Real-time editing: User and state model

Defines participants, actions, states, notifications, permissions, and conflict behavior for real-time editing. This reference fixes the adoption boundary, failure behavior, and observable evidence while leaving environment-specific limits configurable.

Package status: reference context ready for human review. The contract and test scenarios are complete, but no claim is made that an adopting implementation has passed them.

Decision

For Real-time editing, adopt a durable operation log with explicit version and participant identity. Define a deterministic user journey with visible state, reversible choices where possible, preserved input, and accessible recovery. This package is a reference contract: the adopting team must choose numeric limits, providers, jurisdictions, and operational owners from evidence in its own environment.

Scope

• The Real-time editing actors, inputs, outputs, states, policy or schema versions, and externally visible outcomes described by this ux block.
• Primary and alternate interfaces, background work, caches, integrations, support paths, and evidence that can exercise the same boundary.
• Adoption-specific configuration, rollout, recovery, and verification responsibilities needed to apply the reference safely.

Outside this block

• Choosing a universal vendor, framework, jurisdiction, numeric threshold, retention period, or service-level objective for every adopter.
• Claiming that packaged scenarios have run against a downstream implementation or that this reference grants legal, security, or accessibility certification.

Contract

• Assign every durable mutation an operation identifier, actor, base version, server version, and authorization context.
• Choose one conflict strategy per data type and make merge, rejection, and manual-resolution outcomes visible to participants.
• Treat presence and typing indicators as ephemeral hints; never use them as proof of ownership, approval, or a durable edit.
• Preserve an append-only history of material changes even when the current projection is compacted or rebuilt.
• Show progress only while work is actually pending and prevent duplicate activation without hiding the user's committed intent.
• Use plain, action-specific messages that distinguish validation, permission, connectivity, conflict, and terminal failure.
• Choose and version the operation-transform, CRDT, or single-writer strategy per document type; clients cannot mix incompatible algorithms.
• A reconnecting client submits operations against a durable version and receives deterministic replay, transform, or conflict resolution.

Implementation guidance

• Prototype the longest, empty, slow, offline, denied, and assistive-technology paths before locking the happy-path layout.
• Model Real-time editing inputs, outputs, actors, states, invariants, side effects, and evidence before selecting framework or vendor details.
• Store the applicable Real-time editing contract or policy version with material state so migrations, replay, and support decisions remain attributable.
• Introduce the path behind controlled rollout, compare expected and observed outcomes, and keep a tested recovery route until adoption evidence is complete.

Failure handling and safeguards

• Disconnected or stale clients keep recoverable local intent and resynchronize from a durable version before issuing further writes.
• Invalid or contradictory Real-time editing state is rejected or quarantined; the implementation never guesses a value that broadens authority or duplicates an effect.
• Retries are bounded and use durable identity; after exhaustion, work reaches an inspectable terminal state with an accountable owner.

Verification and operations

• Complete the journey with keyboard, touch, screen reader, narrow viewport, delayed network, and a recoverable server error.
• Monitor Real-time editing success, denial, validation failure, dependency failure, retry exhaustion, and recovery by contract version without sensitive payload dimensions.
• Re-run paired positive and negative fixtures after policy, schema, dependency, migration, or boundary changes and preserve the resulting evidence.

Adoption assumptions

• Names and values in the example are a concrete fixture, not universal defaults; adopters replace them through documented evidence and ownership.
• The adopting system can provide authenticated identity, durable operation or record versions, bounded telemetry, and a controlled path for change.

The executable-looking examples in this package are fixtures and acceptance contracts. Run the collection validator to check structure and metadata, then translate and execute the scenarios in the target repository before recording implementation evidence.