Slate: Real-Time AI Collaboration on Code and Docs

Slate is Caiioo's workspace for editing code and documents with the AI. Instead of copying text back and forth, work together in real-time with inline diffs, comments, and version history.

What Slate Can Do

  • Code editing — Write and edit code with syntax highlighting. See exactly what changed and accept/reject changes one at a time.
  • Rich text editing — Create documents with formatting, headings, tables, and lists. Get AI suggestions inline.
  • SVG drawings you can see and refine — Open an SVG (a logo, diagram, or chart) and flip between the source code and a rendered image with one toggle. The AI renders the drawing as it works, sees the result, and iterates—so it can fix a misaligned label or recolor a shape and confirm the change visually in the same turn.
  • LaTeX documents with typeset math — Open a LaTeX document and see a preview with the math properly typeset, while the source stays safely editable in the code view (the preview never rewrites your file). The AI checks the math whenever it edits a LaTeX document and sees errors immediately, so a broken equation gets corrected in the same turn. Pasted LaTeX content is recognized automatically.
  • PDF markup — Ask the AI to draw on a PDF: freehand ink to circle a clause or point an arrow at a figure, notes placed anywhere on the page, and a signature image stamped where you want it. The marks are written into the PDF itself, so they're still there when you download it and open it anywhere else. (A stamped signature is a visual mark only — it carries no identity verification and is not a legally binding e-signature.)
  • Version history — Go back to any previous version. See who changed what and when.
  • Comments — Leave notes on specific parts of your code or document.
  • Edit files in your connected folders — On macOS, Windows, and Linux, open a text file or a Word document straight from a folder you've connected and edit it in Slate. Nothing is copied into the app, and nothing is written to disk until you choose Save file.
  • Show a page right in the chat — An HTML document you've made — an infographic, a dashboard, a one-page report — can render inside the conversation instead of sitting behind a link.

How to Use Slate

The AI opens Slate automatically when you ask for code or document creation:

  • "Write a Python script that scrapes product reviews"
  • "Draft a blog post about machine learning"
  • "Create an HTML page with a contact form"
  • "Edit this document and improve the tone"

When the AI opens a Slate, you can:

  1. Read the code or document — It's displayed with full formatting
  2. Review changes — If the AI proposes edits, see the diffs highlighted inline
  3. Accept or reject changes — Click checkmark to accept, X to reject (one change at a time)
  4. Make your own edits — Directly edit the code or text
  5. Ask for more changes — "Add error handling to this function" or "Make this more concise"
  6. View history — Click "History" to see all edits and revert if needed

Code Features

  • Syntax highlighting for Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, C++, CSS, HTML, SQL, and more
  • Line numbers and bracket matching
  • Inline diffs — See exactly what changed, line by line
  • Per-change accept/reject — Granular control over each edit
  • SVG code ↔ view toggle — For SVG drawings, switch between the raw markup and a rendered preview with a single click; edit the code and watch the picture update

Rich Text Features

  • Formatting toolbar — Bold, italic, links, lists, tables
  • Headings and blocks — Organize with structure
  • Comments — Leave notes without modifying the text
  • Tracked changes — See additions, deletions, and modifications with colored highlights. Accept or reject one change at a time, all at once, or select a region and use "✓ Sel" / "✗ Sel" to accept or reject every tracked change inside your selection—just like selecting a paragraph in Word.
  • Spreadsheet tracked changes — Spreadsheet (.xlsx) edits support cell-level tracked changes too. The AI proposes changes cell by cell, and you accept or reject each one just like in a document.
  • Find and replace — Search across the document and replace matches

Review Changes in a Word Document

  1. Open the .docx file in Slate
  2. Click Track if you want your own edits recorded as proposed changes, then enter your name in Your name
  3. Use ↑ and ↓ to move between changes
  4. Use ✓ or ✗ to accept or reject the current change, or select part of the document and use ✓ Sel or ✗ Sel
  5. Download the document as Word when you're ready to continue in Microsoft Word

When you download the document as Word, your tracked changes and comments are written into the .docx file itself, so Word opens them as native tracked changes and keeps each author's work separate. They also survive uploading the file to Caiioo again.

