Built-in types

Built-in types

any is a general database, but some shapes are so common — and so hard to get right as a CRDT — that the server ships them ready-made. A chat is a built-in type. A block-structured document is a built-in type. Both live in the same encrypted space data as everything else, sync with the same engine, and are read with the same query and subscribe primitives.

What "built-in" means

A built-in type is a type registered by the server in every space, with a dataset whose record shape, validation and merge rules are enforced on every peer. The server keeps bespoke endpoints for writes only — send a message, patch a block — because the write side is where authorization and derivation happen (who may edit, what gets stamped). Reads always go through the generic query primitive: POST /v1/spaces/:spaceId/query with the type's dataset name, and …/query/subscribe for live updates.

The any:// link grammar is not a type, but it is the glue between them: a mention in a chat message, an image in a document and a citation of a property value are all any:// URIs in markdown link destinations.

Why it matters. A hosted backend gives you a messages table and lets you figure out concurrent edits, reactions and unread counts yourself — on a server you trust with plaintext. Here every message is an encrypted CRDT record: two members reacting at the same instant cannot corrupt each other, an edit made offline merges when the device reconnects, and unread state is computed on-device and never leaves your account.

One read path, one wire shape

Because reads are generic, everything you know about reading data applies to built-in types unchanged: filters, sorts, paging, includeTotal, and the windowed subscribe stream with its snapshot → changes frames. A chat client is "a subscription sorted by -_ver.id with a limit"; a document view is "a subscription sorted by nav.pos".

Every write endpoint returns the same small result instead of the record body:

{ "versionId": "…", "changeId": "…", "recordIds": ["<record id>"] }

recordIds[0] is the id the server derived for a newly created record. Read the record back through the query path — or, better, let your open subscription deliver it.

Where the objects come from

Built-in types attach to ordinary objects. A document is an object with page in any.types and blocks in its editor_blocks dataset. A chat is an object carrying the chat type — and for "the chat of this space", the object is registered as a bundle with a derived root, so every device and member computes the same object id and the conversation can never fork.