Now we’re exploring the next step: making agents operate on documents without a browser involved.

The idea is a server-side system where agents can read, write, and transform documents in real time — essentially treating your document layer as a programmable data store that agents can interact with directly. Internally we’ve been joking about the name “real-time agentic document database”, because that’s the shape it’s starting to take.

I’m curious how others would think about this direction.

If you had a database where the fundamental unit wasn’t rows/objects, but documents with semantic structure that agents can mutate, what else could or should it do?

Where are the obvious footguns?

What boundaries would you want between agent autonomy and document integrity?

Would love to hear how you’d expand or constrain a system like this.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46035481

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

We’re the team behind Tiptap, an open source headless text editor framework built on top of ProseMirror. After two months in beta, Tiptap 3.0 is now stable.

Tiptap gives developers full control over their editing experience. You can build a rich text editor, a collaborative doc tool, or something completely custom. It doesn’t come with a UI, so you bring your own components and design.

What’s new in 3.0:

We cleaned up the core, reduced complexity, and made it easier to integrate into modern apps. A few examples:

- Smaller bundles

- Stricter types

- Cleaner API

- New static renderer (output as HTML, Markdown, React, or anything else)

- SSR support

- Several features moved from paid to open source (like emoji, math, file handling)

- General improvements to the editor and extension manager

There are some breaking changes, mostly around package names and how imports are structured. We wrote a migration guide to walk you through it: https://tiptap.dev/docs/guides/upgrade-tiptap-v2

How we make money:

We offer commercial tools like a collaborative editing and AI backend and a set of UI components. The core editor is open source and will stay that way.

We’d love your thoughts. What’s still confusing? What could be better? Happy to answer anything here or in the GitHub repo.

Thanks for reading,

The Tiptap team

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44571088

Points: 9

# Comments: 1

  @tiptap/extension-drag-handle
  @tiptap/extension-drag-handle-react
  @tiptap/extension-drag-handle-vue-2
  @tiptap/extension-drag-handle-vue-3
  @tiptap/extension-emoji
  @tiptap/extension-details-content
  @tiptap/extension-details-summary
  @tiptap/extension-details
  @tiptap/extension-file-handler
  @tiptap/extension-invisible-characters
  @tiptap/extension-mathematics
  @tiptap/extension-node-range
  @tiptap/extension-table-of-contents
  @tiptap/extension-unique-id

Happy coding and enjoy your weekend!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44326955

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

We just shipped an upgrade to our DOCX import and export capabilities, including new extensions, new endpoints, better formatting handling, and custom node support. This may be for you if your product deals with Microsoft Word files in any way.

We rebuilt our DOCX handling pipeline to give developers more control and flexibility:

- Import endpoint: Converts .docx to Tiptap JSON, accurately handles complex formatting (lists, tables, inline styles).

- Export extension: Generates .docx from your editor content, including custom nodes.

- Custom node support: Map internal components (e.g. callouts, embeds) to standard DOCX structures.

- Style control: Define exactly how DOCX output should look to match your app’s UI.

- Frontend or backend: Run conversion wherever it makes sense for your setup.

- Image upload handling: We give you hooks to manage storage your way.

What's still on the roadmap:

1) Import and export of DOCX headers and footers

2) Import and export DOCX pagination

3) Import and export comments, version history, and suggestions

Developer Docs: https://tiptap.dev/docs/conversion/import-export/docx

Product Website: https://tiptap.dev/product/conversion

We’d love your feedback! If you’ve struggled with document conversion (or just want to nerd out a bit), let us know your thoughts and experiences.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44287639

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

We started Tiptap a few years ago because we were frustrated by the state of rich text editors for modern apps. Most were either too limited, too rigid, or tried to solve everything with a monolithic setup. We wanted something more composable and framework-friendly, so we built it.

We originally monetized by selling individual “Pro” extensions. That worked early on, but over time we realized these smaller pieces weren’t where our value was. They were common needs, but not really our moat. In the meantime we’re focusing on larger feature bundles (like collaborative editing, AI-assisted content, documents, etc) that solve complete problems and include backend infra, UI components, and integration logic.

At the same time, we’ve sunset the free tier of Tiptap Cloud (where those extensions were included) and switched to a time-limited free trial. That wasn’t an easy call, but it helps us keep things sustainable while still supporting the open source side of the project and build the ecosystem and platform around.

We chose MIT over more restrictive licenses because we don’t want developers to worry about using these extensions in commercial work or side projects. That freedom is important to us. We’ll keep our core editor and these extensions open. The paid features now live in well-defined bundles tied to real product outcomes.

Here’s what’s free and open:

  - Details, DetailsContent, DetailsSummary
  - Emoji
  - DragHandle (React and Vue)
  - FileHandler
  - InvisibleCharacters
  - Mathematics
  - TableOfContents
  - UniqueID

Thanks, Philip

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44202103

Points: 15

# Comments: 3

From the page:

What does not increase your limit:

Some of Tiptap’s features and common usage patterns do not create new documents. Here are a few scenarios that do not increment your overall count:

Integrating the Editor without Collaboration: You can embed Tiptap’s Editor in your application for local or front-end use without creating any Tiptap Cloud documents. As long as you don’t store documents in the Tiptap Cloud, your count remains unchanged.

Using Content AI without Collaboration: Content AI features, such as autocomplete or content generation, do not require collaboration. If you don’t create new documents or store your AI-generated content in the Tiptap Cloud, you avoid increasing your document total.

