRDT (Yjs/TipTap), get flushed to mutable draft records, and frozen on commit. Edits have `git staged` semantics and agents default to auto-commit. I use different workflows for different types of work with Moxn. - Coding: I push complex plans with Mermaid and bug reproductions with screenshots via Playwright to review and leave comments. I have a post-commit hook that runs Claude Code to auto-update docs on a branch with the same name as my code edits and create a changeset, which is a coordinated collection of merge requests. - Content: I fan agents out on branches to propose candidates (still an MLE at heart), read the diffs, cherry-pick chunks that I like, drop into the editor to write and loop. The launch post https://moxn.dev/blog/launch https://moxn.dev/blog/launch was written that way. Rough edges I want to call out: - Editor cold-start and polish aren't at Notion/Obsidian levels yet. - Full-text search only covers the default branch today, and doesn't hit metadata or multimodal content yet. - No audit logging or other enterprise features yet. There’s a free plan with no credit card required. The blog post has screenshots, and the docs have a video walkthrough including a Playwright bug reproduction doc. I'd especially love feedback from anyone using agents against internal docs or knowledge bases who has hit retrieval, coordination or collaboration problems.
bbischof 6mo ago
This is great; it's honestly so f'in annoying working with documents with multiple users AND LLMs
- mark-weiss 6mo ago
  Thank you!
bfollinprm 6mo ago
Man, where was this a couple months ago? I was managing a janky review workflow in my notion spaces to prevent Claude from bashing my knowledge base in those times it starts to circle; so much nicer to just know there's a state to roll back to when those states arise.
- mark-weiss 6mo ago
  The "revert to this commit" + commit based diff viewer hopefully helps the next time this comes up for you. If you have questions don't hesitate to reach out.
drdpr 6mo ago
This is a smart move for agentic workflows. The biggest pain with using LLMs on docs is the clunky API access to tools like Notion. Treating the knowledge base as a structured filesystem via MCP makes it feel like a legitimate dev tool rather than just another wiki.
- mark-weiss 6mo ago
  Thanks, that's the hope!

6 points by mark-weiss 6mo ago

Moxn is a collaborative editor with git-like version control for documents and a filesystem interface for agents. Even before AI, I wanted docs to behave more like repos for two reasons: - With multiple users live-editing in the same doc, the content I was working on would bounce around in the UI. - I'm naturally iterative and I don’t one-shot prose well. Collaborating with AI added two more pain points: - Multiple agents live-editing the same doc leads to clobbers and deadlocks or file replication and name-based versioning. - Lack of granular agent-specific permissions. The common options helped, but came with tradeoffs: - Git + markdown works well for agents and individual work on a machine, but teams lose multiplayer editing. - Notion and Google Docs work better for teams, but agents have to go through APIs that weren't designed for filesystem-style exploration. The versioning of the docs is revision-based, not branch-based, and search is flat. Moxn is an attempt to combine the git + markdown and Notion/Google Docs worlds to support iterative development and collaboration on content. For humans: a multimodal editor with comments, backlinks and real-time multiplayer. Humans can set branch and section-specific AI permissions. For agents: a filesystem interface with `find`, `search` and `read` tools for content organized by paths, tags, and databases. The part I care the most about is the version control. Docs have branches, commits and merge requests. Merges are common-ancestor aware and conflicts resolve at the section grain. Edits flow into the CRDT (Yjs/TipTap), get flushed to mutable draft records, and frozen on commit. Edits have `git staged` semantics and agents default to auto-commit. I use different workflows for different types of work with Moxn. - Coding: I push complex plans with Mermaid and bug reproductions with screenshots via Playwright to review and leave comments. I have a post-commit hook that runs Claude Code to auto-update docs on a branch with the same name as my code edits and create a changeset, which is a coordinated collection of merge requests. - Content: I fan agents out on branches to propose candidates (still an MLE at heart), read the diffs, cherry-pick chunks that I like, drop into the editor to write and loop. The launch post https://moxn.dev/blog/launch https://moxn.dev/blog/launch was written that way. Rough edges I want to call out: - Editor cold-start and polish aren't at Notion/Obsidian levels yet. - Full-text search only covers the default branch today, and doesn't hit metadata or multimodal content yet. - No audit logging or other enterprise features yet. There’s a free plan with no credit card required. The blog post has screenshots, and the docs have a video walkthrough including a Playwright bug reproduction doc. I'd especially love feedback from anyone using agents against internal docs or knowledge bases who has hit retrieval, coordination or collaboration problems.

bbischof 6mo ago

This is great; it's honestly so f'in annoying working with documents with multiple users AND LLMs

mark-weiss 6mo ago
Thank you!

bfollinprm 6mo ago

Man, where was this a couple months ago? I was managing a janky review workflow in my notion spaces to prevent Claude from bashing my knowledge base in those times it starts to circle; so much nicer to just know there's a state to roll back to when those states arise.

mark-weiss 6mo ago
The "revert to this commit" + commit based diff viewer hopefully helps the next time this comes up for you. If you have questions don't hesitate to reach out.

drdpr 6mo ago

This is a smart move for agentic workflows. The biggest pain with using LLMs on docs is the clunky API access to tools like Notion. Treating the knowledge base as a structured filesystem via MCP makes it feel like a legitimate dev tool rather than just another wiki.

mark-weiss 6mo ago
Thanks, that's the hope!