Moving to a server-aware approach for collaboration

Earlier this year, real-time collaboration (RTC) was removed from WordPress 7.0. Since then, I, @alecgeatches, @dmsnell, and others have been working through the valid concerns that led to that decision. We think these concerns call for a change in direction: Collaboration should be server-aware, with WordPress Core in control.

How collaboration works today

The current RTC experiment in Gutenberg merges edits only in the browser. Each browser holds a copy of the post in a CRDT document. Peers exchange updates with each other until every copy matches. The changes exist only in browser memory until someone saves.

This design mirrors