Your canvas. Without Obsidian.
Open a .canvas file to see its cards, groups and arrows, pan and zoom around it, and turn it into a plain Markdown note: every card in order, then every connection.
Launch plan.canvas
The canvas as Markdown
<https://obsidian.md>
## Launch plan
### Goal
Ship the **spring newsletter** by Friday.
#### Tasks
- [x] Outline
- [ ] Draft
- [ ] Review with [[Dana]]
![[Research/Interviews.md]]
Keep each section under 200 words.
> [!tip]
> Lead with the one change readers asked for.
## Connections
- Goal → Tasks
- Goal → Interviews: based on
- Tasks → Keep each section under 200 words.
- Interviews → Keep each section under 200 words.
- Tasks → https://obsidian.md: publish in
Work on canvases and notes in Obsidian, with AI that edits them, using SystemSculpt
What it does
A canvas, open anywhere.
Turning other notes into Markdown? Try the Markdown cheat sheet for the syntax Obsidian reads.
- See the whole board
- Text cards in formatted Markdown, groups, web links, file cards and labelled, coloured arrows, as laid out in Obsidian.
- Pan and zoom
- Drag to move around. Pinch, or hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, to zoom. Fit brings the whole canvas back.
- Canvas to Markdown
- Each group becomes a heading with its cards under it, files become ![[embeds]], and the arrows are listed at the end.
Questions.
What is a .canvas file?
The file Obsidian saves a canvas in. It’s plain JSON in the open JSON Canvas format: a list of cards with their position, size and colour, and a list of the arrows between them.
How do I open a canvas without Obsidian?
Choose the .canvas file here or drop it on the board, or paste its text. The cards and arrows are drawn as they sit in Obsidian. In your vault, the file is next to your notes, under the name you gave the canvas.
Why do file cards show only their name?
A .canvas file stores where an embedded note or image lives in the vault, not its contents. The viewer has only the canvas file, so it shows the name and path. In Obsidian the card shows the file itself.
How do I turn a canvas into a note?
Open it here and copy the Markdown under the board, or download it as a .md file and put it in your vault. Groups become headings, text cards keep their Markdown, file cards become ![[embeds]] and arrows become a list.
Is my canvas uploaded?
No. The canvas is read and drawn in your browser and isn’t uploaded or stored.
Does it cost anything?
No. It’s free, with no account and no sign-up.
Other free tools: Markdown table generator, Markdown cheat sheet, Markdown viewer, Markdown to PDF, Markdown to Word, Markdown formatter, Markdown to HTML, Markdown to text, Markdown editor, Markdown to Google Docs, Mermaid live editor, LaTeX equation editor, Markdown link generator, PDF to Markdown, Word to Markdown, HTML to Markdown, ChatGPT to Markdown, Evernote to Markdown, Notion to Obsidian.