Team Mode

Team mode enables collaborative thread trees shared across developers via git.

Overview

In team mode:

• Thread files and tree structures are committed to git and shared
• Each team member has a unique author ID stored locally
• Ownership rules control who can modify which threads
• Members can always branch from any thread to build on each other's work

Setting Up Team Mode

1. Create a team project

project_create(title: "Our App", mode: "team")

2. Commit the .threadmind/ directory

git add .threadmind/
git commit -m "Initialize ThreadMind project"
git push

3. Teammates pull and start working

git pull
# ThreadMind auto-detects the project
# Each teammate gets their own author ID on first use

Author Identity

When a project is created, ThreadMind generates a unique author ID:

{git_user_name}-{4_char_uuid}

Examples:

• mahmoud-a3f9
• sarah-7b2c
• dev-e4d1

This ID is stored in .threadmind/config.json, which is gitignored — each team member has their own local identity.

Ownership Rules

Action	Own Threads	Teammates' Threads
View summary	Yes	Yes
Update summary	Yes	No
Delete thread	Yes	No
Create child thread	Yes	Yes
Switch to	Yes	Yes

The key principle: you can always read and branch from anyone's work, but only modify your own.

Workflow

Daily Development

# Start of day: pull latest threads
git pull

# View the full team tree
# → thread_list

main
├── auth (sarah-7b2c)
│   └── auth-tests (sarah-7b2c)
├── api-routes (mahmoud-a3f9)
│   └── api-validation (mahmoud-a3f9)
└── frontend (alex-1e5f)

Branching from a Teammate

You: Create a thread "API Documentation" under "api-routes"

AI:  ✓ Thread "api-documentation" created under "api-routes".
     Author: sarah-7b2c (you)

Now you own api-documentation and can update its summary, even though its parent api-routes belongs to another teammate.

Sharing Your Work

git add .threadmind/
git commit -m "Add API documentation thread"
git push

Git Merge Behavior

What merges cleanly

• Different thread files — each thread is a separate .md file, so two people creating different threads never conflict
• New threads — adding threads only appends to the tree structure

What may conflict

• tree.json — if two people create threads under the same parent simultaneously, the tree index may conflict. Resolution: accept both changes (both new children should appear)

TIP

If tree conflicts become frequent, you can regenerate the tree from the frontmatter in thread files. The tree is a denormalized index — the source of truth is the thread files themselves.

Best Practices

1. Claim topics by creating threads — create a thread before diving deep into a topic to signal to teammates what you're working on
2. Summarize regularly — teammates benefit from your summaries even if they don't read your code
3. Branch, don't modify — if you disagree with a teammate's approach, create a child thread with your alternative instead of asking them to change their summary
4. Pull before creating threads — avoid duplicate work by seeing what threads already exist