Canvas

Open a .canvas file and it shows as a canvas, not as JSON: cards for your notes, text, images, and links, laid out in space and joined by arrows. It is the JSON Canvas format Obsidian's Canvas uses, so a canvas made in Obsidian opens here unchanged.

The viewer is read-only. The file is meant to be generated and revised by an agent, and the canvas updates as soon as the file changes on disk.

What it shows

• Note cards preview the note they point to, without its frontmatter; a card that names a #heading shows just that section
• Text cards render their markdown
• Image cards show the image; other files show their icon and name
• Link cards show the URL
• Groups frame the cards inside them, with a label
• Arrows with labels, in any of the six preset colors or a hex color

Note cards follow edits to their notes, so a note you are writing in another tab stays current on the canvas.

Moving around

• Drag, or scroll with two fingers, to pan
• Pinch, or Cmd+scroll, to zoom around the pointer
• Click a note or file card to open it; click a link card to open it in the browser
• Use the controls in the bottom-right corner to zoom out, zoom in, or fit the whole canvas, which is also how every canvas opens

Letting an agent build it

Because the canvas is a plain JSON file, any agent that can write files can lay one out. Ask for what you want to see, for example:

Make lit-map.canvas with a card for each note in papers/, grouped by whether the paper supports or complicates remote work, and arrows for papers that cite or contradict each other.

Keep the canvas open while the agent works and you will see each revision as it lands. If a write is caught halfway, the last version that could be read stays on screen with a banner until the file is whole again.

To read or tweak the JSON yourself, use the </> button in the corner: it opens the file in an editor beside the canvas, and the canvas updates as you type.

The same actions are in the command palette as json_canvas: zoom in, json_canvas: zoom out, json_canvas: zoom to fit, and json_canvas: edit json, so you can bind keys to them.