Workspaces
A shared, end-to-end encrypted drive for a team, with its own storage allowance and its own chat — and an honest account of what removing someone can and cannot undo.
A workspace is a drive several people share. It has its own storage allowance, separate from anyone’s personal one, and a chat that only its members can read.
How it works underneath
Worth knowing, because it explains most of the behaviour further down.
A workspace is a folder — a root folder with no parent. Its key is wrapped separately for every member, using the same mechanism that shares a folder with a named person. Adding someone is one key wrapped to them; removing them deletes that wrapped copy.
Everything else follows from that:
Files behave normally
Folders, uploads, previews, version history and the trash all work exactly as they do in your personal drive, because they are the same thing.
Mauvely still cannot read it
The workspace key never reaches the server. Members hold it; we hold wrapped copies we cannot open.
Creating one
Workspaces → New workspace, and give it a name. The name is encrypted like everything else — it is stored under the workspace’s own key, so it is not something Mauvely can read either.
You become its owner. The workspace gets its own allowance straight away: 1 TB on Pro, 2 TB on Max.
Members
Only an owner can invite or remove people. An editor who could invite would be able to widen access they were given, which is not something their role is meant to carry.
| Role | Can |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything, including inviting, removing and deleting the workspace |
| Can edit | Add, change and delete files; take part in chat |
| Can comment | Read files; take part in chat |
| Can view | Read files and chat; cannot post |
Inviting someone without a vault
You can invite an address that has never opened Cloud. The invitation is recorded and they show as waiting for their vault — nothing is readable to them yet, because there is no public key to wrap the workspace key to.
Once they set one up, the wrap happens automatically the next time an owner unlocks their vault in a browser. Only a member’s browser can do it; nobody at Mauvely can do it for you.
Removing someone
Storage
A workspace is charged for its own files, whoever uploads them. Upload a 2 GB video into a workspace and it comes out of the workspace’s allowance, not yours — otherwise one member’s personal quota would rise and fall with the team’s activity, which nobody could plan around.
The workspace panel shows its usage. Your own sidebar figure stays personal.
Chat
Every workspace has one conversation, beside its files.
Messages are encrypted under a key derived from the workspace’s own key, so exactly the people who can read the files can read the messages — that falls out of the key structure rather than being a permission we check.
@to mention someone. Start typing and pick from the member list.- Enter sends, Shift+Enter starts a new line.
- Edit or delete your own messages. An owner can also delete anyone’s, for moderation.
- A viewer can read the chat but not post.
New messages appear within a few seconds. The app polls rather than holding a live connection; in a background tab it backs right off, so a workspace left open is not a reason your laptop never idles.
Deleting a workspace
Only an owner can, and it is immediate and total: every file in it is destroyed for everyone. There is no trash for a workspace — a half-deleted one would still appear in every member’s sidebar with no way to explain what it was.
Individual files inside a workspace go to the trash normally.
What is not built yet
Coming later
- Domain-based auto-join — everyone with a
@company.comaddress joining automatically. - Per-workspace billing. A workspace’s allowance comes from its creator’s plan today; it has no separate subscription. - Live chat. Messages arrive by polling, not push. - Re-keying on removal, which is the only thing that would change the warning above.