Ghost Docs
Privacy-first P2P dec. collaborative platform
Created on 14th March 2026
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Ghost Docs
Privacy-first P2P dec. collaborative platform
The problem Ghost Docs solves
- Privacy-first collaborative docs lets people co-edit documents without storing plaintext content on a central server.
- User can login using social logins and optional wallet connection. For every user GhostID will be created so that there identity remains completely non-exposed. User can create public and private documents, only public documents are searchable. User will remain completely non-exposed using peerIDs, they can edit docs, chat during live sessions while non-exposed.
- Safer identity model, combines login + optional wallet binding, but uses GhostID in collaboration so raw wallet identity is not exposed in normal flows.
- Decentralized real-time editing, uses peer-to-peer session sync for presence, chat, cursor/events, reducing dependence on a single relay/server path.
- supports private, link-based, and public access modes for docs sharing
- Better trust boundary by keeping backend minimal (metadata, permissions, access checks) while pushing sensitive content handling to client-side encryption.
- Useful for teams handling sensitive notes/specs especially where auditability, ownership control, and resilience matter more than convenience-only cloud docs
Challenges I ran into
- Browser P2P connectivity was unstable (frequent dial failures): fixed by adding better relay target selection, peer hints, retry backoff/muting, and diagnostics to see failure reasons.
- Early collaboration encryption design caused cross-peer decrypt issues: solved by switching from per-peer token secret usage to a shared per-document session key.
- Pubsub behavior in sparse sessions caused noisy failures: treated zero-subscriber publish errors as transient and enabled safer publish behavior to avoid false fatal states.
- Concurrent editing merge quality had edge cases: improved local edit handling to smaller text deltas and added periodic full-state sync for late joiners.
- Auth versus anonymous link-join flow conflicted: updated join flow to support access-token joins with GhostID fallback while still enforcing role checks.
- Async collaboration tests were flaky: replaced short fixed waits with polling/wait-for style checks so integration tests stay stable under load.
Tracks Applied (1)
Build What Big Tech Won't
Fileverse
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