Comments

Readers can attach comments to selected passages of a shared document. Comments are available on both plans.

Enabling comments

Commenting is enabled or disabled per document (and per collection), alongside the sharing setting itself.

For public shares, anyone signed in can comment when it is enabled. For private email shares (Pro), you choose per person: view only, or view and comment. See 01 Public Share Links and 02 Private Sharing by Email.

How commenting works

• Comments attach to selected passages in the read-only markdown source view.
• Commented passages are highlighted directly in the markdown view.
• The panel is a side panel on desktop and a slide-over drawer on smaller screens.
• Each comment shows its quoted passage, the author's display name and avatar, and a relative timestamp.
• Jump from a comment in the panel to its highlighted passage.
• Authors can delete their own comments.
• The panel refreshes automatically while a discussion is happening, so you are not reading a stale thread.

Commenting requires signing in

A reader can view a public document anonymously, but must sign in to comment. Signing in from the shared page returns them to the same page and automatically resumes the Comment action they were attempting.

Moderating as the owner

You read and moderate comments from the normal workspace editor — you do not have to open your own share link.

As the owner you can delete any comment, not just your own.

Comments survive unsharing

Two behaviours that save awkwardness:

• Comments are preserved when public sharing is disabled, and shown again when commenting is re-enabled. Turning a link off to tidy up does not destroy a discussion.
• Comments whose original text was edited away are kept as orphaned notes. They remain visible and deletable, but without a stale highlight pointing at text that no longer exists.

Privacy

• Commenters see only display names and avatars — never email addresses. This holds for public and private shares alike.
• Comment access requires possession of the active, random share URL. Knowing a document's ID is not enough to read or write its comments.
• Browser sessions cannot enumerate the comments table directly.
• Disabling sharing invalidates the URL permanently, which cuts off comment access along with read access.

What comments are not

Worth being clear about the boundaries, so you do not plan a workflow around something that is not there:

• No replies. Comments are flat — there are no threads.
• No approval workflows, resolve/unresolve states, or assignment.
• No preview-anchored annotations. Comments attach to the markdown source, not to the rendered preview.
• No notifications. MDflow does not email you when someone comments.

Comments are a lightweight way for readers to point at a passage and say something about it. For anything heavier, the document itself — and the Tasks view — is a better instrument. See 06 Tasks.