Scratch pad
Sketch by hand on the canvas and let connected chats see your drawing as an image.
Some ideas are faster to sketch than to describe: a flowchart, a page layout, an equation. A scratch pad is a sheet of paper on your canvas. Connect it to a Chat node and the AI sees your drawing as an image, next to everything else you've wired in.
Add a scratch pad
- Press
S, or click Scratch pad in the toolbar at the bottom of the canvas, then click where you want it. The right-click menu doesn't list scratch pads. - Drag from the right handle of an image node or another scratch pad onto an empty spot, then pick Scratch pad.
Draw
Draw with a mouse, a trackpad, a touch screen or a stylus. Any press on the paper draws, so move the pad by its header. A stylus that reports pressure draws thicker when you press harder. With other pointers, line weight follows the speed of your stroke.
The bar across the top of the pad holds, from left to right:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Undo and Redo | Step through this pad's strokes, erases and clears. |
| Pen | Draws. Pads start with the pen. |
| Eraser | Removes any whole stroke it touches. |
| Black, Red, Blue, Green | Ink color. |
| Thin, Medium, Thick | Pen width. |
| Clear | Empties the pad. |
Strokes, erases and clears are part of the canvas undo history, so ⌘Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux) undoes them too. The pad's Undo and Redo buttons light up only when the next step belongs to that pad, so they never reverse a node move by surprise.
Scrolling and pinching over the pad still pan and zoom the canvas.
Ask a chat about your sketch
- Connect the pad's right handle to a chat node, or type
@in the chat's composer and pick the pad. - Ask about it, for example "Turn this flowchart into steps".
Each time the chat sends, the pad is turned into an image of your ink on its paper background and attached to the message. Nothing is stored, so if you change the drawing and ask again, the AI sees the new version. An empty pad sends nothing. Pads further up a chain or inside a connected group count too.
If the chat doesn't seem to see your sketch:
- Make sure the pad is connected. An unconnected chat only knows the pad exists.
- Pick a model that accepts images. Slashspace doesn't check this, and a text-only model can't read the drawing.
- Check that the chat isn't set to Isolated context, which ignores all connections.
Agent and Chat mode see the drawing. Orchestrator mode doesn't, and Image mode can't use a pad as a reference image yet.
Resize and save
Drag the pad's right or bottom edge to add or remove paper. Your drawing never scales. Strokes past a shrunken edge are hidden and left out of the image, and they come back when you enlarge the pad.
The canvas saves your strokes. Your tool, color and width aren't saved: a pad goes back to the black, medium pen when you reopen the canvas.
To sketch while you read a chat, click Open in sidebar in the pad's header. The side view shows the same pad, scaled to fit.