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The canvas is the main surface inside a NodePad workspace. It holds your conversation branches, text notes, and cross-branch connections in one view so you can see the structure of the work, not only the latest reply.

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Why it matters

Most AI interfaces flatten everything into one timeline. That works until the work stops being linear — when a question splits into sub-questions, when you want a second opinion from another model, when a fact-check should stay separate from the main draft, when a reply needs to draw from messages that happened elsewhere. The canvas keeps all of those moves visible instead of hiding them inside one scroll.

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What you can place on it

Conversation branches

A branch is a sequence of user and assistant messages. Branches can continue, split, and reconnect through merge flows.

Text notes

Freeform annotations for you and your team. They are not model instructions.

Reference and merge edges

Edges show how messages relate across branches — visible provenance instead of hidden prompt text.

Attachments

Images and files stay attached to the messages that used them and can carry forward into branches and merged drafts.

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Common actions

Navigate

Pan and zoom to inspect one branch closely or zoom out to understand the whole workspace. Use workspace search to jump between matching messages without losing your spatial layout.

Organise

Open the command palette to jump to actions such as merge composition or the reference picker. From the sidebar you can favorite a workspace, add tags, duplicate it, or export it when you want a checkpoint.
Each canvas belongs to a workspace, which keeps its own title, default model, reasoning preference, workspace instructions, branch layout, and tags. A good mental model is one workspace per problem space — one for a feature investigation, another for a long research project, another for a piece of writing.

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Continue

Nodes

The individual messages that make up a branch.

Forking

Branch from any message to explore an alternate path.

Merging

Combine messages from different branches into one draft.