The hub
Self-hostable Yjs sync hub for cross-machine canvas collaboration. Deploy once, link your peers, share canvases over the internet — no SaaS, no Cloudflare account, no Yjs knowledge.
Maude's design plugin is canvas-first and local-first. Phase 8 added live multi-tab collaboration — but only on localhost. The hub is how you collaborate across the internet: a small, self-hostable service that relays Yjs state between machines, without exposing anyone's laptop and without a SaaS account.
The mental model
Three copies of the truth, same as solo mode plus one:
- Live (Y.Doc) — canonical on the hub, replicated to every connected peer.
- Disk (
.design/**/*.tsx) — each peer's local mirror, regenerated from the Y.Doc. This is what Claude Code reads and writes. - Git — each peer's local history, reconciled via
git push/pullas usual.
You and your collaborator each run maude design serve against your own clone. Edits flow: your /design:edit writes a file → the sync agent pushes it to the hub → the hub broadcasts → their agent writes their disk → their browser updates. Nobody learns Yjs.
What you actually do
# Once, on a VPS or Fly account:
maude hub deploy fly
# → open the printed /admin bootstrap link → "Generate invite" → copy command
# Each peer, in their repo:
maude design link https://maude-hub-acme.fly.dev --token mau_...
# Daily, unchanged:
maude design serve # browser canvas, now live with the hubRead next
- Deploy a hub — Fly one-command path + Docker on any VPS, per-provider notes, transport hardening.
- Hub pricing — what it costs per month, by provider. (Spoiler: ~$0.45–$6.)
- Linking peers —
link/adopt/unlink/status, the trust gate, the gitignore strategy, and offline-mode behavior.
The hub wraps Hocuspocus (production-tested, MIT, Node-native). Why not PartyKit / Liveblocks: DDR-052.