Launch HN: Tiptap (YC S23) – Toolkit for developing collaborative editors

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Our great sponsors
  • SurveyJS - Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App
  • WorkOS - The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS
  • InfluxDB - Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale
  • tiptap

    The headless rich text editor framework for web artisans.

  • Hi HN! We're Nick, Patrick, Philip, Sebastian, Sven, and Timo from Titap (https://tiptap.dev/), an open source developer toolkit for building collaborative editing apps. Our editor framework, based on ProseMirror, is at https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap, and our real-time collaboration backend, based on Yjs, is at https://github.com/ueberdosis/hocuspocus.

    Building editor interfaces like Notion or Google Docs in your web app takes a lot of work and time. Our open source tools and cloud services let you build collaborative content editing faster—in days or weeks, rather than months or years. And this is just for the editor. If you want real-time collaboration or other advanced features like version history in your editor, the overall workload quickly escalates—you will need a robust and serious backend infrastructure that requires even more time to set up and maintain. This doesn’t make sense for most frontend developers or most startups.

    We spent eight years as a digital agency developing applications with complex content editing functionality. We learned the hard way how limited the existing editors were. After building Tiptap as a headless editor framework with an extension-based architecture, we needed to allow multiple users to edit content simultaneously, which got complicated. There was no simple solution that could be integrated quickly. So we built that too.

    The Tiptap editor is based on the JS framework ProseMirror, which is a good foundation for editors. The learning curve for ProseMirror is steep because it's complicated to understand and lacks simple APIs and documentation. It takes a lot of code around ProseMirror to develop a modern user experience. We’ve taken care of that for you.

    Tiptap is headless, so it will work with whatever frontend or design you have in mind—we make no assumptions about your UI. You can use it to develop block-based editors like Notion, classic interfaces like Google Docs, or whatever you need. It's also framework agnostic, so you can use it with React, Vue, etc., or vanilla JavaScript. And it's highly customizable through our extension architecture. We also provide an API to access ProseMirror's internals through Tiptap if you want to dig deep into the core.

    Adding real-time collaboration to your editor is as easy as installing and configuring an extension. Our collaboration backend, called Hocuspocus, uses Yjs. This is a widely used implementation of CRDTs (conflict- free replicated data type). Hocuspocus makes it easy to set up a Node.js websocket server to handle communication between multiple peers to synchronize data. Like the Tiptap editor, Hocuspocus is designed to be extensible according to your needs. Also, Hocuspocus can work independently of Tiptap with other editors like Lexical or Slate.

    An earlier version of Tiptap got discussed a couple years ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901975. We’ve been enjoying wider adoption since then. For example, Substack uses Tiptap for their editor that allows creators to write content on substack.com, and YC uses Tiptap in their Bookface forum (which is basically HN for YC alums).

    With the Tiptap Cloud, we offer managed backend services if you don't want to build and maintain every feature yourself. For real-time collaboration, we provide a cloud infrastructure with multiple datacenter regions where you can deploy Hocuspocus. The Tiptap AI integration beta is a service where you connect your OpenAI API key to our backend and install the Tiptap editor AI extension to get AI writing experience in your editor. Here’s a demo: https://ai-demo.tiptap.dev/

    We invite you to explore Tiptap's capabilities in your app, contribute to its open source development, and (hopefully!) join our welcoming community. We'd love to hear what you've already built with Tiptap or what's stopping you from creating something with it :-) We look forward to all of your comments!

  • react-prosemirror

    A library for safely integrating ProseMirror and React.

  • I've found react-prosemirror [1] to be a light ProseMirror React integration that supports node views. I had also considered Remirror before, but its abstraction and internals seem even heavier than Tiptap's.

    [1] https://github.com/nytimes/react-prosemirror

  • SurveyJS

    Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

    SurveyJS logo
  • hocuspocus

    The CRDT Yjs WebSocket backend for conflict-free real-time collaboration in your app.

