Project Structure

collaborative_editor/
├── collaborative_editor/       # Django project settings
│   ├── settings.py             # Main configuration
│   ├── asgi.py                 # ASGI entrypoint (WebSocket + HTTP)
│   └── urls.py                 # Root URL routing
├── editor/                     # Main application
│   ├── models.py               # Document, DocumentCollaborator, DocumentVersion
│   ├── consumers.py            # WebSocket consumer for live editing
│   ├── routing.py              # WebSocket URL routing
│   ├── views.py                # Document CRUD, collaborator management
│   ├── forms.py                # Registration/document forms
│   ├── static/                 # CSS and JS (editor.js, collaborators.js)
│   └── templates/editor/       # Document list, editor, collaborator UI
└── manage.py

Why I built this

I wanted to understand what actually happens under the hood in tools like Google Docs or VS Code Live Share — not just "it syncs," but the concrete plumbing: rooms, broadcast vs. echo-to-sender, per-user cursor state, and where permissions have to be checked (view vs. edit) before any of that is trusted. Django Channels turned out to be a good way to build that from first principles without reinventing a WebSocket server.