I like the idea, my fear is however that the lack of structure will cognitively overload my brain and at some point every canvas will become a mess. Think about how to expire unused/old windows. Maybe let use set a limit so that at some point they are forced to remove old window when they want to open a new one.
I have a miro board as a notepad, I constantly add new stuff but at the same time its unmanageable.
Another example could be browser tabs, since there's no limit my current window holds approximately 60 open tabs which (which I dont use ofc) - this is the effect of chrome not having a native way to save stuff for later in a semantic way (you cannot search through bookmarks the same way you would search through google).
The success of this project will be defined by how well and easy users are able to retain the context (or content) of their canvas.
I like Obsidian for note taking and it does have an infinite canvas, but it feels bolted on. I would love to have a more canvas first note taking app, maybe with folders for visual declutter.
Navigation in default Obsidian is one of the weakest points imo
That’s a valid concern and probably one of the biggest risks with an infinite canvas.
The goal is not “infinite mess”, but persistent context with enough structure: docking, tabs, splits, search via Cmd+K, detachable panels, project-based canvases, and restored layouts. I also think things like expiry/cleanup, saved views, folders or semantic grouping would make sense over time.
Retention of context is basically the whole product question here.
Nice, I'm creator of Logdy.dev [https://logdy.dev/logdy-pro] and some time ago I was developing a pro version that has similarities to your project. Would love to chat if you plan to commercialize your solution.
We've (https://www.definite.app/) replaced quite a few metabase accounts now and we have a built-in lakehouse using duckdb + ducklake, so I feel comfortable calling us a "duckdb-based metabase alternative".
When I see the title here, I think "BI with an embedded database", which is what we're building at Definite. A lot of people want dashboards / AI analysis without buying Snowflake, Fivetran, BI and stitching them all together.
hi, dev building Shaper here. Both, Shaper and Metabase, can be used to build dashboards for business intelligence functionality and embedded analytics. But the use cases are different: Metabase is feature-rich and has lots of functionality for self-serve that allows non-technical users to easily build their own dashboards and drill down as they please. With Shaper you define everything as code in SQL. It's much more minimal in terms of what you can configure, but if you like the SQL-based approach it can be pretty productive to treat dashboards as code.
I have a miro board as a notepad, I constantly add new stuff but at the same time its unmanageable.
Another example could be browser tabs, since there's no limit my current window holds approximately 60 open tabs which (which I dont use ofc) - this is the effect of chrome not having a native way to save stuff for later in a semantic way (you cannot search through bookmarks the same way you would search through google).
The success of this project will be defined by how well and easy users are able to retain the context (or content) of their canvas.
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