Ideation canvas guide

Open the canvas

The Evidence board has four views: Cards, By complaint, Timeline and Canvas. The Canvas view starts with three choices: Find ideas (recommended), Start from a template, or Add from Evidence. The Cards list switch shows the same cards as a table. See the Evidence board guide.

Find ideas

Find ideas asks who you are (founder, buyer or either), the market or niche, where to start from, how many ideas (1 to 6) and any constraints. It adds a Brief card and puts a message in the chat box. Nothing is sent until you review the message and send it. Your own AI then reads your research with Desktop's tools and places evidence, ideas and assumptions on the canvas in one step.

• Every evidence id the AI sends is checked against your project. An invented one is dropped and counted.
• A quote the AI sends must appear in the saved text, or it is dropped.
• Caps per pass: 30 evidence cards, 6 ideas and 5 assumptions per idea.
• The AI sends no scores. Idea cards from the AI are drafts until you press Save as idea.

Cards and frames

• Note and Prompt: free text. A Prompt is a standing instruction for your AI, not evidence.
• Evidence: points at a saved evidence item, with source, title, an optional pinned quote and a link to the original. If the item is deleted, the card says Removed.
• Idea: points at an idea, or holds a draft. Shows how much evidence backs it and how much is against.
• Assumption: a statement, a type (desirability, usability, feasibility, viability or ethical), a test, a success criterion and a state (untested, testing, passed or failed).
• Frame: a container with a role: Problem, Evidence, Ideas, Assumptions, Decision or custom. Moving a frame moves its cards. The Problem to decision template adds the five frames in reading order.

Connect cards

Drag a card's dot onto another card. Supports and Contradicts run from evidence or a note into an idea or assumption, and the counts on the target are computed from them. Feeds Context sends a card's text to a frame you have turned into a question for your AI. Self connections and duplicates are refused.

Your call

Importance and evidence level (1 to 5) on an assumption are labelled Your call. A connected AI cannot set them. It can store a visible suggestion that you Accept or ignore. Anything computed from your data, such as counts, says so.

Move around

• Scroll to pan. Hold Cmd and scroll to zoom. Fit shows everything.
• Select cards and press F to frame them. Tidy packs cards into rows, and never moves a pinned card.
• Library drags saved evidence onto the canvas.
• Undo and Redo cover every change, including a whole AI pass. Undo history is kept until the app quits.
• Gentle suggestions appear when, for example, an idea has no supporting evidence.

Use it with your AI

Every canvas action is an MCP tool, so Claude, Codex or Cursor can read the canvas, add cards, connect them and tidy. Scraped text is handed to the AI as data, never as instructions. See the Ideation canvas group in the tools reference.