Share & collaborate
Collaboration in CRAYON-C4 happens on cloud projects (Pro): you invite teammates by email, they accept, and everyone works on the same project. There are no anonymous public share links — sharing is always to named, signed-in people.
Invite a teammate
- Open the cloud project you want to share.
- In the project detail page, find the members section and click Add member.
- Type their email address and choose a role (default is Editor).
- They receive an invitation by email. When they sign in with that email address and accept, they're added to the project.
An invitation is bound to the exact email it was sent to — someone signed in under a different address must accept on that other account, then switch to this one inside the project.
Roles and permissions
| Role | Can read | Can edit | Can manage members & invitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viewer | All diagrams | — | — |
| Editor | All diagrams | All diagrams and content | — |
| Admin | All diagrams | All diagrams and content | Yes |
| Owner | All diagrams | All diagrams and content | Yes |
Owner and Admin can both manage the team — invite new members, resend or revoke invitations, and change member roles. Owners have the additional ability to delete the project and transfer ownership. You're the project owner by default when you create it.
Accept an invitation
When someone invites you to a project, you receive an email. On the Projects hub (Pro), an Invitations section appears at the top showing pending invitations:
- Project name — which project you're invited to
- Role — the access level (Viewer, Editor, or Admin)
- Time left — how many days until the invitation expires (12 days from send)
Click Accept to join the project, or Decline to turn it down. The invitation is tied to the exact email address it was sent to — if you need to accept under a different email, switch accounts first.
An invitation you haven't answered expires 12 days after it was sent. If you miss the deadline, ask the inviter to resend it — accepting is permanent, so once you've joined there's nothing left to expire.
Managing invitations
Pending invitations appear in the members list with a status. You can:
- Resend an invitation to remind them (sends another email to the same address)
- Revoke an invitation to cancel it
Invitations expire after 12 days. If a teammate doesn't accept within that time, you can resend the invitation or revoke and re-invite.
Copy a cloud project
Project owners and admins can create an independent copy of a cloud project. Click the Copy action on the project's row in the hub, and a dialog asks who should have access to the copy:
- Just me (I become sole owner) — the copy is private, only you can access it
- Keep current members and roles — all current members are copied with their existing roles; you are set as the owner
The copy is a new, completely independent project. Changes to either one don't affect the other.
Promote local projects to the cloud
If you're on a free account, you can work on local projects (stored in your browser). When you upgrade to Pro, you can move these to the cloud for sync and sharing.
On the Projects hub, a Promote all to cloud banner appears when you have local projects. Click the button to move all unpromoted local projects to your cloud account at once.
You can also promote a single project by clicking Promote (or Promote (Pro) if you're not yet upgraded) on the project row.
Audit log
Every change to the project — who edited a diagram, when a member was added, role changes — is recorded in the audit log. You can view it from the project detail page to track what's happened and who made changes.
Sharing with people outside the project
For an audience that shouldn't be invited into the project itself:
- Export an image of the diagram for slides and documents.
- Export the Markdown bundle or PDF for a full, readable handout of the model.
Think before exporting widely: a context diagram is usually safe for any audience; detailed container or deployment views can reveal infrastructure you'd rather keep close.
Where next
- Export diagrams — the formats and when to use each.
- Manage projects — cloud vs browser storage.