  • Hi HN! We're Nick, Patrick, Philip, Sebastian, Sven, and Timo from Titap (https://tiptap.dev/), an open source developer toolkit for building collaborative editing apps. Our editor framework, based on ProseMirror, is at https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap, and our real-time collaboration backend, based on Yjs, is at https://github.com/ueberdosis/hocuspocus.

    Building editor interfaces like Notion or Google Docs in your web app takes a lot of work and time. Our open source tools and cloud services let you build collaborative content editing faster—in days or weeks, rather than months or years. And this is just for the editor. If you want real-time collaboration or other advanced features like version history in your editor, the overall workload quickly escalates—you will need a robust and serious backend infrastructure that requires even more time to set up and maintain. This doesn’t make sense for most frontend developers or most startups.

    We spent eight years as a digital agency developing applications with complex content editing functionality. We learned the hard way how limited the existing editors were. After building Tiptap as a headless editor framework with an extension-based architecture, we needed to allow multiple users to edit content simultaneously, which got complicated. There was no simple solution that could be integrated quickly. So we built that too.

    The Tiptap editor is based on the JS framework ProseMirror, which is a good foundation for editors. The learning curve for ProseMirror is steep because it's complicated to understand and lacks simple APIs and documentation. It takes a lot of code around ProseMirror to develop a modern user experience. We’ve taken care of that for you.

    Tiptap is headless, so it will work with whatever frontend or design you have in mind—we make no assumptions about your UI. You can use it to develop block-based editors like Notion, classic interfaces like Google Docs, or whatever you need. It's also framework agnostic, so you can use it with React, Vue, etc., or vanilla JavaScript. And it's highly customizable through our extension architecture. We also provide an API to access ProseMirror's internals through Tiptap if you want to dig deep into the core.

    Adding real-time collaboration to your editor is as easy as installing and configuring an extension. Our collaboration backend, called Hocuspocus, uses Yjs. This is a widely used implementation of CRDTs (conflict- free replicated data type). Hocuspocus makes it easy to set up a Node.js websocket server to handle communication between multiple peers to synchronize data. Like the Tiptap editor, Hocuspocus is designed to be extensible according to your needs. Also, Hocuspocus can work independently of Tiptap with other editors like Lexical or Slate.

    An earlier version of Tiptap got discussed a couple years ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26901975. We’ve been enjoying wider adoption since then. For example, Substack uses Tiptap for their editor that allows creators to write content on substack.com, and YC uses Tiptap in their Bookface forum (which is basically HN for YC alums).

    With the Tiptap Cloud, we offer managed backend services if you don't want to build and maintain every feature yourself. For real-time collaboration, we provide a cloud infrastructure with multiple datacenter regions where you can deploy Hocuspocus. The Tiptap AI integration beta is a service where you connect your OpenAI API key to our backend and install the Tiptap editor AI extension to get AI writing experience in your editor. Here’s a demo: https://ai-demo.tiptap.dev/

    We invite you to explore Tiptap's capabilities in your app, contribute to its open source development, and (hopefully!) join our welcoming community. We'd love to hear what you've already built with Tiptap or what's stopping you from creating something with it :-) We look forward to all of your comments!

  • yjs

    Shared data types for building collaborative software

  • Note: https://github.com/yjs/yjs for collaborative "document edition, and user cursors"; has WebRTC, web socket, matrix.org backend

  • remirror

    ProseMirror toolkit for React 🎉

  • We have been using Tiptap in production for more than a year in Notesnook[0]. Glad to see it finally launching here on HN!

    We have had quite a long and rough ride in search of a stable rich text editor. We began with Quill.js then migrated to TinyMCE and then finally settled on Prosemirror. Unfortunately, contenteditable is still absolutely horrible on web browsers, especially mobile ones.

    Tiptap is a good choice if you are looking for a framework agnostic and thin abstraction over Prosemirror. However, if you are primarily working with React you should go with Remirror[1]. Tiptap's APIs are heavily inspired by Remirror (almost a duplicate in some places). Remirror takes the edge on the maturity and stability of the API and extensions. The sheer number of utilities offered by them to simplify Prosemirror's APIs is astounding.

