The goal of the Open Canvas Working Group (OCWG) is to establish interoperability between different infinite canvas tools.
The OCWG is an open working group of inifinite canvas tool builders and users who are iterating on a standard to drive interoperability between a wide variety of infinite canvas tools.
Status: Gathering implementation feedback
The OCWG has released a specification of the Open Canvas Interchange Format (OCIF). The spec is in the "Candidate Recommendation" stage, which means it has been widely reviewed and satisfies OCWG's technical requirements. We are currently gathering implementation experience.
Read the specIntended Outcomes
- Discover a lowest-common denominator file format for storage and serialization.
- Demonstrate real-time synchronization between different tools.
- Develop a test bench for the standard to demonstrate capabilities. (Similar to the CSS Acid Tests)
Contributing
All major discussions and artefacts are public on GitHub. You can also join our Discord for ephemeral discussions. Major updates go out via email.
Meetings
Next Meeting: #43 - April 7th, 12:00 ET
We meet every 2 weeks on Tuesdays. Meeting recordings, transcriptions and other artifacts can be found in the linked discussions.
Past Meetings
| Date | Topic | Recap |
|---|---|---|
| March 24th, 2026 | Releasing 0.7.0 | Meeting #42 |
| March 10th, 2026 | Meeting #41 | - |
| February 3rd, 2026 | Meeting #40 | - |
| January 20th, 2026 | Meeting #39 | - |
| January 6th, 2026 | Meeting #38 | - |
| December 16th, 2025 | Meeting #37 | - |
| October 28th, 2025 | Meeting #36 | - |
| October 14th, 2025 | The group discussed LLMs as primary spec readers, testing LLM-generated converters via round-tripping real-world files, planning the v0.6 stable release, and migrating spec hosting to Cloudflare Pages for better URI and redirect support. | Meeting #35 |
| September 30th, 2025 | Discussion covered transclusion as rendering referenced nodes as live viewports, node ID character set restrictions, cycle prevention in transclusion graphs, and the roadmap toward OCIF 1.0 including independent implementations and formal test suites. | Meeting #34 |
| September 16th, 2025 | The group discussed the page node extension, transclusion semantics for node reuse and synchronized editing, resource and ID naming conventions, and handling of relations and groups in transclusion. | Meeting #33 |
| September 2nd, 2025 | Meeting #32 | - |
| August 12th, 2025 | Meeting #31 | - |
| July 22nd, 2025 | Meeting #30 | - |
| July 8th, 2025 | The OCWG meeting primarily focused on recent updates to the Oakiff spec—particularly the implementation and use cases for root nodes, nested scene importing, and a discussion around extending the schema with canvas-level and theme extensions—alongside progress updates on related tooling and libraries. | Meeting #29 |
| June 24th, 2025 | The meeting focused on prioritizing the development of a well-structured OKIF library and repository, while clarifying technical decisions around root nodes, nested canvases, and metadata to improve OKIF’s usability and interoperability with tools like Obsidian Canvas. | Meeting #28 |
| June 3rd, 2025 | The team discussed challenges and progress in achieving stable interoperability between canvas drawing tools (like TL Draw and Excalidraw) using the OCIF format, focusing on issues like color mapping, themes, canvas metadata, and round-trip file fidelity, and explored potential extensions and spec changes to address these. | Meeting #27 |
| May 20th, 2025 | In this meetup we further prepared both the Candidate Release and the LocalFirst-conference talk | - |
| May 13th, 2025 | The meeting focused on planning the 1.0 candidate recommendation for the Oak format specification, discussing issues like archive bundling versus buffers, scaling and coordinate systems, demo ideas for an upcoming talk, and the need for clearer definitions, better examples, and robust validation/testing tools before the candidate release. | Meeting #25 |
| April 1st, 2025 | The Open Canvas Working Group meeting covered spec versioning and GitHub management, plans for an upcoming release, community outreach opportunities, and the need for an OCIF validation tool, culminating in a decision to focus on validation and explore tools for Obsidian Canvas integration. | Meeting #22 |
