Collaborative document offline sync

DesignHard50 minFigma and Google style

Your task

Design the sync engine for a collaborative document editor where users edit offline on phones/laptops and sync when reconnected. Two users can concurrently edit the same paragraph, and concurrent edits must merge without a server-side lock and without losing characters. Scale: docs up to a few MB, hundreds of collaborators per doc, sync over flaky mobile networks. Pick a conflict-resolution strategy and justify it against the alternative.

It covers

  • Crdt
  • Operational transform
  • Offline sync