# Secondbrain Teams: you share the piece, not the space.

Source: https://www.secondbrain.media/guide/teams  
Language: en  
Spanish version: https://www.secondbrain.media/guide/teams.es.md

---

Working with other people does not force you to open up your workspace. You share one piece — a document with its whole branch, a recap, a canvas, a task board — and whoever receives it sees it in their own account, in the space they choose, with the permission you gave them and nothing else. Editing is live: two people typing in the same paragraph do not clobber each other.

## The unit you share is the piece

In almost every other tool, sharing means adding someone to a space: they walk in and see what is inside. Not here, and that is a privacy decision rather than a limitation. Your workspace holds your Atlas, your daily notes, your recaps, your clips and your digest: years of material that has no business travelling because you need someone to edit one document.

So the invitation is always about a specific piece, and the guest is not a member of anything: they still own their account, they still see their own space, and what you shared shows up inside it.

- **A document and its branch** — With its sub-documents, canvases, recaps, clips and attached files. Edited by several people, live.
- **A recap** — The summary, the transcript and your meeting notes. Also live, and also with a public link if you need one.
- **A task board** — Not a frozen list: the rule. Whatever comes in later and meets the conditions is visible to the other person too.
- **A person from your Atlas** — You link them to their real user and, from then on, they see the tasks where they are tagged or are the assignee.

> **The three modes, in one line each**
>
> Private and editable — you invite a Secondbrain user by email. They see that piece, with edit or view-only permission.
>
> Public and read-only — you publish and anyone with the link reads it, no account needed. Unpublishing cuts access instantly.
>
> Through a linked person — you do not invite piece by piece: whatever ends up associated with that person reaches them on its own.

## Sharing a document to edit it together

From the document's Share button, on the same screen as the public link.

1. **Type the email** — It has to be a registered Secondbrain user: if there is none, it tells you right there instead of sending an invitation into the void. The app suggests the addresses you have shared with before.
2. **Pick the permission** — Edit or View. You can change it later, and removing someone is one click: access is gone instantly, with nothing to republish.
3. **Decide whether the branch goes too** — With include the tree, everything hanging off the document travels with it. Without it, you share that page and nothing else.
4. **On the other side, they place it** — They get the notice, accept it and choose which of their spaces it appears in and which folder it hangs from. That is theirs: it never touches your tree.

- In the recipient's tree, a borrowed document carries a badge — SHARED or VIEW — so it is never mistaken for one of their own.
- Moving the document in your tree does not move it in theirs, and vice versa: each of you keeps it where it is useful.
- The recipient can leave whenever they want, and stops seeing it without asking you for anything.

_One screen covers both ways: the collaborators who edit with you — with LIVE next to it, because that is what happens — and the public link, switched off here._

## What travels with the branch

Sharing the tree is not sharing a list of documents: it is sharing everything that lives under that document, whatever type it is. And it is dynamic — what you add inside the branch tomorrow is already shared, with nobody to invite again.

| What | Comes with the branch | What the guest can do |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Sub-documents | Yes, at any depth | Read them, and edit them if their permission is Edit |
| Canvases | Yes | See them and draw on them, with changes syncing |
| Recaps | Yes | Read the summary and the transcript, and write in the notes |
| Clips | Yes | Open them and read the saved content |
| Attached files | Yes | Preview and download them |
| Images inside the document | Yes | See them: they are signed for the guest, not served broken |

A canvas or a recap can also be shared on their own, with no tree involved: a recap has its own share button, with the same two modes — private collaborators and a public link.

## Live editing: nobody clobbers anybody

Collaboration is not "you save and then I save". Two people can write in the same paragraph at the same time: the document converges on its own, with no conflicts, no duplicate copies and no dialog asking which version survives.

- **Presence** — Above the document you see who else is looking at it right now, each in their own color.
- **Other people's cursors** — You see where the other person is typing while they type, not when they finish.
- **It saves itself** — There is no save or sync button: changes travel as you write and the document is safe.
- **Recaps and canvases too** — The same mechanism runs on a recap's notes and on a shared canvas.

> **Why there is no "conflicted copy"**
>
> The whole document is not shipped every time someone types: the change travels, and each change knows how to place itself relative to the others. Two simultaneous edits on the same line end up identical for both people, with nothing to resolve.
>
> That holds when someone loses their connection too: when they come back, their work merges instead of overwriting what happened meanwhile.

## The public link

When there is no Secondbrain account on the other side — a client, a supplier, someone who only has to read — you publish the document and send the link.

- No account, read-only: whoever opens the link reads it, cannot edit, and sees nothing else of your space.
- The link is stable: republishing the same document always returns the same address, so the one you sent three months ago still works.
- With the tree included, the published page carries a side index with the branch's sub-documents, canvases, recaps and files: you hand over a whole manual, not a single page.
- Unpublishing cuts access instantly, and the link is kept for the next time you turn it on.
- Recaps publish the same way, with their summary and transcript.

## Sharing a task board

A board is a saved set of conditions: what a task has to be to belong — the project, the organization, the person, the tag. See Tasks for how one is built.

