Both ProseMirror and the newer version of CodeMirror have a pretty elegant solution to this: each modification to the document is modeled as a step that keeps track of indices instead of node/text identities, and uses a data structure called a "position map" that the buffered steps can be mapped through to create steps with updated positions, which are then applied to your document.

In practice, it works quite well. Here's more info:

https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/collaborative-editing.html https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/blog/collaborative-editing-cm.htm...