Collaborative Markdown Where the Share Link Is the Agent Credential
The shared-note CLI pattern maps to joelclaw review handoffs: humans use the browser, agents use the same permissioned link.
jot is a tiny self-hosted collaborative Markdown editor from Mario Zechner with real-time editing, remote cursors, and inline comment threads. The clever part isn’t “another editor.” It’s that the same note works for humans in a browser and for agents through the jot CLI.
The sharp move is shared mode: a /s/<id> link becomes a scoped credential. If the owner sets the note to view, comment, or edit, a human can open the link and an agent can register that same link with jot register shared https://jot.example.com/s/abc123. No full owner API key, no account ceremony, no “paste this giant doc into chat” bullshit.
For joelclaw, this sits near Obsidian, Markdown, and agent review workflows. It isn’t a replacement for the Vault as durable memory. It’s more like a temporary review room: humans mark up the thing, agents read the comments, apply exact edits, and the finished artifact can move back into the system.
The data model is also nicely boring. The collaborative state lives in JSON, while .md files are written to disk for grep, backup, and external tooling. Rich state where you need it, plain text where you want it.
Key Ideas
- Share links act as scoped credentials, so an agent can read, comment, or edit a note without receiving the owner’s full API key.
- Inline comment threads anchored to text selections make review less lossy than a chat thread floating beside the document.
- The CLI edit command accepts exact
oldText/newTextpatches, which fits agent workflows because edits are explicit and bounded. - Shared mode gives agents the same access level as the human-facing link: view, comment, or edit.
- The JSON sidecar plus derived Markdown file keeps collaborative editing state without abandoning plain-text backups and search.
- The agent setup modal turns “invite an agent into this document” into copy-paste instructions instead of custom integration glue.