Seal vs Google Docs for Markdown review and sign-off

Google Docs is great for writing prose, but it throws away your Markdown and it can’t tell you when an approval has gone stale. When you paste a .md file into Google Docs you lose the structure your agent or repo cares about, and getting the approved text back means copying it out by hand. Seal keeps the document as a real Markdown file, renders it for reviewers, and — with the free local plugin — commits the approved version straight back to your repo. Use Google Docs to draft narrative documents; use Seal when the thing being reviewed is Markdown that has to stay Markdown.

Can I review Markdown like I review in Google Docs?

Yes. Seal gives reviewers the same comfortable, comment-in-the-margin experience as Google Docs — a clean web page, inline comments, no git — but on a real Markdown file instead of a converted copy. The difference reviewers feel most is the summary: instead of opening a 6,000-word doc cold, each reviewer gets a short AI summary written for their role and lands on the slice that’s theirs. Seal is the review and sign-off layer, not an editor: your AI agent or your own editor writes and edits the .md, and Seal is where people comment, suggest, and approve.

What about approvals that go stale?

This is the big gap in Google Docs. A comment or a “looks good” in Google Docs is frozen the instant you leave it — the document keeps moving and nobody is told that the thing they approved has changed. In Seal, the moment anyone edits the part you approved, your approval lifts on just that part and comes back to you to re-check. On the hosted tier the sign-off is identity-verified and bound to the document’s content hash, so you get a tamper-evident record that a named person approved exactly these words — something a Google Docs comment can never be.

Side by side

	Google Docs	Seal
Source format	Pasted text — your Markdown structure is lost	Stays a real .md file; renders, then commits back
Round-trip to your repo	Manual copy-paste back, by hand	Local plugin commits approved text straight back
Per-reviewer summary	No — everyone reads the whole doc	Yes — an AI summary written for each reviewer’s role
Approval when the doc changes	A comment/approval stays even after edits	Approval lifts on the changed part and returns to you
Identity-verified sign-off	No — a comment is not a verified approval	Yes — WebAuthn-verified, bound to the exact wording (hosted)
Tamper-evident record	No	Yes — approval bound to the content hash (hosted)
Reviewer setup	Google account + sharing	A link; free account only for verified sign-off
Editing	Edits in Google Docs (not Markdown)	Not an editor — your agent/editor writes the .md; Seal reviews and signs off

When should I use Google Docs instead?

Use Google Docs when you’re drafting a narrative document from scratch with a small group, real-time co-writing matters, and the output never has to live as Markdown in a repo. Reach for Seal when the document is already a .md file (anything an AI agent wrote), when reviewers are outside your repo, or when you need a verified, tamper-evident record of who approved what — not just a comment thread.

Get the free local plugin Try hosted →