Real-time editing, comments, version history and search do not need the internet. They need a network. ShimoDocs runs the full collaboration surface inside an air-gapped enclave, installed from offline packages and with nothing calling out.
Most collaboration platforms assume three outbound dependencies: licence validation, update checks, and a hosted AI endpoint. Any one of them turns an isolated network into a broken deployment. Removing them is an installation-time property, not something you configure afterwards.
ShimoDocs installs from offline image packages and the deployment guide documents the isolated path explicitly, alongside the online one. The installer accepts an external middleware address instead of bundling its own, so the suite can be pointed at infrastructure that already exists on the isolated side.
Four things, and all of them are ordinary files. That matters because it means the deployment can be built and refreshed through whatever controlled transfer process your environment already uses, rather than requiring a network connection to be opened.
Because a licence is a file rather than a phone-home check, enabling the suite on an isolated network does not require a temporary connection. The free perpetual licence for teams of up to five people is issued the same way.
The usual casualty of an air gap is AI assistance, because hosted model APIs are unreachable by definition. The AI configuration layer in ShimoDocs points at an endpoint you specify, which on an isolated network means a model served inside the enclave.
That turns prompt and document context into internal traffic that your existing network controls already cover. If no model is available in the enclave, the collaboration features are unaffected — AI is an addition to the suite, not a dependency of it.
It is more useful to be specific than to claim nothing changes. Three categories of feature depend on reaching the public internet and stop working on an isolated network.
Everything in the collaboration core — real-time co-editing, comments and suggestions, version history, document-level permissions, audit logs, forms, spreadsheets, presentations and search — is internal traffic and works normally.
The failure mode of air-gapped systems is not the initial install; it is that nobody can upgrade or diagnose them two years later. Two things in the operations platform are aimed squarely at that.
Upgrades are applied by uploading an installation package, with the platform running its own compatibility checks before it starts — so the transfer process produces a reviewable event rather than an automatic change. And when something does go wrong, the operations platform carries the diagnostic surface inside the enclave: service and real-time logs, middleware inspection, cluster management, container packet capture and a monitoring metrics reference, with no external observability service required.
Yes. It requires a deployment that can be installed from offline image packages, performs no licence call-out at runtime, and does not depend on a hosted model endpoint. ShimoDocs documents the offline installation path and supports external middleware on the isolated side.
The AI configuration layer points at a model endpoint you choose. In an isolated network that means a model served inside the boundary, so no prompt or document context leaves the enclave. If no model is available, the collaboration features work without it.
The installation package, the offline image tarball, the licence file and any middleware you run externally. All four are ordinary files, which is why the deployment can be built and refreshed through a controlled transfer process rather than a network connection.
You lose the features that are inherently online: third-party integrations that call out, public link sharing to the internet, and any AI model that is only available as a hosted API. Real-time editing, comments, version history, permissions, audit logs and search all work normally.
The operations platform accepts an uploaded installation package and runs its compatibility checks before applying it. On an isolated network the package is brought across by the same controlled transfer used for the original installation, so upgrades follow a reviewable process rather than an automatic one.