Visibility says who may see a resource. Only two values exist: the empty string, meaning public, and Private, meaning only the space owner, its writers and its site may read it.

This page defines the visibility value type, a string with two allowed values, carried by Ref and Comment blobs. Its formal schema is attached as the schemaDefinition in this document's metadata, so the app can show it.

Only Refs and Comments carry the field. Changes and files have no visibility of their own. They become public by propagation when a public Ref or Comment links to them, and stay private otherwise, whatever order the blobs arrive in. A document's effective visibility is the value on the newest Ref of its current generation. A private Ref must name a single-segment path. A comment carries its own visibility, usually copied from the document it targets. As of September 2026 the daemon refuses to prepare the first change of a new private document outside its tests, and its own CreateRef always writes public Refs. So private visibility applies to documents that were already private. Privacy has the model and its direction.

See also