Multiplayer editing
Work in the same terminals and documents together, live, with shared presence.
A taiku session is multiplayer by default — several people can type, edit, and watch in the same workspace at once without stepping on each other.
The focus model
Everyone in a session can move around the workspace freely. Several people can type into different terminals at the same time with no interference. The only thing that needs a rule is what happens when two people aim at the same terminal.
taiku handles this with a lightweight focus lock. Whoever is actively typing into a terminal holds it for the moment. Everyone else still sees its output update live, but their keystrokes go elsewhere — so you never get two people scrambling the same command line. Focus moves naturally: when one person stops and you click in, it's yours.
The result is that most conflicts simply don't happen. In a well-organized session, each person tends to work in their own terminals, or one person drives while others follow along. When the work feels crowded, that's usually a cue to split it across more terminals or separate pages.
Co-author documents and terminals
Documents are truly collaborative. Open a markdown or MDX document in the same session and you can both edit it at the same time — your edits and theirs merge live, character by character, with no "save and overwrite" conflicts. You'll see the other person's changes appear as they type, and your own cursor position is preserved while they work elsewhere in the file.
Terminals are shared the same way: every byte of output streams to everyone in real time, including scroll history. One person can run a build while another watches it, or you can hand off mid-task. Because the document and terminal state are part of the session rather than your local screen, anyone who joins picks up exactly where things are.
This is what makes a session feel like a shared room rather than a screen share. You're not watching a recording of someone's work — you're working in the same place at the same time.
Presence and the Users panel
You can always see who else is here. Each participant gets a colored avatar in the toolbar, and the Users panel shows everyone connected, what they're focused on, and who's idle.
Presence updates instantly as people join, leave, or switch terminals. A brief network blip won't bounce someone out of the list — taiku waits a moment for a reconnection before showing anyone as gone, so the panel stays steady instead of flickering.
What's shared
A session shares far more than a single screen. When you're working together, everyone has a consistent view of:
| Shared across the session | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Terminal output and history | Everyone sees the same live output and can scroll back through it. |
| Open documents | Edits merge live; no one's changes get clobbered. |
| Who owns which terminal | It's clear at a glance who created what. |
| Active web previews and tunnels | Shared previews show up for everyone in the session. |
| Plugin panels | The same plugin panels and their state are visible to all. |
| Presence and chat | Names, focus, connection status, and the session chat are shared. |
Each person still keeps their own layout — your arrangement of tiles and pages is yours — but the underlying session is one shared thing. That's the split that lets you work side by side: a common environment you both act on, arranged however suits each of you.