See a Slate Inline in the Chat

When the AI builds something visual as an HTML document — an infographic, a dashboard, a summary card, a comparison table — it can show it right in the conversation instead of leaving you a link to open.

Ask for it any time. If a document is already there and you'd rather look at it in the chat, say "show it inline", "show it in chat", or "show it here". It's the same document, not a copy: nothing gets rewritten, and no second item lands in your Library.

Where it appears is deliberate. The AI puts the document's link where it wants the card to appear in its reply, so the card can sit in the middle of an explanation rather than always on top.

Click the label above the card to open the full slate, where you can edit it, look at its history, or export it. The card grows to fit its content, up to the height of your window.

Only HTML documents render this way. Any other slate — code, a Word document, a spreadsheet — stays a link you click.

Edit Files in Your Connected Folders

On macOS, Windows, and Linux, Slate can open a file that lives in a folder you've connected and edit it in place. See Workspace Files for how to connect a folder.

This works for text files (code, Markdown, configuration, plain text) and for Word documents (.docx), where formatting, bookmarks, and document structure are preserved as you edit.

Saving is always your call. Type all you like — nothing touches the file on disk until you click Save file. The status line above the document tells you where things stand: Draft saved on this host. File not yet saved. while you work, Saved to file. once it lands.

If the file changed underneath you, Slate says Changed on disk and offers Review latest changes, where you compare Original, Your text, and Disk text and choose Keep mine or Use disk for each difference. Independent edits combine on their own; overlapping ones wait for you.

Undo one save. Right after saving, Undo last save puts the file back the way it was — and the undo survives closing and reopening the file, as long as what's on disk still matches.

Your work is kept if something goes wrong. If the app closes, the connection drops, or a save is interrupted, your edits are held as a recoverable draft. Reopen the file and click Recover saved draft. From a recovered draft you can also:

  • Download draft — keep a copy outside Caiioo
  • Relink draft to moved file — point it at the file after you've moved or renamed it, if that file still holds the original contents
  • Recreate missing file — write the draft back as a new file at the path it came from, if the original is gone. It never overwrites an existing file.

Heads up — a file Caiioo can't safely edit (a binary format, or one you've marked read-only) opens as Read only rather than letting you type into something that can't be saved.

The Assistant Knows What You Have Open

On the desktop apps, the AI can see which document you're looking at, open a slate you already have open, and find slates from earlier conversations by name or by searching their contents. So "keep editing the doc I have open" or "find the pricing draft from last week" works without you hunting for a link.

Publish a Slate to the Web

Any slate can become a web page anyone with the link can open — no Caiioo account needed on their end.

  1. Open the slate's share menu and choose Share to web
  2. In Publish to web, set the Public title, choose how long it Stays up for (including until you delete it), and decide whether to Allow search engines — off by default, so a link you send three people doesn't turn into a search result
  3. Click Publish

You'll see Public link created with an Open page button. Publishing the same slate again updates the page you already shared, so a link you've sent keeps working — the button reads Update public page.

The link is unguessable but not secret. Treat it like a password: anyone who has it can open the page, and pasting it into a chat app shows a preview with the title. Take a page down at any time from Settings > Data > Shared pages, or from the share menu with Take down public page. Removal takes about a minute.

Tips

  • You can edit while the AI is working—changes sync
  • Version history keeps every edit. You can't lose anything
  • Point the AI at any document by pasting its Slate link into the chat ("this is the file I want to update: …")—it resolves to the right document, even if the link came from a different conversation
  • Export in the format that fits your workflow: Word (.docx), PDF, HTML, Markdown, rich text (.rtf), CSV for tabular data, or the document's native format
  • A Word document downloads with its pending tracked changes and comments intact. Markdown and rich-text exports read as the finished document, without deleted text included as live content

This guide is maintained by the Caiioo team using Slate, our built-in editor.