Talk to your canvas. It draws back.
Spectacle is a spatial workspace for thinking and planning, with an AI that can create on the canvas.
Free & open sourceNo account needed
Demo: in Spectacle, a user asks the chat beside a canvas to draw the checkout flow from their Payments notes with a retry path for declined cards. The assistant shows which notes it is reading, replies, and draws an eight-step flowchart on the canvas as a proposal. The user applies it and the shapes become part of the canvas.
The canvas, reimagined.
A spatial toolkit for your hardest work. Powerful drawing tools, rich-text notes, diagramming, and small tools the AI builds for you.
Drawing tools
Freehand ink, geometric shapes, and smart connectors that anchor and route cleanly around your cards.
Notes & to-dos
Distraction-free markdown notes and to-do checklists that live directly on your canvas.
Extensions
Small AI-built tools like converters, estimators, and checklists that live on your canvas.
An AI collaborator with hands on the canvas.
Most AI sits on the side and talks about your work. Spectacle's assistant shares the canvas: it reads what you're working on, places proposals in empty space, and waits for your nod.
It creates
Full access to the same canvas tools to draw diagrams, clean sketches, and arrange real UI wireframes.
It sees what you see
Understands your active canvas, displays context as removable chips, and pulls in references with @.
It keeps you in charge
Every change lands as a proposal in empty space. Apply, edit, or discard without touching existing work.
Bring any model you need, local or cloud.
Run models locally on your computer, use your own API keys, or use managed models from Spectacle Cloud.
Local
Run models locally bundled with the app. Private on your computer, and works with no network connection.
- Works offline
- No account needed
Cloud
Connect Anthropic, OpenAI, or any OpenAI-compatible API directly. Billed directly by your provider.
- Your provider, your bill
- Latest frontier models
Spectacle Cloud
Managed frontier models with pooled credits and instant access.
- Instant access
- Unlock cloud collaboration
Connect to other AI tools on your terms.
Claude Desktop, Cursor and other agents connect to Spectacle over MCP, so they can read the canvas you point them at and suggest changes to it.
Model Context Protocol
Standard MCP server over a local Unix domain socket. Any MCP client can connect.
Explicit scopes per agent
Grant access to one canvas, read-only or with permission to suggest changes. Revoke any time.
Changes stay as proposals
Outside agents can't overwrite your canvas. Their edits land as proposal cards for you to apply.
Every call in the audit log
See which tool read which note, at what time, right in the app. No mystery telemetry.
Private by design.
- On your computer
- Everything lives locally. No account needed to use it.
- Encrypted at rest
- Encrypted on your computer by default, or switch to plain files anytime.
- Touch ID unlock
- With a recovery key you keep.
- Works offline
- Canvases, search and local AI need no network.
- Open file format
- Documented, so you can take your work anywhere.
- Open source
- Free, GPL-3.0. Read the code that holds your notes.
Your own digital workbench.
Spectacle introduces a brand new way to work. First, step inside a self-organizing view of your canvases, then zoom in and start working.
Organize at the speed of thought
- Jump between any canvas instantly
- Connect related canvases with smart spatial links
- See a bird's eye view of your entire body of work
- Ask AI-powered search to find anything across your canvases
- Home surfaces all notes and to-dos into convenient priority views
Think visually, on a canvas that answers.
Free and open source. Your work stays on your machine; add Cloud when you want to share.