Documentation / Library, tags and boards

Boards

An infinite canvas per board — cards, notes, frames and connectors, made by hand or with Claude in a chat, exported as PNG or SVG or shared by link.

A board is an infinite canvas. Drag items out of your library onto it and arrange them, with notes, frames and connectors around them. A board is a view of your library, not a copy of it.

Make a board#

Click + beside Boards at the foot of the sidebar. Boards can be renamed, reordered by dragging, and deleted from the same place.

Put things on it#

Press I, or click the items button in the board toolbar, to open the items panel. Drag any item out of it onto the canvas. Items stay in the library; a board holds an arrangement of them.

The tools#

Three insert tools, each on a single key:

• T — a text label.
• N — a note. Notes take markdown.
• F — a frame: a container you can drop cards into, to group a section of the board.

Connectors#

Drag a card's ◇ handle onto another card to link them. A connector can be:

• Auto — the endpoints attach themselves and follow the cards as they move.
• Manual — you place the endpoints yourself by dragging their handles.

Each one takes an arrow at the target end, at both ends, or at neither, and a colour.

Placing things accurately#

• S toggles grid snapping.
• Smart guides line a dragged card up with its neighbours. Hold Alt during a drag to invert the setting for that one drag.
• The auto-arrange button lays the cards out for you. On a board with frames, it moves each frame whole, with its cards as they are, and the loose cards go after the frames.
• Shift1 (or ShiftF) zooms to fit everything, Shift2 to the selection, and Shift0 to 100%. The button right of the zoom bar hides the minimap.

Chat with Claude#

The chat button, first in the board toolbar, opens a chat on the left of the board; drag its right edge to make it wider. Enter sends, and ShiftEnter or AltEnter makes a new line. Say what you want, and Claude changes the board:

• "Make a board for the opening scene: cold fog, wet concrete." Claude searches your library, puts the best items on the board in frames, and writes a note in each frame.
• "Put the cards into frames." Claude groups the cards that are already on the board, and names the frames.
• "One frame per row, three cards in each." Claude lays out the frames and the cards in them. Nothing it moves is left on top of something else.
• "More space between the cards in every frame." Each frame keeps its new spacing when it changes later.
• "Make the first picture bigger", "give every card the same width", or **"the same height for each card in Combat"**. A picture keeps its proportions, and its frame grows to fit.
• "Make the frame titles bigger and red", "dashed lines with arrows at both ends", **"add a title at the top", "turn on the grid"**. Claude can do what the right-click menus, the line popup and the board settings do. Sharing, export, lock and deleting the board stay with you.
• "Write a note for each frame", "find more like the Fog frame", "take out the videos", or a question about the board.

What to know:

• One answer is one step. All the changes of an answer undo together: click Undo under the answer, or press CtrlZ.
• Claude reads words, not pictures. It knows an item by its tags and its description — the ones AI annotation writes, or yours. The chat cannot find an item that has neither, and it tells you how many there are.
• Claude knows where things are. It reads where each frame and card is and what overlaps, and after each change it reads where things went.
• It changes this board only. Claude never changes tags, descriptions or projects. A card it removes stays in your library.
• The chat is kept with the board. The board keeps the last 20 messages, and Claude reads all of them, so "add some motion" follows on from what you said before. The bin at the top of the chat clears it, and Claude starts again from nothing. Deleting the board deletes its chat.
• It uses AI credits — the same monthly credits as annotation and Organize, about 3 to 20 a message. When they are spent, the chat says so, and it opens again when they renew.

The chat works on boards of up to 150 cards. A locked board, preview and a shared link do not show it. Locking the board stops a message that is running.

Showing a board#

• P is preview: every toolbar disappears and the board fills the window. Esc leaves.
• L locks the board read-only, so a demonstration cannot be dragged out of shape by accident.

Share a link#

The link button in the board toolbar, left of the lock, shares the board. Click Create link, then Copy link, and send it to anyone. They see the board as preview shows it: they can pan, zoom, play the videos and open the links. They cannot change anything, and they see nothing else from your library. They need no account.

• The link is live. The board is read each time the link is opened, so an edit shows at the next load, and an item you delete leaves the board at once.
• You can see what is shared. The link button turns green, and a link mark shows beside the board in the sidebar.
• Stop sharing ends it at once. A link you make after that is a new address. The old one never works again.
• The picture in a chat. A link pasted into a chat shows a picture of the whole board. The board draws it, about 30 seconds after you stop editing.
• It follows your subscription. The link works while your subscription is active. If it ends, the link stops, and it works again, at the same address, when you subscribe.

There is one link per board, and it only views: no editing, no password and no expiry date. Deleting the board ends its link.

Export#

The export button writes the board — or just the current selection — as a PNG or an SVG. The export is made from the board itself, with the images inlined, so it opens anywhere and needs nothing from JayBoard to render.

Board settings#

The settings button holds the defaults every card and frame on the board uses: card borders, rounded corners and drop shadows, and whether frames get a dashed border and rounded corners. Grid puts dots or lines behind the cards, on the snap grid; it is off until you turn it on, and preview, a shared link and an export leave it out. Autoplay videos plays every video card by itself, in a loop, while it is on screen; it is off until you turn it on. Mute autoplay plays those videos without sound; it is on until you turn it off. A browser plays sound only after your first click or key on the page, so until then an unmuted video plays muted. A shared link follows both settings, and a video card's own menu sets both for that card alone. The same panel renames and deletes the board.