What Readers See

This document describes the experience from the other side of a share link — useful before you send one.

Opening a shared document

Readers open shared documents directly in a clean reader view. No account, no sign-up wall, no MDflow chrome demanding attention.

The rendered markdown preview is shown by default.

What they can do without signing in

• Read the rendered document.
• Switch views — rendered preview, read-only markdown source, or side-by-side split on larger screens.
• Download the original markdown as a .md file.
• Export a PDF through a print-ready flow.

That is a deliberately generous anonymous experience. A reader can take your document with them, in its original portable format, without giving you anything.

What requires signing in

• Commenting (when you have enabled it).
• Cloning an editable private copy.

Signing in from the shared page returns them to the same page and automatically resumes whichever action they were attempting. They do not lose their place.

Cloning

A signed-in visitor can clone a private, independent copy into their own workspace:

• They choose a destination folder.
• The cloned filename is automatically disambiguated inside that folder.
• Referenced uploaded images are copied, so their copy is self-contained.
• The copy is fully independent — your later edits, deletion, or unsharing do not affect it.

What readers never see

• Your identity or email address.
• Any other document in your workspace.
• Uploaded images the saved public document does not reference.
• Version history.
• Which workspace the document came from, or that other workspaces exist.

For comments specifically: commenters see display names and avatars only, never email addresses — including yours.

Encrypted documents

A shared encrypted document shows a password gate. The reader enters the password you gave them separately. Without it there is nothing to read — the server itself holds only ciphertext. See 01 Document Encryption.

Collections

A shared collection opens in the same reader with a file list, and each document offers the same preview, source, split, download and PDF options.

In Knowledgebase mode (Pro) readers additionally get a homepage at the root URL and full-text search across the collection. See 03 Sharing Collections.

Dead links

An invalid or disabled link shows a friendly unavailable page. It reveals nothing about what was there, or whether anything ever was. See 01 Public Share Links.

For tools and AI agents

Appending .md to a share URL returns the raw markdown with YAML frontmatter (title, canonical URL, markdown URL, visibility). This means a shared MDflow document is directly citable and readable by an AI agent in one request — a useful property if you are publishing reference material you want models to read correctly. See 05 Agent Discovery Files.

Share pages are noindex, so they are not intended to be found by search engines — only by people you send the link to.