Why canvas and not chat?

The inherent difference is that Bonscape is the architecture. ChatGPT, as its name suggests, is a chatting app. Same goes for Claude and others.

Chat has evolved from dialogue and that's modelled based on how we talk: in turns. You talk, I listen and I talk and you listen.

Every chat app has mimicked this model in its structure. Alternating chat bubbles and its the same whether is sms messaging, whatsapp or slack.

When humans interact with humans, this chat model works really well because humans basically have unlimited context windows.

AI doesn't.

Its a predictive model that's trying its best to guess the next word and while its super useful and intelligent sometimes, it still requires an extreme amount of handholding.

That's why “prompting” is a skill otherwise we could just ask it to “Solve X” and it will go and find out everything about X and then fix it for ourselves.

Code Alternatives are there for exactly that: Code. Now theoretically one can use them for thinking and notes but its not really the right way to do that. Code usually is too fragmented and is not for ideas and brainstorming.

The right mental model for brainstorming is a Canvas. That's what humans have used from the start of the human civilisation whether thats wall of a cave or paper sheets or a miro board.

This open canvas represents the breath of our thoughts and allows us to fully expand our thinking without limiting them from top to down.

That's why nearly all brainstorming exercises are open canvas based whether that's a physical whiteboard, a wall with sticky notes or an online tool.

We're bringing that same open canvas to AI collaborations so you can explore different directions all at once when talking to AI.