Digital Whiteboard

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

A real-time collaborative canvas with AI diagram generation, built as an open-source alternative to Miro, FigJam, and Mural.

Digital Whiteboard is a multiplayer infinite canvas for product, design, engineering, and facilitation teams. It pairs CRDT-based real-time collaboration with AI-native diagram generation, semantic canvas understanding, and meeting-to-canvas synthesis — closing the gap between chaotic brainstorms and structured design artefacts.

Why Digital Whiteboard?

Incumbents are expensive at scale. Miro Business runs $16/user/month and FigJam Professional $12/editor/month; per-seat pricing compounds quickly across large organisations.
The leading open-source option is aging. Excalidraw is beloved by developers but lacks the template depth, AI features, and enterprise controls of Miro-class tools — leaving a gap for a modern, OSS, Miro-quality canvas.
AI is bolted on, not native. Most incumbents treat AI as an add-on feature; a canvas designed AI-first can do live semantic understanding, smart layout, and meeting-to-canvas synthesis the others cannot.
Privacy-first and self-hosted options are scarce. Organisations avoiding SaaS have few credible whiteboard options today.
Microsoft Whiteboard, Canva Whiteboard, and Concept Board ship with weak AI and limited diagramming depth, leaving a clear differentiation lane on AI capability.

Key Features

Real-Time Collaborative Canvas

Infinite multiplayer canvas with simultaneous editing
Multiplayer presence: live cursors and activity indicators
Guest access via link without account creation
Comment threads and @mentions for asynchronous feedback
Session recording and playback

Diagramming and Ideation

Shapes, connectors, text, and sticky notes
Smart alignment, snapping, and group/bulk operations
Template library covering retrospectives, kickoffs, customer journeys, and architecture
Presentation mode for sharing results in a focused, non-editable view
Export to PNG, SVG, and PDF

AI-Native Generation

Prompt-to-diagram for flowcharts, ERDs, sequence diagrams, and wireframes
Live semantic understanding: surface connections, flag contradictions, suggest missing components
Meeting-to-canvas synthesis from video transcripts (decisions, action items, concept maps)
Smart layout and beautification of hand-placed elements
Whiteboard-to-document export (PRDs, design docs, executive summaries)

Integrations and Workflow

Jira, Slack, and Microsoft Teams connectivity
REST API and webhooks for custom automation
Embed support for wikis and websites
Mobile support for iPad and Android

Enterprise and Governance

Role-based access control
Audit logging
Self-hosted deployment option for privacy-sensitive organisations

AI-Native Advantage

Where incumbents treat AI as a sidecar — a "generate diagram" button bolted onto a manual canvas — Digital Whiteboard makes AI continuous and contextual. The canvas is read live by an LLM that can suggest missing components, flag contradictions, beautify layouts, and convert a chaotic brainstorm into a structured PRD with one click. Multi-LLM agent support lets teams choose their preferred model, and meeting-to-canvas synthesis automatically populates the board from a call transcript.

Tech Stack & Deployment

Real-time sync is built on CRDTs (Yjs / Automerge lineage) over WebSockets (RFC 6455), with optional WebRTC peer-to-peer channels for low-latency audio/video. The canvas surface uses the W3C SVG and Canvas APIs. Content is exposed via OpenAPI / JSON for integration with external AI services. Deployment targets both managed cloud and self-hosted instances, with the self-hosted path treated as a first-class option for privacy-sensitive organisations.

Market Context

The broader online collaboration tools market exceeded $14 billion in 2024, and Miro alone was valued at $17.5B in its 2022 Series C; Lucid Software raised $500M at a $3B valuation in 2021. Team-tier pricing across incumbents clusters at $8–$16/user/month, with enterprise pricing custom. Primary buyers are product managers running remote workshops, UX designers ideating collaboratively, engineering teams diagramming architecture, and facilitators running design sprints and retrospectives.

Project Status

This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Note on patents: CRDT/OT real-time sync implementations and AI diagram generation techniques used by incumbents (Miro, FigJam, Jeda) may be patent-encumbered. Independent legal review is recommended before implementing competing capabilities. Excalidraw is MIT-licensed and safe to study or fork.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.