An intelligent conflict detection system. The system provides semantic expression of edits and history-aware conflict detection in a large-scale service allowing multiple users to simultaneously work with the same document, which may result in conflicting edits. When submitted, changes to a version of a document are compared to all versions of the document created since the document was sourced. Edits to documents are expressed as intents describing the changes in terms of an action and object of that action based on a characteristic of the data being edited. Comparing the intent of current edits against the historical intent of the edits made in prior versions originating from the same source document allows the system to intelligently assess whether the edits are in conflict. History-aware semantic analysis results in users being prompted less frequently to resolve conflicts, which improves the user experience.