Shared-notes: Secure P2P Note Exchange & Commenting between TriliumNext instances - TESTING IT!

[ricolandia]

Hey Triliumers!

I've been working on a way to bridge the "single-player" nature of Trilium for specific collaboration scenarios, and I wanted to share a new tool I just built.

Shared-notes - a fully serverless, peer-to-peer exchange and commenting system designed to let two independent TriliumNext instances interact directly.

🔒 Security (and how it works)

Most sharing workarounds end up hitting CORS walls or, worse, risking ETAPI token exposure. This widget/handler combo bypasses all of that:

• Zero ETAPI Exposure: The generated invitation string contains only an ephemeral, single-use UUID token. Your master ETAPI token is never exposed.
• Server-to-Server Communication: Replies are sent using api.runOnBackend via require('https') straight to the other user's public endpoint. No CORS issues, no external third-party servers.
• Strict Validation: The host's backend handler validates incoming replies against a specific "gate note", enforcing a 7-day expiration and rejecting tokens meant for other notes.
• Threaded Replies: When User B replies, the responses land beautifully in User A's instance as child notes under the original shared note.

🛠️ Quick Preview of the Workflow

1. User A generates an invite string from a note tab and sends it via any secure channel (Signal, Email, etc.).
2. User B pastes it into their "Accept Invite" tab. The full note content is imported into their Shared Inbox.
3. User B creates child notes to reply and hits "Send".
4. User A receives them automatically as threaded replies.

🌐 Note on Language: Since I am based in Brazil, the UI buttons and text strings within the code are currently in Brazilian Portuguese (PT-BR). However, they are entirely self-contained and very easy to translate into English or your preferred language directly inside the note editor!

🧪 Looking for Testers!

This is still an early experiment, and I would love to get some feedback, edge-case discoveries, or code review from the community. If you have a multi-instance setup or a friend running TriliumNext, please give it a spin!

📦 Check out the code and the full architecture layout here:
👉 https://github.com/ricolandia/TriliumNext-Toolkit/tree/main/Shared-Notes

Let me know what you think or if you run into any bugs!

[AlexShyXie]

Very Interesting!

[AlexShyXie]

Right now, the biggest missing piece in Trilium is multi‑user editing – a lot of the other feature requests feel more like small refinements around the edges. What you’ve built here is already very valuable even if/when Trilium gets native multi‑user editing one day:

Multi‑user editing ≠ commenting.

Real‑time co‑editing is about “writing together in the same note”, but there’s still a huge need for async commenting, review, and discussion around shared content. Your tool nails that use case.

Even when Trilium eventually grows its own multi‑user mode, I can see Shared‑notes continuing to be useful as a lightweight, secure way to exchange comments and feedback between instances.

Thanks for building this and sharing it with the community!

[ricolandia]

Hey! Thank you.