Canvas mode

Canvas mode turns a region of a sheet into an interactive mini-app: a kanban board, a gallery, a dashboard, a calendar, or a heat map. You describe the view you want in plain language and the agent picks the layout and maps your columns to it.

How to use it

1. Open Insert > Create Canvas. A new canvas tab opens alongside your sheet.
2. In the prompt bar, describe the view you want, for example “kanban by status” or “dashboard of revenue by region”.
3. Click Generate. The agent reads the sheet’s columns and sample rows, chooses a layout, maps the columns, and renders it.
4. Edit the sheet as usual; the canvas updates live. Click Refresh to rebuild it after a large change, or change the prompt and generate again.

Layouts

• Kanban: rows grouped into lanes by a column. Cards carry left/right controls that move a row to another lane and write the new value back to the sheet.
• Gallery: one card per row in a wrapping grid, with optional sorting and an optional image field.
• Dashboard: KPI metrics (sum, average, count, min, max of a column) plus grouped charts.
• Calendar: rows pinned to a date column and sorted chronologically; rows with no date are listed separately.
• Heat map: a numeric column rendered as colour intensity.

Model and availability

Canvas uses the same model you’ve configured for the agent, so there’s no separate setup. It runs in the desktop app, not the in-browser (WASM) build yet.

Current limits

Canvas mode is usable end to end today, with a few rough edges to know about:

• Views aren’t saved yet. A canvas lives for the session; when you reopen the workbook, regenerate it from the prompt. Your sheet data is of course saved as normal.
• Dashboard charts render as simple proportional bars for now; the bar, line, area, and pie distinction is captured in the spec but not yet drawn differently.
• Heat maps render as a single strip. A two-axis (row by column) pivot is planned; today both-axes requests fall back to the strip.
• Write-back is kanban-only so far. Gallery, dashboard, calendar, and heat-map views are read-only; edit the underlying cells to change them.