How the AIGE Canvas Works: One Board, Everything On It

Most AI tools hand you a text box and a download button. You type, you wait, you save the file, and the thing you were actually trying to build lives somewhere else: in Figma, in a folder, in your head. The AIGE canvas removes that round trip. It is an infinite board, and everything you generate arrives on it as an object you can move, resize, group and keep working on.

If you have signed in on a desktop browser, you are already looking at it. The canvas is what loads at the AIGE workspace. What follows is how the pieces fit together, written for a first session rather than a reference shelf.

The basic loop: say it, and it lands

Work starts in the chat dock. Describe what you want in plain language, an image or a video or a set of variations, and send it. You do not have to choose a model. The agent reads the request and picks one, which matters more than it sounds: model choice is the thing beginners get wrong most often, and it is the thing that wastes credits when it goes wrong.

When the generation finishes it does not appear in a results tray. It lands on the board.

Everything on the board is a real object

This is the part worth learning early. A finished generation is not a preview. Drag it, scale it from any corner, rotate it, group it with other objects, stack it in front of or behind its neighbours. Select several at once and align them. The image you just made and a rectangle you drew a minute ago behave identically, because to the board they are the same kind of thing.

That is what makes this a workspace instead of a gallery. A generation can become a layout without being exported anywhere first.

Getting around

Scroll to pan. Pinch, or hold ⌘ and scroll, to zoom. Holding the space bar turns whatever tool you are using into a temporary hand, so you can shove the view sideways mid-task and carry on without losing your place.

Three shortcuts save more time than the rest combined:

• ⌘0 resets zoom to 100% when you have lost your sense of scale.

• ⇧2 zooms to whatever you currently have selected.

• ⌘A selects everything on the board.

A zoom control sits in the bottom-right corner showing the current percentage, if you would rather click than remember.

Two toolsets in one bar

The toolbar along the bottom has a small switch at its left end with two states. AI mode carries the tools for working with generated content: frames, connector arrows, text, sticky notes. Design mode swaps in the drafting set, including the shape library and the freehand pen.

That switch is easy to miss on a first visit, and missing it is why some people decide the canvas cannot draw. It can. There is a full guide to every tool when you want the complete list.

The right-hand panel: style and layers

Select an object and the panel on the right wakes up. It has two tabs. Design gives you fill, stroke, effects and text properties, plus align and distribute controls once you have more than one thing selected. Layers lists every object on the board in stacking order, which is the fastest way to grab something buried behind something else.

The Vault: nothing you make is lost

Every generation you have ever run is kept in the Vault, reachable from the top bar and searchable. Deleting something from the board does not delete it from the Vault, and dragging an old result back onto the board does not charge you for it again.

In practice this changes how freely you work. You can clear a board down to nothing without losing the good version of anything, because the good version was saved the moment it was made.

What the agent knows about you

A workspace panel collects the things that make the agent yours, across five tabs: Memory, Skills, Connectors, Content and Files. They open over the canvas rather than on a separate page, so checking what the agent knows never costs you your place. Your credit balance sits in the same top bar, beside the profile menu.

Projects keep boards apart

The project menu next to the AIGE logo separates work into boards and holds your chat history. A client moodboard and a personal experiment do not have to share space.

If you get lost

The question-mark button in the top bar replays the built-in tour: seven short cards that spotlight the composer, the stage, the toolbar, the panel, the Vault and the profile area, in that order. It takes under a minute, and you can run it as often as you like.

Honest note: the canvas is built for a desktop-sized screen and a pointer. It runs on a tablet, where one-finger touch pans the board rather than drawing, but a phone is not where you will want to lay out your first project.

A reasonable first session

1. Ask for one image in the chat dock and watch it land.

2. Drag it, scale it, then press ⌘Z twice to see undo work on the board itself.

3. Flip the toolbar to design mode and put a text label beside it.

4. Open the Vault and confirm the image is already saved there.

That is the whole model. Everything after this is tools.