This document discusses building decentralized collaborative applications and introduces SwellRT, a development framework for decentralized real-time collaborative apps. SwellRT allows for collaborative objects that are JSON documents with access control rules and privacy. It includes features like storage, syncing, identity management, federation, and reactive UIs. The framework API sits above SwellRT in the backend, which connects to a federated network of servers. This allows for more value for developers while providing decentralization and rich text collaboration features in an open source framework.