CRDT Collaboration
Aura’s project state is a Master Score — a shared, living document synchronized in real time for all participants, human and AI, using CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types).
Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| CRDT engine | Yjs (yjs) |
| Local persistence | y-indexeddb |
| Transport | WebSocket provider |
| Implementation | src/lib/crdt-collaboration.ts |
What you get
- Conflict-free shared state — annotations, insights, and timeline edits merge automatically; no locking, no last-write-wins data loss
- Peer cursor visualization — see collaborators’ attention live on the canvas
- Offline edits — y-indexeddb persists local changes; they merge cleanly on reconnect
- AI as a collaborator — Virtuosos write into the same CRDT document as humans, enabling the multiplayer creative environment of the Pantheon vision
Design notes
CRDTs were chosen over OT (operational transforms) because the ensemble is peer-to-peer in spirit: multiple humans and multiple AIs writing concurrently, sometimes offline. Yjs gives strong eventual consistency without a central authority for conflict resolution.
See also Offline-First PWA for the mutation queue that complements CRDT sync for non-CRDT (Firestore) writes.