Multi-device

Once two devices are paired, every Manuscript in your Trove root is mirrored across both. Editing on one device propagates to the other through Guild as soon as both have internet.

How conflicts are resolved

Scene content uses a CRDT (conflict-free replicated data type). Concurrent edits from two paired devices merge automatically without losing words. The merge is deterministic: every device that sees the same set of edits ends up with the same Scene, byte for byte.

For structured metadata (Scene status, POV, manifest fields), the merge is last-write-wins by wall-clock timestamp. The window where this matters is narrow because metadata is small and writes are infrequent compared to prose edits.

What syncs and what doesn’t

Synced:

• Manuscripts and the full Manuscript Tree under them.
• Codexes linked from those Manuscripts.
• Entities inside those Codexes.
• Drafts (the read-only snapshot kind).
• The user-wide Tome.

Not synced:

• The .trash/ folder. Soft-deletes are local until you purge.
• Local-only settings (editor preferences, window position).
• Your Trove License. Validation happens per machine against Polar.

Transport

Edits go out as encrypted envelopes to the Guild relay; the receiving device pulls them on its next sync. The relay sees ciphertext only.

Offline behaviour

A paired device is fully usable offline. Edits accumulate in the local MLS commit log. On reconnect, the device sends its commits and pulls anything it missed. CRDT merge handles overlapping edits.

If you write on two devices while both are offline, then bring both online, the merge happens whenever either device next reaches the relay.

Mixing Guild sync with file-level sync

Possible, not recommended. If your Trove root is inside an iCloud Drive or Dropbox folder and you have Guild enabled on the same Manuscript, you have two replication paths racing for the same files. Pick one.

The exception is treating file-level sync as a backup target on a single machine while Guild handles cross-device sync — that works because only one machine writes to the synced folder.