obsidian-canvas

Purpose

This skill creates and edits Obsidian Canvas files (.canvas) — a native Obsidian feature that provides an infinite, freeform visual workspace. Canvas is fundamentally different from both Mermaid diagrams (structured graph DSL) and Excalidraw (hand-drawn sketches): it is a spatial navigation interface for your vault, where notes become draggable cards that preserve their full content and linking behavior.

On a Canvas, you can place:

• Note cards — live views of existing .md files in the vault
• Text cards — free-floating rich text blocks
• File cards — images, PDFs, and other vault files displayed inline
• Web cards — embedded iframes showing external URLs
• Groups — colored bounding boxes that cluster related cards

Canvas files are JSON with .canvas extension. They are rendered natively by Obsidian with no plugins required (available since Obsidian 1.1.0).

When to Use

Invoke this skill when: