✨ Feature Request: Add Commenting Support for Files and Folders

[KMK0815]

Hi OpenCloud team 👋
First off, thank you for your amazing work on this project! I’d like to propose a feature that could significantly enhance collaboration and user experience: a commenting system for files and folders, similar to what ownCloud offers.
🚀 Feature Overview
The idea is to allow users to:

• Add comments to files and folders
• View and reply to existing comments
• Receive notifications for new comments or replies
• Optionally tag users or link to other files

This would be especially useful in collaborative environments where users need to discuss documents, provide feedback, or track changes without switching to external tools.
✅ Benefits:

• Improves team collaboration directly within the platform
• Reduces reliance on external communication tools
• Adds context to file changes and updates
• Encourages user engagement and feedback

💡 Inspiration
This feature is inspired by the commenting functionality in ownCloud, which has proven very useful in enterprise and team settings.
🙏 Call for Collaboration
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! If others in the community are also interested, maybe we can start a discussion or even collaborate on a prototype or plugin.
Thanks again for your hard work and dedication!
Best regards,
Mathias Köppchen
Protronic GmbH

[KMK0815]

Hi OpenCloud Community👋

💭 Thoughts on Implementation Using PouchDB/CouchDB
Leveraging PouchDB (client-side) and CouchDB (server-side) for syncing comments could be a great fit, especially considering the decentralized and offline-first nature of PouchDB. A similar approach is used in obsidian-livesync, which syncs notes between Obsidian and CouchDB.
Here’s a rough outline of how this could work:
🧩 Architecture Concept

Comment Storage:
Each comment could be a document in CouchDB with metadata:
{ "_id": "comment:uuid", "type": "comment", "target": "file_or_folder_id", "author": "user_id", "content": "This is a comment", "timestamp": "2025-10-20T15:00:00Z", "replies": [ ... ] }

Syncing:
PouchDB on the client syncs with CouchDB on the server.
Changes (new comments, replies) are synced in real-time or on demand.

UI Integration:
Comments could be shown in a sidebar or modal next to the file/folder view.
Markdown support could enhance readability and formatting.

❓ Open Questions
Here are some technical challenges and open questions that would need to be addressed:

Authentication:
How can OpenCloud users authenticate securely with CouchDB?
Would it use session tokens, OAuth, or a proxy service?

Access Control:
How do we ensure only authorized users can view or comment on specific files?
Should comments inherit file permissions?

Notifications:
Could be triggered via CouchDB’s _changes feed or a webhook system.
Tagging users could be implemented with @username parsing and notification hooks.

• check API for using oc notifications bubble
• is there an example in WebExtension witch uses oc notifications

Conflict Resolution:
How do we handle comment conflicts during sync (e.g., simultaneous edits)?

Scalability:
How well does CouchDB handle large volumes of comments and users?

Integration with Existing OpenCloud APIs:

Should this be a plugin or a core feature?
How would it interact with file metadata and activity logs?