Sharing it is the part that matters, and it is worth understanding before you click: a shared board is not a snapshot of today's tasks, it is the rule.

```
in the board  ⟺  meets the conditions  ∧  not private  ∧  you did not pull it out
              ∨  you put it in by hand
```

Which means: a new task tagged with that project joins on its own, and one that loses the tag disappears. That is why a board with no conditions cannot be shared — it would be "all my tasks, forever" — and why conditions cannot be removed from one that is already shared.

_A board is this: the whole Tasks screen. Whoever receives it opens the same thing — list, kanban and timeline — but inside there are only the tasks that meet the conditions, and nothing else from your space._

- **They look at it their way** — List, kanban or timeline, with their own filters and their own sorting. What they touch on top is theirs and temporary: it changes nobody else's board.
- **They work the tasks** — With edit permission: status, date, assignee, and creating new tasks inside the board. Those are born in the owner's space, properly classified and guaranteed to belong to the board.
- **They talk on the task** — Every task has comments, and both sides see them: that is where something specific gets discussed without leaving for another tool.
- **On the phone too** — Your boards and the borrowed ones open from the pill on Tasks: the list and the timeline. The kanban is not replicated — six columns do not fit on a phone.

- The recipient picks which of their spaces it shows up in, same as with documents.
- A guest cannot touch a task's Atlas tags: they move the board's scope and they belong to the owner.
- Taking the board away from someone, or unsharing it entirely, is one click and cuts access instantly.

_It is the same dialog as a document's — same email field, same Edit/View — with the warning that matters on top: it is a rule, not a snapshot._

## An Atlas person, linked to their user

The other way of sharing does not go piece by piece. In your Atlas, a person is an entry; if that person also uses Secondbrain, you can link the entry to their real user.

1. **You invite from the entry** — On the Atlas person you enter their email. The invitation stays pending, with an amber dot on the entry.
2. **The other person accepts** — They get the notice and choose which of their spaces should receive what comes. Nothing is shared until they accept: linking is an invitation, not an imposition.
3. **From then on, their stuff arrives on its own** — Tasks where that person is tagged or is the assignee, and documents associated with them, show up in their account with no further action from you.

- Tasks that arrive this way are marked with 👥, so they stand apart from their own.
- They arrive read-only: they are tasks from someone else's space, read right where they already look at theirs.
- Documents associated with that person arrive with the link's permission — view or edit.
- Unlinking cuts everything: they stop receiving, and the entry goes back to being an entry.

> **Which one to use when**
>
> If what you want is for someone to see one thing — this document, this board — share the piece.
>
> If what you want is for someone to see everything that concerns them as it appears, link the person: whatever you assign them from now on reaches them on its own, with nothing to remember.

## How an invitation arrives

What you share does not sit waiting for the other person to come and look.

- An email with the name of what was shared and a button to open it.
- A notice inside the app, and a system notification if they have those on.
- A card at the bottom right of the workspace to accept and pick the space, which gathers board invitations and person links together: it is the same question.
- On the phone, the same card above Tasks: an invitation no longer has to wait for the computer.

## What is circulating, on one screen

Sharing is easy to do and easy to forget. So there is a single place that answers "what of mine is out there, and what of someone else's is in here?", with a search box:

- Published — everything with a public link, to copy or unpublish.
- Collaborators — what you share privately, with whom and with what permission.
- With me — what others share with you, who it came from and which space you put it in.
- Boards — the ones you share and the ones shared with you, together.
- Linked — the Atlas people tied to a user, to check the status or unlink.

_Five tabs and a filter. Revoking happens here and it is immediate: you do not have to open the piece to take someone's access away._

## What does not cross the border

The whole point of the model is that sharing one piece does not leak the rest. What a guest does not see, even while working inside your board or your document:

- Your Atlas: the entries, what the AI wrote about each entity and the neighborhood of the graph.
- Your daily notes, your recaps, your clips and any file that does not hang off what you shared.
- Your digest and your reports.
- On a borrowed task, the name of the recap it came from: that is a meeting the guest cannot open.
- On an entity, everything beyond the minimum needed to draw the tag: name, type and color.

And the other way around: someone sharing something with you does not put them in your space or give them access to yours. Each side still owns their own account.

> **Cutting access is immediate**
>
> Removing a collaborator, dropping someone to read-only, unsharing a board or unpublishing a document all take effect right away, with nothing to expire.
>
> And on the other side too: whoever received something can leave and get it off their screen without asking permission.

## Keep reading

- [Memory, docs and canvas](https://www.secondbrain.media/guide/memory) — Documents, live collaboration, canvases, files and AI.
- [Tasks and detection](https://www.secondbrain.media/guide/tasks) — Where your tasks come from, the boards to look at them and deliverables.
- [Atlas and knowledge graph](https://www.secondbrain.media/guide/atlas) — People, projects and organizations, linked on their own.
- [Account security](https://www.secondbrain.media/guide/account-security) — Two-step verification, data export and account deletion.