ratslate

An infinite canvas in the terminal. Boxes, arrows and text, placed and moved with the mouse — and written out as ASCII, so the drawing can live in a README or a comment rather than only on the screen it was made on.

Reads and writes JSON Canvas (.canvas), the format Obsidian's Canvas uses, so a board can round-trip through Obsidian — negative coordinates, groups, file and link cards included, every coordinate saved back exactly where the other tool put it.

What's on a board

• Boxes — drag empty canvas to place one, type into it, double-click to edit. c cycles colors, or use the ● button for a real color picker — a truecolor gradient field with a hue strip and live preview, plus the six JSON Canvas presets — and border styles: plain, rounded, thick, double or dashed (x cycles them too).
• Connectors — shift+drag from one box to another. Sides, arrowheads, colors, labels, line styles (solid ──, thick ━━, double ══, dashed ╌╌) and arrowhead glyphs (> ▶ ▷ ● ◆) all editable; JSON Canvas fromSide/toSide/fromEnd/toEnd respected.
• Tables — a box whose text is a GFM markdown table renders as a real grid. Double-click a cell to edit it spreadsheet-style (Tab/Enter/arrows, +col -col +row -row buttons, Alt+Enter for a line break, Ctrl+Z inside the session). Still plain markdown in the file — Obsidian renders it as a table. Connectors can anchor to a table's row, column or single cell, and stay anchored when things move.
• Groups — draw a box around things, press g. Moving the fence moves everything inside it.
• Files & links — JSON Canvas file/link cards: o opens them (creating the file if it doesn't exist yet), y copies the path or URL.

The canvas is an infinite plane: pan with arrow keys or the mouse wheel, and the minimap in the corner (toggle m) shows where everything is — click or drag it to jump.

Press l (or send {"type":"layout"} through --api) for auto-layout: a layered left-to-right arrangement of whatever's connected to what — so an agent can pour in nodes and edges without computing a single coordinate, and a hand-drawn board can untangle itself. One undo step.

Tabs: several boards, one camera

ratslate before.canvas after.canvas

Multiple files open as tabs sharing a single camera — flip with Tab/Shift+Tab (or click the bar) and the whole board swaps under an unmoving view, so two versions drawn at the same coordinates compare like frames of a flip-book. T clones the active board into the next free <name>-2.canvas to start an "after" from a finished "before". Every file stays a plain, standalone JSON Canvas.

Written out as ASCII

ratslate board.canvas --render

prints the whole board — tables, connectors, groups — exactly as the TUI draws it, ready to paste into a doc, a PR, or a commit message.

--api

Every mouse drag and keystroke is also a Request value, and there is exactly one function that applies one: dispatch. --api is that same function reached from the command line instead of a terminal — not a second implementation of what a move or an edit means.

ratslate board.canvas --schema     # what a request/response looks like
ratslate board.canvas --api '{"type":"place","x":2,"y":2}'
ratslate board.canvas --api '[{"type":"set_text","id":"n1a2b3c4d","text":"hello"},{"type":"save"}]'
ratslate board.canvas --api '{"type":"render"}'   # the ASCII render, as JSON

A JSON array runs as a batch, applied in order, replied to in order. Nothing is written to disk until a save request says so — --api is safe to use for a read-only state query.

Boards as launchers

Set RATSLATE_OPENER to any command and o hands it what's selected — a box's text, a file's path, a link's URL, or the exact table cell under the cursor. The opener decides what "open" means: jump to a terminal pane, open a ticket, anything nameable in text. Unset, o opens file and link boxes through the OS as usual.

Humans and agents, live

Edits sync through a CRDT sidecar (.canvas.crdt, yrs): a person dragging boxes in the TUI and an agent placing them through --api merge live, field by field, instead of overwriting each other's saves. The .canvas file itself stays clean JSON Canvas.

Install

brew install azihsoyn/tap/ratslate   # Homebrew (macOS/Linux)
cargo install ratslate               # or from crates.io

License

MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option.