In depth

Sharing and mentions

Public links that expire, sharing with someone on your server, and what exactly a mention gives away.

Open a note, use the share control, and create a link. Choose how it ends:

  • On a date — the link stops working then.
  • After N views — it burns out once used up.
  • Never — until you revoke it.

Anyone with the link can read the note, with no account. A link can also grant editing.

Expired and exhausted links are tidied up by a background job rather than lingering; you can revoke any link by hand at any time from the note’s share menu.

Sharing with someone on your server

Share directly with another account and the note appears in their Shared with me. They get exactly what you granted — view or edit — and it ends when you revoke it.

When the note links to other notes of yours, the share dialog offers Also share the notes it links to: all of them, or just the ones you tick. They go to the same person with the same access, so the links work for them as they do for you.

What they can do with it

A note shared with you sits on your desk like your own, with its owner’s face (their initials until they add a picture) at the foot, and Can view when you can only read it. Hover over it for the same actions as your own notes:

  • Pin it, and give it your own tags — they organise your desk and filters, and nobody else’s. The owner’s tags stay the owner’s.
  • Make a copy into your own notes, copy its link, or download it as a .md file.
  • With edit access, also change its colour — colour belongs to the note, so the owner and everyone else see it — and share it onward with someone else. It stays the owner’s note: they see who you added (and who added them), and can change or remove that access like any other.

Shared notes can be selected along with your own; the selection bar pins them, and leaves archiving, sharing and deleting to their owners.

One copied link works for everyone: it opens the note for its owner and for anyone it is shared with, and tells anyone else it isn’t shared with them.

Either way, the note’s card in your grid carries a badge showing it has left the vault, with the names on hover. This is on the card rather than two clicks away on purpose: “who else can read this one” is the question the whole product is built around.

Mentions invite, access is the whole note

Type @ and a username. They get a notice in their Inbox, and Papyra asks whether to share the note with them:

  • Can edit (the default) — they open the note and write in it with you.
  • Can view — they read it, and can ask you for edit access.
  • Don’t share — they see who mentioned them and when, nothing of the note, and a Request access button.

Access is always the whole note or nothing. Requests land in your Inbox, where you approve (as editor or viewer) or decline. If the note is later deleted or locked, the inbox entry says so plainly.

Locked notes never leave

A Vault note is never shareable and never delivers a mention, whatever you type in it. There is no setting to override this. If you need to share something that lives in a locked note, move it to an unlocked one first.

[[double bracket]] links and Linked mentions are navigation within your own vault. Linking to a note gives nobody access to it. In a note shared with you, a link opens the note it points to when its owner shared that one with you too (at whatever access they chose); otherwise Papyra says it isn’t shared with you, and whom to ask.

Smart collections

A collection is a saved rule, not a folder: everything tagged work and pinned, or anything whose text mentions pricing. Build the rule in the UI and the collection stays current as you write.

Notes are not moved or copied into a collection, so a note can be in several at once, or none. Collections are private to you and are not shared by sharing a note.

To pass one on, use the share button on its card in Collections. Only the name and rules travel, never notes, so the rules run against the receiver’s own notes. Send it to someone on your server (it waits in their notifications until they add it), or copy it as JSON and paste it into Collections → Import on any Papyra. A name they already use gets a number.

Revoking

Everything is revocable, and revocation is immediate:

  • A link — the note’s share menu.
  • A person’s access — the same place.
  • A mention — the recipient dismisses it from their Inbox, which drops the grant.

Once revoked, the next request from that link or person is refused. There is no grace period, and nothing is cached on their side that would keep working.

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