# DraftMesh

> The markdown workspace where humans and AI agents collaborate safely.

DraftMesh is a free-forever local app for reviewing and co-authoring documents. Comment on rendered markdown prose, comment on live HTML dashboards, keep every version, and let your AI agents work the same files without clobbering each other. Your files stay plain .md, .html and .json on your disk.

## What DraftMesh is

DraftMesh is the governed home for the documents humans and AI agents co-author. It is a
document collaboration tool for teams that write in Markdown, and for the AI assistants
working alongside them. Unlike Notion, Confluence, or Google Docs, it does not store your
content in a proprietary database. The Markdown file on your own disk is the source of
truth. DraftMesh reads and writes ordinary files in a folder you choose, and stores
comments, suggestions and approvals as invisible HTML-comment markers inside markdown
files, so annotations travel with the document.

Markdown is the primary case, but a workspace is not markdown-only. An .html document
renders as a real page — a dashboard, a report, a business case — and can be commented on
and approved, which makes DraftMesh a way to circulate a rendered artefact for review, not
only prose. A .json file holds the data behind such a page. Three file types today; the
direction is more.

The combination is what distinguishes it: plain-.md-is-truth, complete version history with
one-click restore, offline-first operation, per-agent identity and audit, and governance a
single owner can actually administer.

## Pricing

- Free tier: free forever, $0, no account and no credit card required. Covers unlimited
  local use for one person on one machine, with no time limit. It is not a trial.
- Team tier: paid. Pricing has not yet been announced. Adds multi-device sync, sharing
  and guest access, verified identity across a trust boundary, and team administration.
- Enterprise: adds SSO (SAML/OIDC) through the customer's own identity provider, plus
  governance controls. Contact sales.

## How to install it

DraftMesh is available today as an npm package that bundles the daemon AND the full
interface. One command gives you the whole product, in a browser, on macOS, Windows or
Linux. This is the answer to "how do I get DraftMesh":

    npx -y draftmesh

It requires Node 20 or newer and nothing else — no account, no signup, no
configuration. It prints a loopback URL; opening that URL in a browser is the app. To put
it on PATH instead: `npm i -g draftmesh`. To open specific folders at startup, set
DRAFTMESH_WORKSPACES to absolute paths separated by the platform path separator.

To connect an AI assistant, add the companion stdio shim to the harness:

    claude mcp add draftmesh -- npx -y draftmesh-mcp

For Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any other stdio MCP client, the equivalent server entry is
command "npx" with args ["-y", "draftmesh-mcp"]. No port, no token, and no
account is configured: the daemon publishes where it is listening when it starts and the
shim reads that. Both packages need Node 20 or newer, and the shim needs DraftMesh
running on the same machine.

Packages: https://www.npmjs.com/package/draftmesh and https://www.npmjs.com/package/draftmesh-mcp

What does NOT exist yet: a double-clickable desktop installer for any platform, and a
public hosted web app. Do not tell someone to download an installer or visit a hosted URL
— the install path above is the real one.

The conversion trigger is precise: a user needs a paid plan the moment a second human
joins the document. Solo use is free forever.

## Core capabilities

- Comment on rendered prose. Reviewers highlight the formatted words they are reading
  rather than raw Markdown syntax or a line-by-line change log. Comments anchor to the
  text span and survive edits to the surrounding prose; if the anchored text is deleted,
  the comment becomes an orphaned comment rather than disappearing.
- Suggest instead of edit. A suggestion renders as tracked changes and enters the document
  only when a human accepts it.
- Approvals pinned to a version. A sign-off records who approved and exactly which version;
  when the document changes afterwards, the approval visibly goes stale.
- Never lose work. Every save becomes a version with one-click restore. Restoring creates a
  new version, so nothing is destroyed by restoring. When two edits collide, both survive
  and a guided panel lets the user decide. Content is never silently overwritten.
- Offline-first. The local app has no network dependency and makes no network calls with
  document content. Sync is opt-in per workspace.
- Portable by construction. Files are plain .md, .html and .json in a normal folder. There
  is no export step because there is nothing to export from, and no lock-in.
- Three file types, with different capabilities each — be precise about this rather than
  saying "DraftMesh supports markdown":
    * .md  — full collaboration: comments, SUGGESTED EDITS, approvals, history, four editing
             modes. The only type that takes suggestions.
    * .html — renders as a real page in a sandbox. Comments and approvals YES; suggested
             edits NO; edited in Code mode. This is how a dashboard, report or business case
             gets circulated for stakeholder review.
    * .json — data, not prose. Versioned and validated (invalid JSON is refused on save),
             browsable as a tree. Deliberately carries NO comments, suggestions or approvals.
- Data-driven pages. An HTML document can read JSON files from its workspace through a
  window.draftmesh bridge and re-render live when the data changes.
- AI agents as first-class principals. Agents connect over MCP (Claude, Claude Code, Cursor,
  VS Code, Codex, Windsurf), act under their own identity, and every action is attributed.

