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A free whiteboard for brainstorming and mind maps

Rapid idea dumps without fighting template pickers. Click anywhere to drop a sticky note, drag, cluster, draw circles around groups. Paste reference images from the clipboard. Type a Mermaid mindmap and get a hierarchical view in plain text.

Open a board for your next session →

Why teams pick cnvs.app for brainstorming

No template picker between you and the canvas. Miro / FigJam open a "choose a template" dialog. cnvs.app is already empty and waiting.
Sticky notes in one click. Click anywhere to drop a text block. Right-click or press Y to toggle sticky-note style. Drag to cluster.
Paste anything. Reference image from a Slack thread (Ctrl+V), URL of a competitor's product, a screenshot — all drop on the canvas.
Mermaid mindmaps. Type mindmap in a Mermaid block and you have a hierarchical idea tree as plain text. Easier to outline than dragging boxes.
Quick screenshots. Print / PDF export when you're done; paste the result into the meeting doc.
Open by URL. Anyone you share with joins. No "request access".

Brainstorming patterns that work well

Sticky-note dump

Set a 5-minute timer, each person drops as many sticky notes as they can. Then cluster together.

Affinity mapping

After the dump, draw circles around clusters, label them. Use colour: red for "must have", blue for "nice to have".

Mind map outline

One Mermaid mindmap block in a text node. Edit the source, the diagram re-renders live for everyone.

SCAMPER & reverse brainstorm

Drop section headers as bigger text, sticky notes below each. No template, just type the headers.

Mermaid mindmap example

mindmap
  root((Product launch))
    Marketing
      Launch post
      Demo video
      Customer quotes
    Engineering
      Feature flag rollout
      Load test
      Monitoring dashboard
    Sales
      Battlecard
      Pricing page update
      Webinar

Drop that into a cnvs.app text node and you have a hierarchical mind map rendered as SVG, editable by anyone on the board in real time.