Real-time collaboration

You can write on your own without ever creating an account. An account is only needed when you want to share a vault and edit it live with other people.

Sign in or create an account

1. Open Settings → Team.
2. Click Sign in.
3. Enter your email and a password, then click Sign in. New here? Choose New here? Create an account and click Create account.

Once you’re signed in, Settings → Team shows your email. Use Sign out when you’re done.

Create a team (optional)

A team is a group of people you can share vaults with in one step. You can skip teams and invite people one at a time instead.

1. In Settings → Team, type a Team name and click Create.
2. Invite people by email. They’ll see the team automatically when they sign up or sign in with that email.

Each account can own up to 2 teams. There’s no limit on how many teams you can be invited to.

Share a vault

1. Open the vault you want to share.
2. Click Share vault under Settings → Vaults → Team, or the Share this vault button in the editor’s top bar.
3. Under Access, choose Only people I invite, or Everyone in one of your teams (they can edit).
4. Click Share vault.

Everyone with access gets the whole vault: notes, folders, boards and attachments.

Invite people

Open the share window for a shared vault (you must be its owner):

• Invite by email. Type an address, choose Can edit or Can view, and click Invite. They get access as soon as they sign in to inkwell with that email.
• Invite link. Choose a role and click Create link, then copy it. Links expire after 7 days. Anyone who has the link and signs in can join.

Under People with access you can change someone’s role between Owner, Can edit and Can view, or remove them with the ×. People you’ve invited but who haven’t joined yet are marked invited.

Roles

Role	What they can do
Owner	Everything, including inviting people, changing roles and removing access.
Can edit	Read and edit notes and boards.
Can view	Read only.

Join a shared vault

1. Open Settings → Vaults and click Join a shared vault.
2. Either paste an invite link (it looks like inkwell://join/…) and click Join, or pick a vault under Shared with you.
3. Choose an empty folder on your computer.

The notes, folders, boards and attachments download into that folder and stay in sync. If you click an inkwell://join/… link, inkwell opens this window with the link filled in.

You must be signed in first, otherwise inkwell tells you to sign in under Settings → Team.

Edit together

While a vault is shared, the top bar of each note shows small coloured avatars for the other people who are in the vault. Avatars for people editing the same note are shown first and in full colour, and hovering one shows their email.

You can see your teammates’ cursors and selections in the note as they type, each in that person’s colour and labelled with their name. Edits from different people are merged as they happen, even when two of you type in the same paragraph.

A status indicator on the Share button tells you where syncing stands: Synced, Syncing…, Offline — changes sync when you reconnect, or Sync error — retrying.

Work offline

You can keep writing without a connection. Your edits are stored on your computer and merged with everyone else’s when you’re back online. Nothing is dropped and nothing is overwritten.

What’s shared and what stays local

Synced with your team	Stays on your computer
Notes and their folder structure	Your themes, fonts and other settings
Boards, columns and tasks	Your Canvas
Attachments added to notes	Other vaults you haven’t shared
	Anything outside the shared vault folder

Stop sharing or leave

• Leave on this device. In the share window, click Stop syncing on this device, then Stop. Your files stay where they are; only syncing ends.
• Remove someone. An owner clicks × next to their name. Their devices stop syncing and keep a local copy of what they already had.