1. A method comprising: providing, by a content management system, a first party web application to a user; receiving a first input from the user, the first input associated with a source document to be modified, identifying a reference document different than the source document, and including a dependency primitive associated with the source document and the reference document; in response to receiving the first input, accessing a dependency formula associated with the dependency primitive via the first party web application; determining, based on a set of syntax rules, whether the dependency primitive indicates a reference dependency or an alias dependency and whether the dependency formula is valid, wherein the set of syntax rules identifies the dependency primitive as a reference dependency in response to the dependency primitive including a mathematical operation, and wherein the set of syntax rules identifies the dependency primitive as an alias dependency otherwise such that a change to a first object in an alias dependency with a second object is reflected in the second object and vice versa; responsive to determining that the dependency primitive indicates a reference dependency and the dependency formula is syntactically valid: creating in a dependency graph a dependency object associated with the source document and the reference document, the dependency object having an object ID, an object name, a formula for the dependency object, dependencies of the object, and dependents of the object; recursively calculating a resultant value of the dependency object using the formula for the dependency object and the value of all dependencies of the dependency object, the resultant value stored by the content management system; and displaying by the first party web application the source document and the resultant value of the dependency object within the source document; responsive to determining that the dependency primitive indicates an alias dependency and the dependency formula includes an existing dependency object name: recursively calculating a resultant value of an existing dependency object corresponding to the existing dependency object name using the formula for the existing dependency object and the value of all dependencies of the existing dependency object without creating a new dependency object in the dependency graph, the resultant value stored by the content management system; displaying by the first party web application the source document and the resultant value of the existing dependency object within the source document; and synchronizing the displayed resultant value with the existing dependency object.