Collections

A collection is a named set of documents, assembled independently of how those documents are filed in folders.

Collections exist to solve a specific problem: how you organize your work and how you present it to a reader are different problems. Your folder tree is for you. A collection is for someone else.

Building a collection

• Add individual documents, or add a whole folder to include every document inside it.
• Pick from across all of your workspaces. The picker groups options by workspace. A collection is not limited to the workspace you happen to be viewing.
• A document can belong to more than one collection, without being moved or duplicated.
• Rename and delete collections freely.

Duplicate collection names get an automatic numeric suffix.

What a collection does not do

A collection is a view. It does not:

• move or copy the underlying documents,
• change how they are filed,
• create a second version of anything.

Delete a collection and its documents are untouched. Edit a document and every collection containing it shows the update.

Collections cannot nest — there are no collections of collections.

Sharing a collection

Two ways:

• A public link — read-only, opens without an account, with optional commenting. Turning the link off permanently invalidates it; turning it back on generates a fresh URL.
• Privately by email (Pro) — the whole curated set behind one private link, for named people.

See 03 Sharing Collections for both in detail.

What readers see

Readers open a clean reader with a file list, and read each document with the same options as a single shared document: rendered preview, markdown source, side-by-side split, download as .md, and PDF export.

Internal links between documents in the same collection resolve to their siblings, so a hub-and-spoke set of documents works as a small website. See 03 Linking Documents Together.

Knowledgebase share mode (Pro)

A collection share renders in one of two presentations, chosen on the collection page:

Folder structure (the default) — the reader browses the folder and document tree.

Knowledgebase (Pro) — a proper documentation site:

• You pick a homepage document, which renders directly at the share link's root URL.
• The sidebar gains a Home entry.
• Visitors get full-text search across the collection's documents.

The search is language-neutral, diacritics-insensitive and prefix-matching — typing private finds privately, and resume finds résumé. Encrypted documents are never searchable.

The mode applies to both the public link and private email-ACL views.

If your Pro plan lapses, the share automatically falls back to the folder structure without losing the stored settings. Nothing breaks and nothing is lost; resubscribe and Knowledgebase mode returns as it was.

A worked example

This documentation is a good illustration. The folders are numbered and nested for your benefit as the author. To publish it, you would:

1. Create a collection and add the whole documentation workspace's folders.
2. Switch the share to Knowledgebase mode.
3. Set 01 Welcome to MDflow as the homepage.
4. Share the link.

Readers land on the welcome page, search across everything, and never see your other workspaces.