| March 18th, 2025 | The Open Canvas Working Group meeting covered spec versioning and GitHub management, plans for an upcoming release, community outreach opportunities, and the need for an OCIF validation tool, culminating in a decision to focus on validation and explore tools for Obsidian Canvas integration. | Meeting #21 |
| March 4th, 2025 | The meeting focused on addressing SSL issues, demonstrating the Hello World file, discussing the implications of global versus relative positioning in OCIF, and the need for clearer definitions in handling relationships and positioning within the OCIF specification. | Meeting #20 |
| Feb 18th, 2025 | The meeting focused on refining the OCIF spec by addressing arrow representation, bidirectional linking with relations, naming consistency, example clarity, and versioning strategy, with action items set for updates and improvements. | Meeting #19 |
| Feb 4th, 2025 | The OCWG meeting focused on refining the spec by clarifying transclusion, defining visual node shapes, discussing Z-ordering and resource handling, debating extensions vs. relations, demonstrating OCIF integration, and identifying key actions to improve adoption and documentation. | Meeting #18 |
| Jan 21st, 2025 | The Open Canvas Working Group meeting focused on refining the core specification for interoperability, organizing versioned schemas, developing JSON schemas for core elements, and ensuring clarity in tooling and documentation to enhance adoption and compatibility. | Meeting #17 |
| Jan 7th, 2025 | The meeting focused on improving adoption through better examples and documentation, enhancing export and interoperability features (e.g., OCIF to TLDraw), developing a validator and converters, addressing advanced use cases like nested compositions and transclusion, and leveraging community outreach and LLMs to support these efforts. | Meeting #16 |
| Dec 17, 2024 | The meeting focused on finalizing and documenting key decisions for specification 0.2, including resource handling, schema bundling, and extensions structure, while setting action items for implementation and future discussions. | Meeting #15 |
| Dec 3, 2024 | The Open Canvas Working Group meeting focused on refining the OCIF specification by organizing spec documentation, defining key concepts like "canvas," finalizing JSON structure and coordinate systems, establishing licensing and namespaces, and addressing extensions, schemas, and file formats, with action items aimed at improving clarity, community involvement, and interoperability. | Meeting #14 |
| Nov 19, 2024 | The meeting focused on distinguishing groups and sets conceptually, refining extensible JSON modeling strategies, addressing schema conflicts, and strategizing adoption and branding for the Open Canvas format. | Meeting #13 |
| Nov 5, 2024 | The Open Canvas Working Group meeting focused on discussing the representation and distinction of directed and undirected edges, the integration of ports as visual and logical nodes, attaching metadata to edge types using RDF-like structures, defining schema properties for enhanced modeling, addressing complexities in hyper edges, and planning documentation enhancements with visual JSON examples and tools like PlantUML, while solidifying future action items for implementation and documentation improvements. | Meeting #12 |
| Oct 5, 2024 | The team explored key design challenges in OCWG, from JSON Schema limitations and group deletion semantics to parent-child relationships and connectors, while outlining actions to improve structure and interoperability across tools. | Meeting #11 |
| Sep 17, 2024 | Node, Relation, Resource, and Schema Structure, ID Management, Caching Considerations, JSON Linked Data vs JSON schema, Extensibility and Schema Features | Meeting #10 |
| Sep 5, 2024 | The OCWG meeting focused on legal structures, resource handling, node relations, and namespace management, while aligning the Open Canvas format with GLTF’s standards for interoperability. | Meeting #9 |
| July 30, 2024 | JSON Schema Development, Asset Handling, Extension System, and Expert Collaboration | Meeting #8 |
| July 9, 2024 | Codeflow demos and discussions of schema extension, asset handling, and z-ordering | Meeting #7 |
| June 25, 2024 | Interop demos, multiple schemas per node, asset handling | Meeting #6 |
| June 4, 2024 | Discussing the extensibility model | Meeting #5 |
| May 21, 2024 | Discussions on the initial spec | Meeting #4 |
| April 30, 2024 | Discussions on the initial spec | Meeting #3 |
| April 16, 2024 | Defining interop and a minimal format | Meeting #2 |
| March 26, 2024 | OCWG Kickoff | Meeting #1 |