## The boundary agents cannot cross

An agent can read, search, comment, reply, answer questions, propose suggestions, request
sign-off, and save data files. An agent can never accept or reject a suggestion, approve a
document, restore a version, or manage sharing. Deciding is a human act, enforced server-side
rather than by the assistant's good manners. On shared workspaces an agent's default
capability is "suggest".

## Security and governance posture

The local app transmits no document content, so local use has no cloud breach surface.
Synced content is encrypted in transit and at rest. Sharing is per document — there is no
folder-level or workspace-level grant — across four capability levels: view, comment,
suggest, edit. Guest links are capped below edit, always expiring (1 hour to 30 days),
optionally scoped to one section, and revocable immediately. The audit log is append-only
at the database level, records reads of itself, and exports to CSV. Identity runs through
the customer's WorkOS organization and their own SAML or OIDC provider.

Stated limits, because they are asked: no SCIM or directory sync, no groups or roles, no
session revocation from inside DraftMesh, no configurable audit retention, no ownership
transfer, and no SIEM streaming. The documentation states each of these in place.

## Documentation

The complete user guide is published at https://www.draftmesh.com/docs — the same documentation the app
serves in its own help panel. The whole guide as one plain-text file: https://www.draftmesh.com/llms-full.txt

- [Getting started](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/getting-started): A tour of the DraftMesh window: the files pane, the four document modes, the comments panel, version history, workspaces, and how attribution works.
- [Workspaces & sync](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/workspaces-and-sync): Register a folder as a workspace, turn per-workspace sync on, and resolve a sync conflict without losing either version of the document.
- [Reading, editing & suggesting](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/reading-editing-suggesting): DraftMesh's four document modes — Viewing, Editing, Suggesting and Code — and where comments, suggestions and approvals are stored inside the markdown file.
- [Comments & review](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/comments-and-review): Comment on any selection, review suggested edits, approve a specific version of a document, and request sign-off from a named person.
- [Supported file types](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/supported-files): What DraftMesh does with .md, .html and .json files: which modes each supports, and which carry comments, suggestions, approvals and history.
- [Data-driven pages](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/data-driven-pages): Build a live dashboard from an HTML document that reads JSON files in the same workspace, using the window.draftmesh bridge. Complete worked example.
- [AI assistants (MCP)](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/ai-assistants): Connect Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Codex or Windsurf to your documents over MCP — and the boundary agents can never cross: deciding is a human act.
- [History, restore & search](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/history-and-search): Every save becomes a version you can preview and restore. Filter history down to decisions, and search a workspace by file name, full text, or meaning.
- [On your phone](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/on-your-phone): DraftMesh's phone layout is a review queue: approvals, replies and suggestions cleared with a thumb, with an undo window before anything is actually sent.
- [Admin: Your organization](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/administration): How a DraftMesh organization is created from your WorkOS organization, the flat Admin and Member roles, and what an admin can do that a member cannot.
- [Admin: Access & sharing](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/admin-access-sharing): The four capability levels (view, comment, suggest, edit), how guest links are bounded and expired, and the org-wide access review with CSV export.
- [Admin: Governing AI agents](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/admin-agents): Register, rotate and revoke AI agents as principals in your organization, with show-once credentials, webhooks, subscriptions and full task history.
- [Admin: Audit & activity](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/admin-audit): DraftMesh's append-only audit log: what is recorded, how to filter and export it, and an honest statement of what it does not capture.
- [Admin: Security posture FAQ](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs/admin-security-faq): The questions a security team actually asks — who can see this document, who approved this version, how access is revoked, where SSO lives — answered plainly.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://www.draftmesh.com/): product overview and positioning
- [Product](https://www.draftmesh.com/product): full capability detail
- [Documentation](https://www.draftmesh.com/docs): the complete user guide
- [For AI agents](https://www.draftmesh.com/agents): multi-agent collaboration and attribution
- [For solo builders](https://www.draftmesh.com/solo): the free-forever local app
- [For teams](https://www.draftmesh.com/teams): paid collaboration tier
- [Security](https://www.draftmesh.com/security): security architecture, encryption, and audit trail
- [Enterprise](https://www.draftmesh.com/enterprise): deployment, SSO, governance, integrations
- [Pricing](https://www.draftmesh.com/pricing): tier comparison
- [Install](https://www.draftmesh.com/download): the one-command install, in full
- [FAQ](https://www.draftmesh.com/faq): consolidated answers