# Editing and collaboration

The Vault editor, how simultaneous editing merges, and version history.

Status: Available

Documentation updated: 2026-09-22

Source: https://docs.orneos.com/docs/vault-editing

## The editor

Rich text with the usual structure: headings, lists, quotes, code blocks, tables, links, and inline images.

There is no save button. Changes are persisted as you type.

## Link a Vault page

Use **Link Vault page** in the editor toolbar to search for a page in the active team and insert its reference. The same picker is available when writing issue descriptions and comments. Linking makes a page discoverable from the task and contributes to its [context bundle](https://docs.orneos.com/docs/context-bundles).

## Export as Markdown

Open a page and choose **Export**, or press `e`  outside the editor. This downloads the current editor content as a `.md` file. It is an individual-page export, not an account backup or a version-history export.

## Simultaneous editing

Several people can edit the same page at once. There is no lock and no "someone else is editing" screen — everyone writes and the text merges.

This is genuinely different from how [issue fields](https://docs.orneos.com/docs/issues) behave, and the difference is worth understanding:

| | Issue fields | Vault pages |
|---|---|---|
| Two people, different fields / paragraphs | Both survive | Both survive |
| Two people, same field / same sentence | Later write wins; the other text is gone | Both edits merge into the text |

Issue fields use last-write-wins per field. Vault uses a collaborative text structure that merges concurrent insertions and deletions character by character, so two people typing in different paragraphs — or even the same paragraph — end up with one document containing both contributions rather than one of them being discarded.

That merge is a merge of *text*, not of meaning. Two people rewriting the same sentence in incompatible ways produces a sentence containing both rewrites. Read the result.

## Presence

You can see who else is in the page while you are editing it.

## Version history

Every page keeps its edit history. You can browse previous versions and restore one.

Restoring writes the old content as a new current version rather than deleting the intervening history, so restoring is itself undoable.

**History is per page and dies with the page**

Version history does not protect against deletion. Deleting a page — or the space containing it — removes the page and its history together. See [Spaces and pages](https://docs.orneos.com/docs/vault-spaces).

## Requires a connection

Vault editing needs the network. Unlike issues, page content is not held in your browser's local database yet, so there is no offline queue behind it: if you lose connectivity mid-edit, stop and wait for it to come back rather than continuing to type.

Making pages readable offline after first load is [planned](https://docs.orneos.com/docs/product-status).

## Related

- [Vault overview](https://docs.orneos.com/docs/vault) — what Vault is for.
- [How sync works](https://docs.orneos.com/docs/sync-engine) — why issues behave differently from pages.