Importing other file formats: You can import any number of files in formats like DOCX or MD. This action alone doesn’t raise your count. You only add to the count once you save them as Tiptap documents in the Tiptap Cloud.

Comments and Revisions: Comments and revisions live in the document’s metadata. They never raise your document count, but you must sync the document to the Tiptap Cloud to use them.

In our AI extensions, we provide callbacks like onSuccess that you can hook into, to send analytics events and track the AI's responses.

We're currently working on new open source features for the editor core, such as Markdown support, a decorations API, and editor content migrations: https://tiptap.dev/tiptap-editor-v3

We also recently released Hocuspocus V3 (https://github.com/ueberdosis/hocuspocus/releases/tag/v3.1.0).

If you’ve ever tried wiring up AI inside a document editor, you’ve probably dealt with:

  - Extracting context from complex document structures
  - Handling prompt input + streamed output
  - Supporting undo/redo for AI changes
  - Designing UI for accepting/rejecting changes
  - Multiplayer session state and conflicts

This new Tiptap toolkit gives you a clean way to define AI Agents that can read and edit rich text based on user-defined tasks. You can trigger agents manually, automatically, or in response to structured input.

Works with OpenAI or your own backend + LLM stack. Built on top of the same multiplayer engine behind Tiptap’s collaboration features.

We also include an AI Changes extension so users can review and accept/reject generated edits, like a built-in code review for content.

There’s a live demo here: https://ai-agent.tiptap.dev/

Developer Docs: https://tiptap.dev/docs/content-ai/capabilities/agent/overvi...

Happy to answer questions or just hear what you’re building :-)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44177964

Points: 45

# Comments: 18

Hi HN! Philip here from Tiptap (https://tiptap.dev/). We're excited to announce Tiptap 3.0 Beta, a major upgrade built with and for the open source community. It's still extension-based, still unopinionated, but we've tackled some of the biggest developer headaches:

Enhanced TypeScript support: Strong typing for extension storage and config options.

Server-side compatibility: Manipulate editor content on the server, no DOM required.

JSX support: Leverage a modern, React/Vue-like approach to describing your node output.

Expanded StarterKit: Includes Underline, Link, Trailing Node, and more out of the box.

Markviews for React & Vue: Attach event handlers to marks for truly interactive content.

Consolidated packages: We grouped commonly used extensions (like the new TableKit) to simplify your dependency management.

Static renderer: Render Tiptap documents (to HTML, Markdown, or even React components) in any environment, no browser needed.

Floating UI-based popovers: More reliable positioning and customization than tippy.js.

We’re also exploring new features for later releases, like content migrations (think automated schema updates), advanced markdown support, and a more powerful Decorations API that lets you style or annotate your content without messing up the underlying document.

The new 3.0 docs: http://next.tiptap.dev/

We’d love your help:

- Give Tiptap 3.0 a try by checking out our docs or installing the beta. - Break it (please!) and let us know what we can improve. - Contribute to the open source repos if you’d like. PRs, bug reports, and docs are always welcome. - Let us know what you’ve built or want to build. We’re excited to hear your ideas and feedback.

A huge thanks to ProseMirror and Yjs for being the core building blocks that make Tiptap possible, and we couldn't be prouder to sponsor both projects for their fantastic work and commitment to the OSS community!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43905319

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

Yeah, figuring out the right business model around open source is always a balancing act. And it’s never done. We started Tiptap by monetizing some of the more complex editor extensions, but with the launch of cloud services, we’ve gradually shifted that line to “cloud vs non-cloud,” like you said. Still, that line keeps moving as the ecosystem grows.

Your point about one-time payments for solo developers or indie founders makes a lot of sense. Honestly, we've been actively thinking about such an offering for quite a while and how to make Tiptap more accessible without giving up on sustainability.

These are handcrafted React components that integrate directly with Tiptap’s headless core, things like toolbars, dropdowns, formatting buttons, upload controls, etc. They’re MIT licensed and fully optional. You can use them as-is or customize every part.

There’s also a CLI that sets everything up for you: project scaffolding, recommended defaults, and a working example.

This is for folks who like the flexibility of Tiptap but don’t want to start from zero every time they need an editor UI. It doesn’t change how Tiptap works – just gives you a faster way to build on top of it.

Live demo: https://template.tiptap.dev/simple

Docs: https://tiptap.dev/docs/ui-components/getting-started/overvi...

GitHub: https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap-ui-components

CLI: npx @tiptap/cli init

We’re working on more components (e.g. comments, version history) including some tied to Tiptap Cloud. The ones released now are 100% free and open source.

Would love feedback, especially from anyone who’s built editor UIs before. What should we add next?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43690157

Points: 19

# Comments: 6

While there’s no right or wrong, my experience is that starting as a solo freelancer to cover your bills while building your product usually works better than running an agency. Even with just 3 or 4 people, you’ll spend a ton of time on sales and project management, which can quickly bury your own product work.

We nearly killed our company at überdosis when transitioning from an agency to a product company. On paper, funneling agency revenue into product development sounded perfect. In practice, juggling client deadlines (with real pressure) and the growing needs of Tiptap (maintenance, support, new features) was brutal.

Open source is also powerful. It helps you build a community and attract leads, but it demands a lot of maintenance and support. It’s worth it if you have a clear strategy.

My personal advice: keep your operation as lean as possible, handle a few selective freelance projects to stay afloat, and pour every remaining resource into your product. Once it gains enough traction, you can let go of client work without risking your financial stability. Good luck :-)