    In the end, though, its Prosemirror that's doing all the heavy lifting. And no matter how many abstractions you put on it, you will have to get really, really close in with Prosemirror's internals. Tiptap or Remirror do not make that any easier or harder aside from the initial bootstrapping.

    [0] https://notesnook.com

    [1] https://remirror.io

  • notesnook

    A fully open source & end-to-end encrypted note taking alternative to Evernote.

  • We have been using Tiptap in production for more than a year in Notesnook[0]. Glad to see it finally launching here on HN!

    We have had quite a long and rough ride in search of a stable rich text editor. We began with Quill.js then migrated to TinyMCE and then finally settled on Prosemirror. Unfortunately, contenteditable is still absolutely horrible on web browsers, especially mobile ones.

    Tiptap is a good choice if you are looking for a framework agnostic and thin abstraction over Prosemirror. However, if you are primarily working with React you should go with Remirror[1]. Tiptap's APIs are heavily inspired by Remirror (almost a duplicate in some places). Remirror takes the edge on the maturity and stability of the API and extensions. The sheer number of utilities offered by them to simplify Prosemirror's APIs is astounding.

    In the end, though, its Prosemirror that's doing all the heavy lifting. And no matter how many abstractions you put on it, you will have to get really, really close in with Prosemirror's internals. Tiptap or Remirror do not make that any easier or harder aside from the initial bootstrapping.

    [0] https://notesnook.com

    [1] https://remirror.io

  • novel

    Notion-style WYSIWYG editor with AI-powered autocompletion.

  • Tiptap is incredible! Built https://novel.sh/ with it and the extensiveness & API is chefs kiss! So proud of you guys and the YC funding is truly well-deserved! Congrats again!

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

    WorkOS logo
  • tiptab

    Browser extension for managing tabs and windows.

  • This looks like a great editor. Just a heads up over the name of the project. I've released a browser extension for navigating browser tabs named Tip Tab about 5 years ago [1]. Unfortunately its name is only one letter part from the Tip Tap document editor. Just a clarification to avoid the confusion between the two. Cheers.

    [1] https://github.com/williamw520/tiptab

  • mui-tiptap

    A Material UI (MUI) styled WYSIWYG rich text editor, using Tiptap

  • Going Headless seems like a good approach however it’s made rolling out TipTap for a side project tedious as I need to start with styling basic components.

    It’d be great to have an 80% use-case coverage for common components.

    I’ll call out this wrapper for TipTap + MUI I stumbled on that’s been a nice addition. https://github.com/sjdemartini/mui-tiptap

  • tailwindcss-typography

    Beautiful typographic defaults for HTML you don't control.

  • We've been using https://tailwindcss.com/docs/typography-plugin with Tiptap and it's worked great so far.

  • BlockNote

    A React Rich Text Editor that's block-based (Notion style) and extensible. Built on top of Prosemirror and Tiptap.

  • We think the headless approach is a big factor in why Tiptap has become so popular, but you are right! You can't just add Tiptap to your project without styling. That's why we're always asked about a drop-in Notion-like styling. We don't offer this, but our community has built something that might help you: https://github.com/TypeCellOS/BlockNote

  • writedown

    ✏ writedown - Free and Open Source Markdown Diary. Public Blogs and Private Notes.

  • I'm using Tiptap on writedown (https://writedown.app)

    I really like it. The documentation on extensions is a bit lacking but understandable.

    One thing I don't really like is the price increase as you got funding. I thought the plans would be cheaper, not 5-7x more expensive post-funding.

  • cr-sqlite

    Convergent, Replicated SQLite. Multi-writer and CRDT support for SQLite

  • I didn't know that. Especially the first approach sounds interesting to me, because as far as I know the transactions of Yjs seem to be a problem on heavily changing documents. https://github.com/vlcn-io/cr-sqlite#approach-1-history-free... Thanks!

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

Suggest a related project

Related posts