See it before it’s built.
Nuanced Canvas is a Mac app for writing specs with an AI agent. It comments as you write, sketches approaches you can click through, and builds the one you choose. When you’re ready, it opens the pull request.
For Macs with Apple silicon.
How it works
From a rough idea to a pull request you can review.
Every screenshot here is from one Canvas session on Pantry, a sample app. Click or tap one to see it full size.
Write the spec
Write what you want in Markdown, the way you’d explain it to a teammate. Canvas keeps your documents itself, so drafts stay out of your repository.
Once there’s enough to go on, an agent reads along and leaves comments in the margin. Reply in the thread. When it suggests an edit, nothing changes until you accept it.
Explore approaches
When the document says enough, the agent reads it alongside your code and sketches one to three approaches: screens of your app, diagrams or worked examples. It may ask a question or two whose answers would change them.
A dot on Explore marks a new round. It waits for you to open it, and exploring never changes your document.
Compare them side by side
Each approach is a short walkthrough you can click through. Compare approaches puts them next to each other, one moment at a time.
React in your own words and the agent revises. Earlier versions stay, so you can see what changed.
Try it, then choose
For a web app in your repository, the agent can build live screens from your own components with sample data, so you can tick, tap and undo for real. They run sandboxed, with no network access.
When one feels right, press Go with this.
Build it and open the pull request
The agent builds the approach you chose in a separate Git worktree, on its own branch, so your working copy and current branch are left alone.
When it’s done, it offers Ship PR. Canvas pushes the branch and opens a pull request with the code, the spec and the screens you chose. Merging it is up to you.
In this session the pull request went to a local stand-in for GitHub.
Yours to decide
The agent proposes. You decide.
Your document
Comments and suggested edits wait for you. Exploring never changes what you wrote.
Your code
The agent builds in its own worktree and branch, and only when you ask.
Your merge
Ship PR opens a pull request on GitHub. Whether and when it merges is your call.
- A Mac with Apple silicon
- Canvas checks for updates and installs them when you restart.
- A Nuanced account
- Sign in with GitHub.
- Codex
- The agents run on OpenAI’s Codex. Sign in with ChatGPT, or add an OpenAI API key in Settings.
- A Git repository
- Open a folder on your Mac or clone one from GitHub. To ship pull requests, connect the Nuanced GitHub app to the repository.
Blog
From the blog
- A new spec interfaceThree new ways to work with specs in Nuanced: chat with your spec, see what changed turn by turn, and take a Spec Tour.
- Agents can write code, but engineers still need to thinkNuanced is a spec-driven development workspace for agentic coding that keeps intent, design, and execution aligned.