The Format
Rabble introduces the EDL (Educational Document Language) format — an extension of markdown designed specifically for interactive workshops. Write your workshop content in markdown with special directives for polls, discussions, exercises, and collaboration activities. Rabble transforms that into a live, interactive slide experience.
Session-Scoped Privacy
This is the core privacy innovation in Rabble: participant data is session-scoped. When a workshop ends, participant information is deleted. There are no persistent profiles, no history of who attended which sessions, no longitudinal tracking of learning progress across workshops.
Why? Because workshop participation is often mandatory (corporate training, academic courses) and participants shouldn’t have to worry about their responses being stored, analyzed, or used against them. The workshop is a learning experience, not a data collection exercise.
Real-Time Collaboration
During a live session, participants can respond to polls, contribute to discussions, and collaborate on exercises in real time. The facilitator sees aggregate results and can guide the session based on group engagement. But individual responses aren’t stored beyond the session.
The Stack
React Router v7 provides the interactive frontend. SQLite with Drizzle handles session data efficiently and makes cleanup simple — when a session ends, the data goes away. The lightweight stack means Rabble can run on modest infrastructure, making it accessible to educators and trainers without enterprise budgets.