I’m Building Real-Time Collaboration for PasteDB — Live Editing, Presence & Access Control

#webdev #javascript #buildinpublic #opensource

I’m currently working on collaboration features for PasteDB.
The goal is to turn PasteDB’s editor into a real-time collaborative workspace where multiple people can work on the same paste together.

So far, I’ve implemented:

⚡ Live updates — edits made by one user appear in other users’ editors in real time.
👥 Participant presence — users can see who is currently in the collaboration session.
🔐 Join requests — users can request access to a workspace.
✅ Host approval/rejection — the host can approve or reject incoming users.
📝 Editor/viewer roles — users can join with different permissions.
🔄 Yjs-based synchronization — using Yjs to handle collaborative document updates.

The next feature I’m working on is live cursors — showing exactly where other collaborators are editing.

And honestly, this is currently the part giving me trouble 😅. I’m dealing with cursor position mapping, Yjs relative positions, and synchronization timing. Sometimes a cursor can’t be resolved correctly when updates arrive out of order.
Still working on it and learning a lot along the way.