v1.0 Early Access

Your thinking isn't linear. Your canvas shouldn't be either.

Crystal Canvas is a tactile rendering and interaction layer
that enhances Obsidian's native canvas.

Features

Drawing Studio

Stamps & Templates

Asset Gallery

Neural Edges

Spatial Minimap

Node Rotation

Spatial Clones

Inertia Panning

Glassmorphic Groups

Vector Layer

The Pro Drawing Studio

Sketch, outline, and annotate directly over your canvas. Features auto-morphing shapes that snap to perfect geometry, custom brush styles, and editable vector layers that scale infinitely without pixelation.

Workflow Macros

Canvas Stamps & Templates

Save complex clusters of nodes, drawings, and connection routes as reusable stamps. Deploy pre-programmed chains of layouts instantly to map out frameworks in a single click.

Universal Vault Browser

Visual Asset Gallery

Your vault's entire universe in a single sidebar. Browse, sort, and preview every file type — images, videos, markdown notes, canvas files — organized by date, size, or visual hue. Hover to scrub video timelines, preview documents inline, and drag-and-drop anything directly onto your canvas.

Spatial Logic

Custom Neural Edges

Bypass rigid center points. Connect nodes with multiple custom points along any edge, featuring mathematical curves that dynamically reroute to the cleanest layout when nodes are repositioned.

Spatial Systems

Live Spatial Minimap

Navigate massive canvases with a bird's-eye spatial overview, ensuring you never lose your place no matter how large your workspace grows. Drop custom spatial pins on critical thoughts and click to teleport across thousands of pixels instantly with smooth, physics-based easing.

Engine Architecture

Supporting Subsystems

A deeper look at the visual and physics pipelines that power the canvas engine.

Visual Hierarchy

Free Axis Node Rotation

Break free from standard horizontal alignments. Free-rotate any text, card, or image node in 2D space to construct your own custom visual focal points and unstructured layouts.

System Commands

Spatial Clones & Duplication

Duplicate any selected node, group, or vector drawing instantly. Clone elements while fully preserving their connection structures to rapidly expand your spatial workspaces.

Physics Engine

Inertia Panning & Zoom

Navigation designed with smooth momentum. Pan across thousands of nodes and let the canvas coast naturally to a halt, eliminating the rigid stops of traditional web canvases.

Visual Depth

Glassmorphic Grouping

Organize related concepts inside semi-transparent containers. Watch container borders, backdrop blurs, and colors dynamically scale based on nesting layers and pointer proximity.

System Isolation: Active

Local-First. Quiet. Yours.

I built Crystal Canvas to be an invisible rendering layer over your markdown vault. No cloud databases, no background tracking, no middle-men.

Zero Cloud Footprint

Every stroke, layout change, and custom connection point lives exclusively on your hard drive. Your data runs strictly inside Obsidian's native .canvas file structure. If you decide to uninstall the plugin tomorrow, your files remain completely intact, open, and readable. Your research never leaves your hard drive.

Absolute Silence

I don't track your clicks, catalog your ideas, or record your crashes in the background. There are no tracking scripts, no database analytics, and no cloud check-ins. The engine operates in total isolation, providing the quiet, distraction-free environment you need to think.

Developer Proximity

Early access means we evolve the engine together. When you hit a layout bug or need a custom templates stamp, submit it directly from your settings panel. Your report bypasses massive ticket platforms and drops straight into my personal dev terminal for weekly patches.

crystal-canvas v1.0 > dev_status: active

Pricing

The v1.0 Early Access License

Standard Price

$25 USD

Lifetime access. All future 1.x updates included. No subscriptions, ever. Price reverts to $25 at public release.

View Full Feature Docs

Code copied — use it at checkout!

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Features FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did you build this?

Because the native tools felt rigid. I wanted a space that actually felt alive — a mirror for my own dynamic, hyper-active mind. I built Crystal Canvas to feel entirely free, turning the canvas from a static whiteboard into a fluid environment where you actually enjoy polishing your ideas.

Why isn't this free like Excalidraw or FigJam?

While great tools, web-based whiteboards can feel disconnected, and existing Obsidian plugins often feel static or "dead." Crystal Canvas is a deeply integrated, highly dynamic engine that respects your offline-first vault, offering pro-level features — like smart routing, 3D scrubbing, and inertia panning — without forcing you into a cloud ecosystem.

Will it lock my data or break my existing canvases?

Absolutely not. Crystal Canvas operates strictly as a rendering and interaction layer over your existing .canvas files. Your data remains perfectly safe, standard, and local.

Do I actually need this?

If you only drop a few text boxes a month, probably not. But if the canvas is your primary thinking space, and you want an environment that reacts to you, flows smoothly, and organizes massive amounts of visual media effortlessly, this will change how you work.