The Wiki: Your Universe's Canon

The canon every universe is built around.

Every universe has a wiki: its canon, the agreed-upon reference for the world.

Pages can nest under other pages, every page keeps a full history, and the whole universe has a commit log so you can see how the world changed over time.

There's in-wiki search (and a ⌘K command palette), breadcrumb navigation, and a Create first page prompt for a brand-new world.

The wiki opens by default when you enter a universe, because the world itself is the main attraction.

So how do you change it? That's the next two posts: how you edit, and what happens when you save.

Editing the Wiki: Workspaces & Quick Edit

Two ways to change a wiki page.

There are two ways to make a wiki change.

Quick edit is for fixing a single page, fast.

A workspace is your own private draft where you can edit many pages at once before saving any of them. It auto-saves as you go.

A workspace is single-editor: if someone else has it open, you'll see a read-only notice with a Take over button. (Open the same workspace in two tabs to watch this happen.)

Either way, you finish by committing your changes. What a commit does next depends on your role, which is exactly the next post.

Propose & Merge: How Wiki Changes Go Live

How a suggested change becomes canon.

This is the heart of how Shovel keeps a shared world consistent.

When you commit, one of two things happens, based on your permissions:

If you manage the wiki, you Send to press and your change goes live immediately.

If you're a contributor, you Send to the editor and your commit becomes a proposal, a suggested change waiting for review.

A reviewer opens the proposal and clicks Start review, then either Request changes (a comment is required, so you know exactly what to fix) or Merge (which writes your change into the live wiki).

If changes are requested, you revise and click Ready for review, and it goes back to the reviewer. One reviewer can merge on their own. No committee required.

The result: anyone can suggest, every change is reviewed and recorded, and the world stays coherent.