Agent Canvas
An agent canvas puts agent chats on a desk instead of a single scrolling list. Each chat is a card: a picture of the conversation, a short clipped blurb, and an optional status lamp beside History. You move the cards. The transcript stays closed until you open one.
Core claim
A harness inbox is project management. Agent working, needs-you, unread, read, error, draft, and signed-off are different jobs. A checkmark is not enough, and "the agent stopped" is not the same as "I reviewed it and signed off."
Cards
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Preview — a picture of the conversation, so you recognize it before you read the words.
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Blurb — one or two clipped lines under the picture.
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Status lamp — beside History on the card footer; color encodes the states below. No lamp after sign-off.
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Position — you place the card. The desk remembers.
Only cards inside the viewport are mounted. A card is a shell: title, status, blurb, position. The full transcript loads when you open the chat.
Statuses
| Lamp | Color | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
Agent working |
Green flashing |
The agent is running — activity in progress. |
Waiting on CI |
Green solid |
On hold until an external pipeline (CI, etc.) finishes — not yellow needs-attention. |
Needs attention |
Yellow |
Your attention is required: feedback, planning waits, unread, composing a first prompt, and similar. |
Read (clean composer) |
Grey ring |
You saw the latest; composer empty; not signed off. |
Dirty composer |
Grey fill |
Unsent text in the chat box (overlay on read, working, CI wait, etc.). |
Needs attention + dirty |
Half yellow / half grey |
Needs-attention thread with a dirty composer (split lamp). |
Stopped on error |
Red |
The agent run halted on an error. |
Signed off |
(none) |
You reviewed and marked done. No lamp on the card. |
Archive bin
Archiving takes a card off the desk. The bin remembers the card’s place. Opening the bin offers three views:
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Spatial — cards return to their remembered spots, stacked by how recently they were archived.
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Grid — chronological thumbnails.
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List — compact rows.
Restore puts the card back on the desk at the remembered place and raises it above the cards already there.
Files and topic history
Drop a file from Explorer onto the desk. Drag a connection from that file to the chat that should start from it — for example a markdown copy of an earlier chat used as the next prompt.
When the title changes, the previous title becomes a bookmark. Bookmarks are newest-first under History on the card.
Demo and product
The public demo at https://hci-nerdz.github.io/agent-canvas/ is a static prototype. The shipped product would load real transcripts, provider status, and OS-window chat on desktop.