Canvas Overview

The canvas is your workspace in Slashspace. It's an infinite surface where you place nodes — chats, text, images, web pages, documents — and connect them to build context for AI conversations. Instead of one long chat thread, your thinking is laid out spatially, so you can see how ideas relate and branch off in any direction.

If you're new, start with Core Concepts to understand how nodes and context work, then come back here to learn your way around.

Moving around

How scrolling behaves depends on the Movement mode you pick in canvas settings:

Action	Touchpad mode	Mouse mode
Scroll	Pans the canvas	Zooms in and out
Cmd + scroll / pinch	Zooms in and out	Zooms in and out
Middle-click + drag	Pans	Pans
Space + drag	Pans	Pans
Left-click + drag	Draws a selection box	Draws a selection box

Left-click dragging on empty canvas selects nodes instead of panning. To pan with the mouse, use middle-click drag or hold Space while dragging. Double-click zoom is disabled so stray clicks never jump your view.

You can zoom out very far (down to 1%) to get a bird's-eye view of a large canvas, and zoom in up to 200% for detail work.

Viewport controls and mini map

The panel in the bottom-right corner gives you quick view controls:

1. Fit View — zooms and pans so every node fits on screen.
2. Zoom In / Zoom Out — step the zoom level.
3. Show Mini Map — toggles a small overview of the whole canvas. You can drag the viewport rectangle inside it, and pan or zoom directly on the mini map.

Use cases

• Researching a big topic with 40+ nodes? Toggle the mini map to keep your bearings and jump between clusters.
• Presenting your canvas to someone — hit Fit View to frame everything, then zoom into the branch you're discussing.
• Zoom out to 10–20% to spot orphaned nodes you forgot to connect.

The toolbar

The main toolbar sits at the top-center of the canvas. It holds buttons for every node type (each with a letter hotkey), a Tidy Up button (0) that auto-arranges your nodes, and Search (⌘K).

See Creating Nodes for all the ways to add nodes, and Organizing for Tidy Up and layout tools.

Canvas header

Across the top of the canvas you'll find:

• Sidebar toggle — show or hide the canvas list.
• Breadcrumb — the folder path and canvas name (new canvases show "Untitled" until you name them).
• Settings (gear icon) — opens the canvas settings popover.
• Side view toggle (panel icon) — opens a right-hand panel that shows the active node full-height. See Side View.

Canvas settings

Click the gear icon in the canvas header to open the Canvas settings popover. These settings apply to the current canvas only:

1. Movement — choose Touchpad (scroll pans) or Mouse (scroll wheel zooms).
2. Default model — the AI model new chat nodes use on this canvas. A Global default badge shows when the canvas is inheriting your app-wide setting. See Default Models.
3. Agent workspace — pick (or clear) a folder that agent-provider models can work in. See Agent Providers.
4. Edges — pick one of five edge styles: Default, Straight, Step, Smooth step, or Simple bezier.

A Go to Settings link at the bottom takes you to the app-wide settings.

Use cases

• Set a fast, cheap model as the default on a brainstorming canvas, and a stronger model on your deep-research canvas.
• Point the agent workspace at a project folder so coding-agent models can read and edit those files.
• Switch Movement to Mouse mode if you work with a scroll-wheel mouse and want scroll-to-zoom.

Next steps

• Creating Nodes — every way to get content onto the canvas.
• Connections — how context flows between nodes.
• Keyboard Shortcuts — the full shortcut reference.