Case Study: Document Editor

Modeling version history, branching, and edit confirmation with state machines.

Overview

A real production document editor uses state machines to manage the document lifecycle: loading, editing, version history navigation, and publishing. This case study examines how the machine prevents accidental branching when editing old versions.

Key Insights

One guard replaces multiple scattered conditionals

All entry points go through the machine

Testing is pure input → output

Read the Full Article

Why State Machines Are a Game-Changer for UI Development

Pattern: Forms — Form state patterns

Pattern: Undo/Redo — History stack

Tooling: Testing — Machine testing

TODO

Fork the machine definition into this page

Add full statechart diagram

Add code walkthrough

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