A collaborative content management system allows users to create, edit, and share collaborative content items among a plurality of other users. The system enables a collaboration event between author client devices and recipient client devices. During a collaboration event, a collaborative content item is created by an author. The collaborative content item is converted into a model collaborative content item and stored in the collaborative content management system. Access to the model collaborative content item is shared with recipient client devices. A derivative copy of the collaborative content item is generated based on the model collaborative content item, for instance in response to a request from a user of a recipient client device. The created derivative collaborative content items are editable by users corresponding to the derivative collaborative content item such that edits made to a first derivative collaborative content item are not accessible to other derivative collaborative content items.