Block-based, markdown-native, version-controlled, AI-augmented. Built for novels, research, technical writing, and any team writing anything longer than a memo. Lossless markdown round-trip means your work survives Inkwell.
On working with constraints
Constraints don't fight a draft — they give it edges. The hardest part of any long document is deciding what it isn't.
Working hypothesis: the more open the canvas, the longer the first paragraph takes.
Outline section 2 · Confirm three quotes · Draft conclusion
const audience = readers.filter(r => r.cares_about(topic))Source · Year · Quoted on page
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Markdown round-trip
Canvas is a structured document editor — blocks, version control, AI skills, real-time collaboration. It treats long documents as structured data so version history, diffs, and skills can actually do useful work on them.
Chapter-structured drafts, research notebooks alongside the manuscript, version-controlled revisions. Save points snapshot your day's work; draft lines explore an alternate plot direction without forking files.
RFCs, design docs, papers. Citations link to sources, code blocks render inline, structure checks catch sections that don't match the outline. Markdown round-trips losslessly with the rest of your toolchain.
Internal wikis, briefs, runbooks. Real-time co-authoring, threaded comments, history that survives the document. Every save point preserved — no ‘who broke the doc’ archaeology.
Type / for the block menu. Drag the handle to reorder. Nest blocks inside blocks. Each block has a type — Canvas knows the difference between a heading and a paragraph and can version, diff, and transform them accordingly.
Canvas treats markdown as a first-class representation, not an export afterthought. Paste markdown, get blocks. Copy blocks, get markdown back — preserved structure, footnotes, callouts, tables, code fences. The same document, two representations, losslessly.
That's the difference between a document tool and a vendor lock-in.
Lossless conversion
Footnotes, citations, task lists, code fences — all round-trip cleanly.
Pipe to anything
Pandoc, hugo, mdx, your static-site generator, your AI prompt — all work on Canvas markdown directly.
# On working with constraints
Constraints don't fight a draft — they
give it **edges**. The hardest part of
any long document is deciding what
it _isn't_.
> Working hypothesis: the more open
> the canvas, the longer the first
> paragraph takes.
- [ ] Outline section 2
- [ ] Confirm three quotes
- [x] Draft conclusionOn working with constraints
Constraints don't fight a draft — they give it edges. The hardest part of any long document is deciding what it isn't.
Working hypothesis: the more open the canvas, the longer the first paragraph takes.
Each row is a starting template. The block tags hint at what writers actually drop in first; the editor adapts to whatever shape your document needs.
Chapter outlines, character notes, world-building references. Draft lines explore an alternate ending without losing the trunk. Save points snapshot every reading-pass milestone.
RFCs, design docs, API references. Code blocks with syntax highlighting, structured examples, real-time review with engineering teams.
Source-linked research that doesn't lose threads. Citations track to PDFs and URLs, evidence trails run alongside argumentation, search across every doc in the project.
Briefs, runbooks, design specs, post-mortems. Co-authored in real time, versioned forever, exportable to whatever format your team agrees on.
Papers, dissertations, lit reviews. Footnotes, bibliographies, structured outline mode. Reading-level skill checks accessibility against a target audience.
Atomic notes that link to each other, daily journals, reading log. Markdown-native means your notes survive Inkwell — they round-trip cleanly to any tool.
Chapter 3 argues that the second act needs to slow down — the reader isn't ready to move on yet.
Agreed. Let's hold the reveal until after the market scene.
Blocked at the paragraph, not the file — your sentence is safe.
Block-level cursors, named presence, threaded comments anchored to specific paragraphs. Two people can rewrite the same chapter at the same time — Canvas resolves edits at the block level, not the character level, so nobody's sentence gets overwritten.
Every comment, every save point, every accepted edit lives in the document's history. When someone asks "who wrote this and why?" — the answer is one click away.
Conflict-free co-editing
Simultaneous edits resolve cleanly at the block boundary — no lost keystrokes, no waiting for a lock.
History survives
Comments and resolved threads stay in the document's history, not a separate tool.
Save points snapshot the document at any moment — before a major rewrite, after a draft pass, the version you sent to a reviewer. Draft lines branch the document into parallel versions: try a different argument, restructure a chapter, explore an alternate framing — all without losing the trunk.
Diffs are block-aware. See exactly which heading moved, which paragraph was rewritten, which citation changed — not a wall of red and green character-level edits.
Save points
Named, immutable snapshots. Cmd+S anytime, or auto on document milestones.
Draft lines
Parallel versions. Try a different framing; incorporate the parts that worked.
Six skills built on the document's structure — outlines, citations, prose. Each one reads the document, proposes block-level edits, and lets you accept or reject one at a time. No chat sidebar, no copy-paste round-trip.
Hand the AI a structured outline. It expands each beat into a draft block, leaving the structure intact so your edits stay surgical.
Surface gaps in your document — missing sections, dangling references, headings that don't match the outline, paragraphs that wandered off-topic.
Drop in PDFs, articles, transcripts. The skill extracts the relevant passages into linked block citations — every quote traceable to its source.
Rewrite a document end-to-end in a target voice — academic, conversational, technical, marketing. Each change is a block-level edit you accept or reject.
Measures sentence complexity, jargon density, and passive-voice ratio against a target audience. Flags the dense paragraphs that lose readers.
Select any block, describe the change. The AI rewrites it in place. Accept or reject line by line. No context switching, no chat sidebar.
Canvas skills are reviewable — each suggestion is a block-level edit you accept or reject. Accepting creates a save point automatically. Your draft is never modified without your decision.
Canvas reads and writes the formats your collaborators already use. No proprietary lock-in — markdown is the source of truth, every export is a derivation.
Bonus: cross-product blocks
If you write screenplays in Plot, Canvas can embed live scenes from your scripts — rendered with full WGA formatting, pinned to a save point or following the latest draft. A series bible that references the actual production draft, not a stale copy.
Inkwell ships two real document tools, not lightweight modes. Plot for screenplays, Canvas for everything else. Both share the version-control substrate, AI runtime, and collaboration engine — that's why a Plot scene can render losslessly inside a Canvas document.
Canvas is in early access for Pro users. Join the waitlist now — markdown-native, version-controlled, AI-augmented document editing without the vendor lock-in.