---
id: "canvas.visao-geral"
titulo: "The Canvas"
resumo: "Understand the project board, the kinds of card it holds, and why every workspace has its own Canvas."
idioma: "en"
tipo: "conceito"
categoria: "telas"
aplicavelDesde: "0.0.16"
capabilities: ["canvas.cards.list", "canvas.empty-state", "canvas.backdrop.sky", "canvas.workspace.scope"]
estadoEditorial: "aprovado"
nivelEvidencia: "artefato-distribuido"
refFonte: "27574c339b58316408f6be2d62169d59041d07bf"
revisaoFonte: "2026-09-24"
revisor: "mantenedor (v1, 2026-10-03)"
rota: "/docs/en/canvas/visao-geral/"
fonte: "pt-br/canvas/visao-geral.md"
caminhoPublico: "docs/publica/en/canvas/visao-geral.md"
hashFonte: "sha256:378363259351fe0d9f3d9742e9d429e75d5eb5fc52dd40346137a052dd274da3"
hashDestaPagina: "sha256:054b02ab6ac282708146750f86db994005024c442b4a90e39d751870bea52142"
traducaoAssistidaPorIA: true
traducaoDesatualizada: false
corpoRetido: false
---
<!-- traducao-assistida-por-ia: idioma=EN fonte=pt-br/canvas/visao-geral.md fonteHash=sha256:378363259351fe0d9f3d9742e9d429e75d5eb5fc52dd40346137a052dd274da3 estado=atual -->

The **Canvas** is the project board: an infinite surface where each open piece of work becomes a **card**. It is the first screen you see when you open a new project, and it already comes with a conversation card ready — starting a project in Elyra is a conversation, not configuration.

A card is not a disposable window. Its content (a conversation, a terminal, a note, a file) **lives in the app's main process**. Changing the layout, minimizing or maximizing a card does not interrupt what was running.

## What exists on the board

| Card | What it is |
|---|---|
| **Conversation** | A conversation with an assistant. The project's main conversation card is the maestro. |
| **Terminal** | A full terminal inside a card, with a plain shell or already with an assistant. |
| **Note** | Markdown text stored in a `.md` file, used as memory and as a message between you and the agents. See [Notes on the Canvas](/docs/en/canvas/notas/visao-geral/). |
| **Note group** | A binder of notes with pages, so dozens of cards do not spread across the board. |
| **File** | A real project file opened as a card, in the same editor as the Files screen. |
| **Browser** | A page opened inside the board. It is not a tab of the Browser screen. |
| **Phone** | A phone card (emulator). It only appears when the emulator is available in the build; otherwise the item says it is not available in this version yet. |

The **File** card has no button of its own in the bar: it is born when you open a real file (from the tree, from search, or from a link). You create the other kinds — see [Creating cards](/docs/en/canvas/criar-cartoes/).

## Every workspace has its own Canvas

The Canvas is **per workspace**, not per project. Two workspaces of the same project keep separate boards: what you arrange in one does not appear in, or move, the other. That is what lets you keep a parallel work board without mixing the two.

As a practical consequence, every command-line command that touches the Canvas needs to know **which workspace** it is aiming at. Running from inside a card, the target is that card's workspace; outside one, you point at the workspace explicitly.

## The empty board

With no card on the board, the Canvas shows the invitation **"Nothing on the board yet"** and explains the two paths: the bar at the top to open a conversation, a terminal, or a note, and right-clicking the background to create a card at the point you indicate.

That invitation deliberately has no button of its own — the bar is what creates cards, and a second path there would duplicate the assistant-detection logic. The background is still a work area: right-clicking and dragging to pan work normally over it.

## The background

The Canvas background is a **static star field**, painted once, with no parallax: the stars stay pinned to the screen and are not recalculated when you drag the board. It is surface decoration — it represents nothing about your work and does not change behavior with the board's content.

## Seeing and finding cards

To know what exists on the board without scanning the screen at a zoomed-out level, use the **Layers** panel: it lists the workspace's cards with text search and a type filter, and moves the camera to the chosen card.

You can also list the cards from the command line — useful for an agent that needs to know what exists on the board before acting.

## Limits worth knowing now

- **The app must be open.** Several Canvas operations from the command line are refused when there is no application window open; the target is not guessed.
- **The workspace's Canvas must have been opened on screen at least once.** Without that, command-line commands fail instead of inventing a board that does not exist.
- **The separation between screens is not complete yet.** The product decision is that Canvas, Conversation, Terminal and Browser are independent places, but the central area has not been fully separated — do not count on "each screen showing only its own content" as guaranteed behavior.