Projects / Creative tools
Lumen
An infinite canvas that reads what you sketched and offers the next move beside it.
Runs locally. It works without an API key, and Claude can be added for generation. I haven't found a hosted demo.
- State
- Prototype
- Last change
- Oct 11, 2026 · repository last push
- Page last reviewed
- Oct 29, 2026
- Built with
- AI coding assistants. Commit trailers show Claude as a co-author.
The problem or experience
Whiteboards leave the structuring to you, and chat sidebars pull attention away from the canvas. Lumen puts a small set of suggestions right at the thing you selected, so rough notes can become structure and structure can become something that runs.
Who it's for
People who think by sketching, and anyone curious about AI that works on the canvas itself instead of in a chat window.
My contribution
Lumen is my project, built on top of Excalidraw's open-source React component. The drawing editor underneath is Excalidraw's work.
Upstream work: built on Excalidraw (MIT). Lumen uses the Excalidraw editor component. The repository is a fork-based workspace, and its default branch is not main.
What works today
- Select notes, an outline or a flowchart and a dock offers actions that fit that selection, such as clustering, structuring or tidying.
- An offline engine handles outlines, arrows, clustering and graph checks with no API key.
- Results land on the canvas as ordinary editable objects with undo and version history.
- Boards share by link without a server, and everything is stored locally first.
Limitations
- The feature list comes from the project README. Not every feature has had an independent test pass.
- Real-time collaboration across devices needs a small relay you run yourself.
- There is no hosted demo yet, so you run it locally with npm.
Evidence
- README and source · checked Oct 29, 2026
How you can get involved
Want to pressure-test it?
- Run it locally and tell me where the dock suggests something unhelpful.
- If you build canvas or whiteboard tools, I'd like to compare notes on live objects and sandboxing.