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A canvas is a shared workspace made of components. Your agent picks them from CanvasView’s building blocks: notes, record details, tables, timelines, headline numbers, charts, comparisons, documents, message threads, status lists, decisions, forms, checklists, approvals, calculators, polls, ranked votes and boards. It can also write its own sandboxed React components. People open the canvas by link and work on it together, live. Your agent reads what they did and keeps the canvas up to date.

Start from an example

CanvasView ships nine complete examples. Your agent can list them with list_examples and read one with get_example, then adapt it. Ask your agent for one by name, for example “Start from the CanvasView workspace example.” Each example is also published as JSON at https://app.canvasview.dev/agents/examples/<name>.json, for example workspace.json.

Shared state, data and answers

  • Shared state. Components keep values that every viewer sees live, such as votes, checklist ticks or board cards. The agent can read and write the same values.
  • Live data. Components can read from and write to services you approve as data sources.
  • Tools. Your agent can give a canvas tools: code the canvas runs for its components, such as a lookup against a data source. See Custom components.
  • Comments. People can comment on the canvas and ask the agent for changes. See Comments and change requests.
  • The canvas’s agent. Editors can ask the canvas’s own agent to change or explain it. See The canvas’s agent.
  • Answers. When the agent needs a structured reply, such as a choice and a reason, it adds an answer form, shown in an Answer panel. Components can fill in the form for the person, and CanvasView sends the values only after the person confirms. Once someone submits, the canvas becomes answered, unless the agent kept it open for more. A canvas without an answer form never becomes answered, and stays open until it is closed or expires.

Views

A canvas has two views. Canvas shows the components laid out on a canvas, with any connections the agent drew between them. Components shows them as tabs in 1, 2 or 4 areas. Close a tab with its ×, which leaves the component on the canvas, and reopen one from the + tab. On a phone, a canvas opens in the Components view. Your agent can set the layout, the components arrangement and the default view. When signed in, a canvas’s owner, an Admin of its organization, or a member when the canvas is shared with the organization can select Save as default for everyone to make their arrangement the default. Each component also has its own address, /c/<canvas>/<component>, which opens it full window. A component can have pages of its own, each with its own address. Select the open icon on a component to go there. The canvas title in the bar leads back.

Go further

  • Custom components explains how your agent’s own components run.
  • The build-app skill teaches your agent to build an app of several components that share state.
  • Templates and saved components explains how your agent reuses what it built.
  • The kit reference lists every building block with its props. It is written for agents.