Skip to main content

Thinking on the canvas

The canvas is an AI mind map. You put a question, a claim or a document in the middle, apply a skill — a named thinking method — and the branches come back as cards, each holding a short argument rather than a keyword. You cut what does not hold up and take the rest somewhere.

There are two ways in: a board of its own for a question, or a board beside a document you are reading.

A board for a question​

File → New Canvas, type the question into the topic card, pick a skill from the menu under it and press Run. @ cites files from your knowledge base.

1. Ask something specific. A real situation plus one constraint. "How could a five-person team stop losing hours to weekly status reports?" spreads into something you can use; "artificial intelligence" spreads into platitudes. An empty centre card offers examples.

2. Apply a skill. On the topic card, pick it before you run; on any other card, use Skills in the card's toolbar or right-click → Apply skill…. Brainstorm spreads the subject along genuinely different dimensions; SCAMPER puts an idea through seven kinds of change; six thinking hats looks from six fixed stances. Skills are grouped by what they do: diverge, dig deeper, critique, structure, converge, and learn. Each comes back in the shape the method calls for — a comparison as a table, a trade-off as four quadrants.

Pick a skill on the topic card, then Run.

3. Read the hub first. With more than one branch, a hub card sits between the centre and the branches and names the sharpest tension between them. It usually tells you which branch to open next.

4. Dig into one line. Any single line on a card can be explained, questioned or given a skill of its own. Or expand a whole card and it becomes the centre of its own cluster. What grows from a line keeps a trail back to it. Every card also has its own follow-up box.

5. Cut. Delete the branches that did not earn their place and drag the survivors into an order. Depth comes from repeating the move on the card that matters, not from asking for more at once.

Tidy layout in the board's toolbar rearranges the whole board, including cards you dragged. To keep a card where you put it, click 📌 Pin on its toolbar: a small pin appears on the card and no tidy moves it again, though you can still edit and drag it. If a tidy undoes more than you wanted, the notice that follows has an Undo button.

6. Take it somewhere. From the card's toolbar and its ⋯ menu:

A branch's ⋯ menu: convert it, write from it, or export it.
  • Convert to note (with branch) — a Markdown note in your folder, linked back to the board.
  • Write an article… — hand the branch to the writing side as a ready-made outline, keeping your order or letting it be restructured.
  • Add to chat — the assistant beside the board has the branch in view.
  • Copy, or Export PNG / Export Markdown (with branch). Export ▾ in the board's toolbar does the same for the whole board.

A board beside what you are reading​

Open a PDF or a book, then:

  • Book overview (from the reader's AI menu) lays the whole book out on a canvas beside it: the question it answers, its core claims, its key concepts, how it is built, how to read it, and where it is disputed — tied together by a summary card in the middle. Read the skeleton and "how to read" before chapter one.
  • Canvas on a selection sends the passage to the board. The quote lands word for word under its chapter as the root of a new branch, and a close reading starts on it.

Cards built from a document carry citation marks. Hover one to read the quoted sentence as it stands in the document now; click to open the document there. If the sentence is no longer in the document, the preview says so.

A book overview beside the book, with one line dug into and its citation checked.

The canvas beside a document belongs to that document: come back tomorrow and the same board opens. A document can have several — one for the argument, one for the methods — and you pick which is open. Open it full-size when it grows; one click puts it back beside the source.

Other shapes for reading: put several papers on one board and apply Consensus and disagreement or Comparative analysis; drop a photo of a hand-drawn map or a whiteboard and apply Rebuild structure.

The learn group​

Learning skills work the other way round: they ask you questions and you answer on the card. Multiple-choice is marked immediately, written answers are reviewed per card, and the card above a cluster reviews the records across all of it.

Your knowledge base is off by default​

A board works on what you put on it. Your other notes join only when you switch the knowledge base on with the ◇ KB switch on the topic card. That is deliberate — a brainstorm anchored to what you already concluded produces more of what you already concluded — but it means a branch is only as grounded as the material you pointed it at.

Things to know​

  • Every card is yours to edit. Rewrite, merge or delete; write cards from scratch.
  • Re-running keeps the old version. Run again puts a second copy beside the first.
  • The board is a file in your folder.
  • Wide expansions cost credits. One expansion is cheap; expanding every branch of every cluster is not, and the third layer is usually where the returns stop.
  • A title-only book overview is from memory. Without the file, the cards come from what the model knows — marked where uncertain, with no invented quotes, but not checkable. Add the book to your folder when it matters.

Skills are yours to change: copy a built-in one and edit it, or install more from the example library — see using and writing skills.

Next​

Last updated on