Shipping collaborative editing early on a content-first SSR CMS
I’m building an early-stage content-first SSR CMS for developers.
This week, I shipped a first version of collaborative editing — earlier than I originally planned.
A few early users started working on content together and quickly hit the limits of a single-editor workflow. That pushed me to tackle collaboration sooner, even though the product is still very young.
What turned out to be harder than expected:
keeping server-side rendering predictable while multiple users edit at the same time
handling conflicts without over-engineering
making sure previews stay consistent and debuggable
deciding what not to solve yet
The current version is intentionally simple:
basic real-time collaboration
no fancy presence features
no attempt to solve every edge case
But it already removes a lot of friction for small teams working on content-heavy projects.
This reminded me how different collaboration feels when your system is content-first and SSR-driven, compared to traditional client-side editors.
I’m curious:
How early did you add collaboration to your product?
What did you intentionally not build in the first version?
If anyone is interested, the project is here: https://ekit.app
Happy to get feedback or learn from similar experiences.
