Developers now work alongside agents that plan projects and automate workflows. A conversation is often enough to move work forward.
Some tasks do not fit a chat format. You may need to sort a backlog, visualise complex data, or combine information from multiple sources. A visual interface helps you spot patterns and take action.
Instead of a chain of prompts, you can use canvases to interact directly with the information.
Working with canvases
These shared, interactive surfaces are extensions of the Copilot app. A canvas is an interface in the GitHub Copilot app where developers and agents collaborate in real time.
The agent updates the canvas as it works. You interact with that same workspace through clicks, edits, and other actions. Your interactions send back to the agents or process locally by the canvas.
You can shape the experience by asking Copilot to iterate on your canvas—adding functionality, refining features, and more. The canvas evolves alongside your work.
To create a canvas, use /create-canvas in your agent session in the GitHub Copilot app. Describe what you want it to create and what capabilities it should support.
Because canvases generate from a prompt and evolve alongside your workflow, they take many forms. Some help you visualise information, others help you take action, and some provide a more entertaining way to tackle your backlog.
Here are examples of what is 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 surfaces one at a time. You 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. You hover, drag, and filter to explore the different layers. You interact with the architecture directly, turning a static understanding of a codebase into something you can actively explore.
Sessions worktree view
Goal: Visualize all active GitHub Copilot app sessions and their associated git worktrees, clearly indicating which are active and which are stale, with the ability to easily clean things up where needed.
Prompt: /create-canvas Create a worktree view that will help me see all of my current sessions and whether or not they are active or orphaned. Allow me to clean them up with a few clicks where needed
Result: The canvas generates a visual showing my worktrees with clear indication of what is active and what is currently stale or orphaned. I clean up stale worktrees with the click of a button.
Agent prompt coach
Goal: Improve prompt quality by reviewing past interactions and suggesting clearer, more effective ways to work with agents.
Prompt: /create-canvas Create an interactive prompt coach that suggests to you how you could have improved your previous prompts in your sessions with skills, mcp servers, etc. Make note of any spelling errors, syntax errors, etc.
Result: The canvas shows a list of previous prompts and analyzes each one, suggesting improvements such as missing context, spelling issues, and more. You use these tips to refine your future prompts, improve clarity, and get more consistent results from the agent.
Knowledge finder
Goal: Find people who have context on a specific file or topic by searching across Slack, Teams, email, and documentation.
Prompt: /create-canvas Create a way that I can search across Slack, Teams, Email and docs to find people with knowledge of a specific file or someone that would have more context.
Result: Based on the search, the canvas looks across multiple tools and surfaces the people that are most connected to a given file or subject. It highlights who the person is, and where the connection was found. This allows you to quickly understand someone’s connection to a topic and make it easier to reach out for more information.
Take this with you
These examples only scratch the surface of what you can do with canvases. Canvases turn AI from a conversational tool into a place where you can visualise information, explore different workflows, and turn boring tasks into experiences you will want to complete.
Canvases are a shared workspace where you and the agent think, explore, and take action together.
What it means
You get a visual workspace to manage tasks that text alone cannot handle. You sort issues by swiping, map code structure by dragging nodes, and find colleagues by searching across chat and docs. The interface updates as you work, keeping your decisions and progress in one place.
