Whiteboard / visual canvas to connect notes (Heptabase-like)
complete
Douglas Sant'ana
It would be amazing if Tolaria had a whiteboard-style visual canvas to organize and connect notes, similar to how Heptabase works.
Right now Tolaria is already great for local-first, markdown, and AI-ready workflows, but some knowledge work really benefits from spatial thinking: dragging notes/cards on a canvas, clustering them, and drawing visible connections between ideas.
Some ideas for this feature:
- A board / canvas view where we can place notes (or excerpts/blocks of notes) as cards.
- The ability to connect notes visually, with lines/arrows between cards, while still keeping normal links/backlinks in the underlying markdown files.
- Support for multiple boards (for projects, topics, research areas, etc.).
- Optional sync with relations / types, so boards can reflect existing structure in the vault instead of being completely separate.
This would make Tolaria a powerful replacement/companion for tools like Heptabase, letting us keep everything in plain markdown + git while still having a rich visual thinking mode on top.
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Jannik Oberlies
+1 here Luca Rossi. For an agent, navigating through a repository of md files is easy. For humans, the 'big picture' of a knowledge base is far better to grasp from a visual perspective (i. e. through mindmaps). Obsidian solves this through its canvas. Would love to see this in Tolaria.
PS: What you built is simply amazing. Big thanks for your work. Can't wait to experience what is down the road for Tolaria.
Luca Rossi
About fullscreen whiteboard: if you put your note in wide mode and only include a whiteboard it's basically it
It's important that the note stays a .md so you can add properties, relationships, etc.
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Dario
Luca Rossi this is great. But i'm wondering if the elements inside the whiteboard can be markdown files. Like notes inside the whiteboard. Do you know what i mean ? This is what i meant by "standalone whiteboard."
I suspect you should use react flow to achieve this. Not tldraw
Luca Rossi
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Dario
Standalone whiteboards: There is currently no way to create a standalone whiteboard; the feature is only available within notes.
Full-screen mode: I am unable to find a full-screen toggle for tldraw.
Mermaid integration: I couldn't get Mermaid to work, though this may just be a configuration error on my end.
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krzemian
Dario I agree fullscreen/whiteboard-only notes would be great, as this is a preferred use for infinite canvases, anyway (see Miro, Mural etc.)
But I'm pretty sure this feature will get some more iterations from Luca along the way as desired features are discovered, i.e. regarding the tldraw tool selection, ability to link notes and so on
Douglas Sant'ana
Hey Luca Rossi, thanks for integrating tldraw! it's a nice addition for drawing and diagrams inside notes.
However, I think this doesn't really address what the original request was about. The feature I described is a spatial canvas for organizing and connecting existing notes, similar to how Heptabase works. The core idea is:
- Placing notes (or note excerpts) as cards on a canvas and moving them around freely
- Drawing connections/arrows between notes, while keeping backlinks in the underlying markdown
- Multiple boards for different projects or research areas
- Reflecting existing vault structure (relations/types) on the canvas
What was shipped is an embedded drawing tool inside a note, which is useful, but it's a fundamentally different feature. It doesn't let you drag your existing notes onto a canvas, spatially organize them, or create visual connections between them.
I'd suggest moving this back to "in progress" or creating a separate post for the tldraw integration, since the Heptabase-like canvas is still unaddressed. Dario's feedback in the thread also highlights some gaps (no standalone whiteboards, no fullscreen mode).
Would love to see this revisited, it's the feature that would make Tolaria a true Heptabase alternative while keeping everything in plain markdown + git.
Luca Rossi
Dario what do you mean about mermaid? in the screenshot it seems to be working
Luca Rossi
krzemian yes iterating fast on this ❤
Luca Rossi
Douglas Sant'ana yes I see your point sorry, but I feel the original feature request was not 100% clear and many people upvoted it because they saw "whiteboard" first — see comments from Lucas and Krzemian, and also the fact there is no other "whiteboard" feature request.
Will split this into a separate feature request for a connected notes canvas, but this is probably not coming soon, as it is complex and probably a bit niche!
Luca Rossi
Integrated tldraw! Insert it with /whiteboard
Luca Rossi
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Lucas Tolle
Excalidraw is also a perfect recommendation, and it's open source. Perhaps this will be possible when Luca Rossi creates the ability to add modules/plugins.
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krzemian
Perhaps the folks at https://tldraw.dev/ would agree to use it since Tolaria is open source & free to use?
the_jwoo
Will +1 this.
I love infinite canvas tools and the ability to see content visually connected.
I often work on parallel tasks and like being able to connect relationships across different topics. I’d imagine content being generated or streamed in real time, with the canvas automatically populated with different topics and notes, while still making it easy to branch off from existing notes. Of course, all of this should sync back to simple .md files.
A single-window/editor model is great for isolated tasks and reading, but it doesn’t feel well-suited for exploration, creation, or studying across topics. A UX like Heptabase feels ideal here.
If I had more time, I’d be heads down working on this myself, but I’m a bit too busy right now to build something polished. Happy to take a stab at it when I free up.