Canvas
Canvas is an AI-authored document and code surface that opens beside your chat. Ask the assistant to draft notes, a spec, or a code snippet, then keep editing — your work autosaves, every save can be snapshotted as a version, and you can export or share when it's ready.
What is Canvas?
Canvas is a smart document surface born from an AI conversation. Because it's tied to the session that created it, the AI understands the full context and can keep contributing as you write. Think of it as a shared scratchpad where you and the assistant are co-authors. Open it from the chat tool strip, or find your Canvases under Knowledge.
Two types: text and code
A Canvas is one of two types:
| Type | For |
|---|---|
| Text | Meeting notes, specs, proposals, briefs, and other prose documents. |
| Code | A code document with an associated language for syntax-aware editing. |
Canvas is for text and code — there is no whiteboard, diagram, or freeform-drawing type. For structured tabular data, use a workflow Table node or a spreadsheet in the Knowledge Base.
Creating a Canvas
Two ways to create one from a chat session:
- Ask the AI — e.g. "create a canvas for today's sprint retrospective" — and it generates a structured document that opens in the Canvas panel.
- Click the Canvas tool in the chat tool strip to open a blank Canvas, then type or ask the AI to fill it in.
- Open an AI chat session
Go to AI Chat and start or open a conversation.
- Ask for a Canvas
Type a prompt like "Create a canvas with notes for our Q3 planning session".
- The Canvas panel opens
It opens beside the chat (or as an overlay on mobile), populated by the AI.
- Edit it
Click in and edit directly. Your changes autosave automatically.
- Export or share
Use the Canvas menu to download as PDF, copy as Markdown, or share via the share dialog.
Autosave and version snapshots
Canvas keeps your work safe without a Save button. As you type, edits autosave after a brief pause (a roughly two-second debounce), and the header shows a Saved / Saving indicator. Alongside autosave, Canvas keeps numbered version snapshots so you can review history and roll back.
- Create a snapshot to mark a meaningful checkpoint.
- List all versions from the version menu.
- Restore any earlier version when you need to.
Canvas is built for AI co-writing: you and the assistant draft together, every change autosaves, and you get full version history and sharing. Share the Canvas with teammates, and each edit is saved and snapshotted so your work — and its history — is always preserved.
Working with the AI
Because a Canvas is linked to its chat session, the AI stays context-aware of the whole document. The relationship is bidirectional: the AI can write into the Canvas, and the Canvas content feeds back as context for the AI. Useful prompts to try while a Canvas is open:
"Add a section about deployment risks to the canvas""Reformat the action items as a table with owner and due date""Summarise this canvas in three bullet points" (replies in chat without changing the Canvas)"Translate the canvas to Spanish"
Sharing a Canvas
Canvas uses the same four sharing scopes as the rest of YOffice — each with view or edit, and ownership-enforced so only people you authorise can change it:
- Private — only you.
- Specific people & Workers — named teammates or an AI Worker.
- Workspaces — a workspace's members.
- Organisation — everyone in the org.
Open the Share control in the Canvas header, choose a scope and permission, and copy the link. See Members & Roles for how sharing works across YOffice.
Exporting a Canvas
| Format | How | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Canvas menu → Export → PDF | A formatted document you can download and share. | |
| Markdown | Canvas menu → Export → Markdown | Clean Markdown you can paste into any editor. |
| Word | Canvas menu → Export → Word | An .rtf file that opens natively in Word. |
| Share link | Share → Copy link | Opens the Canvas for anyone within your chosen sharing scope. |