How to build interactive experiences with canvases

Most developers are now working alongside agents, or are at least familiar with how to do so. Agents help you explore ideas and turn them into action, from planning projects to automating workflows. Oftentimes, a conversation is all you need to move your work forward.

But what about tasks that don’t quite fit the conversation mold? Some tasks are easier when you can see and interact with the information. You may need to triage a backlog, visualize complex information, or bring information together from multiple sources.

A visual interface makes it easier to understand patterns, spot connections, and take action. Instead of working through a long chain of prompts and responses, you can use canvases to interact directly with the information in front of you. Working with canvases These shared, interactive surfaces are extensions of the Copilot app called canvases.

A canvas is an interface in the GitHub Copilot app where developers and agents can collaborate in real time. These shared, interactive surfaces are called canvas extensions. The agent can update the canvas as it works, and you can interact with that same workspace through clicks, edits, and other actions.

Your interactions can be sent back to the agents  or  processed locally by the canvas. You can continuously shape the experience by asking Copilot to iterate on your canvas—adding new functionality, refining existing features, and more. The canvas can evolve alongside your work.

To create a canvas, use  /create-canvas  in your agent session in the GitHub Copilot app, then describe what you want it to create and what capabilities it should be able to support. Because canvases are generated from a prompt and evolve alongside your workflow, they can take many forms. Some help you visualize information, some help you take action, others provide a more entertaining way to tackle your backlog.

Here’s some examples of what’s possible with canvas extensions: Issue triage helper Goal : Quickly triage GitHub Issues in a fast, visual way. Prompt :  /create-canvas Create an interface that allows me to easily swipe through issues in a repo in card format. Can swipe right to ship, left to reject.

Result : The canvas shows a card-based interface where each issue is surfaced one at a time. You can take action directly from the UI. As you swipe, the canvas updates in real time, tracking decisions and moving the items into the appropriate buckets.

Interactive codebase diagram Goal : Visualize how a project is structured and how its components relate to each other. Prompt :  /create-canvas Render a colorful, interactive diagram showing how the code in this project is working together, show how things are related, etc. Result : The canvas generates a dynamic diagram of the codebase where each node represents a different part of the system.