The canvas

A canvas is a board of cards and the wires between them. You put material on it (a link, a post, a file, a note), wire it into an Ask card, and the Ask answers from what it can see rather than from nothing.

Everyone on it at once

A canvas is shared with the workspace, so opening one somebody else has open puts you both on it. Their pointer moves on your screen with their name beside it, and the faces at the top of the board say who is here even when nobody is moving. Cards you move, edit or wire land on their screen and theirs on yours; nothing is claimed or locked, so two people can work on different corners of the same board at the same time.

Turning a board into a layout

Make a layout takes the cards on the board into Studio as a grid you can plan a feed from. Cards come across in reading order, across each row and then down, so the shape you arranged is the order you get. A card with a picture becomes a picture cell; a card with words becomes a colored note carrying them, with its second line. A card with neither is left out.

The layout is named after the board, and laying the same board out twice gives you Board 2 rather than replacing the first, because usually you are comparing two shapes, not throwing one away. From there it is an ordinary layout: reorder it, swap cells for real media, and schedule from it.

A new canvas is blank, and stays blank until you put something on it. While it is empty it shows the first moves: start a pillar, add content, and wire it into an Ask. Each one is a real button. The guide disappears with the first card and comes back if you clear the board.

The cards

Drag from the dot under a card to another card to wire them together. Double-click a card to write on it; Enter commits, Shift+Enter is a new line.

Adding content

Add content takes three kinds of thing, and reads all of them. What lands on the board is a card with the title on it; the words themselves sit behind it and go to the Ask when it runs.

A card that is still being read says so, and fills itself in when it is done. Closing the tab and coming back does not lose it. A card that could not be read says why, on the card.

What the Ask reads

One hop, not the whole board. An Ask reads the cards wired directly into it and nothing further upstream, so a canvas you had forgotten about is never quietly sent. The card says how much that is: Reads about 4,300 words from 3 cards.

Words you typed go first and whole. The long bodies behind source cards fill what is left, up to about 3,000 words each and 7,000 words in total. If a source was too long to read all of, the screen says which one and how much of it the answer saw.