Use shapes and arrows to annotate the canvas: highlight references, build wireframe sketches, draw connections between ideas.
Open the shapes menu
Click Shapes in the bottom toolbar.
Pick one of:
- Rectangle — filled or outlined.
- Ellipse / circle — filled or outlined.
- Line — straight line between two points.
- Arrow — straight or elbow connector between two points or two elements.
- Freehand / pen — vector path drawn by hand.
Place a shape
After picking a tool, drag on the canvas to draw the shape. Hold Shift to constrain proportions (square rectangle, perfect circle, 45° lines).
Release the mouse to commit. The shape becomes a normal element you can move, resize, rotate, and recolour.
Connect two elements with an arrow
The arrow tool snaps to element edges. Start the drag on the source element, drop the end-point on the target — the arrow re-routes itself if either element moves later.
Card connectors
Beyond one-off arrows, any card can be wired node-graph style — the same dashed connection lines Pipelines use. Handy for mapping dependencies, flows, or relationships between references.
- Right-click a card and choose Enable Connectors. The card gets an In port on its left edge and an Out port on its right edge.
- Enable connectors on another card too, then drag from a port and drop on that card to draw a connection (Out → In). Connections follow the cards live as you move them.
- Hover the middle of a connection and click the × to remove it.
- Disable Connectors (same right-click menu) removes the ports together with the card’s connections.
Board agents can read this connection graph and create or remove links on request — e.g. ask an agent to “connect these three references in order” or to tidy the wiring. See Pipelines for the full node-graph workflow.
Style a shape
Select a shape to reveal the inline style toolbar:
- Stroke — colour, width, dash pattern.
- Fill — solid colour, gradient, or transparent.
- Opacity — element-wide alpha.
- Corner radius (rectangles) — 0 to fully rounded.
For arrows the toolbar also exposes head style (none, arrow, dot, square) for both ends.
Freehand strokes
The freehand tool records a vector path. Width and opacity follow pen pressure on a tablet. Use it for sketch overlays, signature accents, or hand-drawn lines.
Group shapes with content
Shapes obey the same selection and grouping rules as any other element. Select a shape plus the media it annotates, press Cmd / Ctrl-G to group them, and they move together. See Smart Grouping.
Delete
Select and press Delete or Backspace. Or right-click → Delete.
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