Boardier

A free, open source, AI-focused whiteboard engine built purely for the community. No license needed.

Built by Notier.ai and the awesome contributors.

What is Boardier?

Boardier is a themeable, extensible canvas-based whiteboard shipped as a React component. It runs entirely in the browser using HTML Canvas 2D — no server required for rendering. The engine is designed from the ground up with AI integration in mind: structured element data, a programmatic API for LLM agents, and Mermaid diagram conversion are all built in.

Features

• 16 element types — rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, lines, arrows, freehand, text, icons, markers, checkboxes, radio groups, frames, images, embeds, tables, and comments
• Hand-drawn aesthetic — configurable roughness (0 = clean, 2 = sketchy) powered by a seeded PRNG for stable rendering
• Full theming — light, dark, and custom themes via a single BoardierTheme object
• Tool system — select, shape, line, freehand, text, pan, eraser, icon, marker, image, and widget tools
• AI-ready API — searchElements(), getSceneSummary(), getSceneStats(), moveElement(), resizeElement(), setElementColor(), panTo(), selectElements(), and more, designed for LLM agents
• Multi-page support — create, rename, delete, and switch between pages/slides
• Presentation mode — fullscreen slide presentation with keyboard navigation
• Export — PNG, SVG, and JSON export
• Mermaid → Boardier — convert Mermaid flowchart syntax into positioned canvas elements
• Undo/redo — full-scene snapshot history with configurable depth
• Copy/paste — in-memory clipboard with offset pasting
• Smart guides — alignment guides shown during drag
• Minimap — overview navigation panel
• Draggable UI panels — toolbar, zoom, export panels can be repositioned
• 100% client-side — no server, no database, no API keys shipped

Quick Start

import { BoardierCanvas, defaultTheme } from 'boardier';

function App() {
  return (
    <BoardierCanvas
      theme={defaultTheme}
      config={{ showGrid: true, snapToGrid: true }}
      onChange={(elements) => console.log('Scene updated:', elements.length)}
    />
  );
}

API Overview

Note

The following overview may not always be up to date. To see the full docs, please visit Boardier Docs.

<BoardierCanvas />

The main React component. Props:

Prop	Type	Description
config	BoardierConfig	Read-only mode, grid, snap, zoom limits, layout
theme	BoardierTheme	Visual theme for the entire engine
initialScene	BoardierSceneData	Pre-load a saved scene
onChange	(elements: BoardierElement[]) => void	Called when elements change
onSelectionChange	(ids: string[]) => void	Called when selection changes
onViewChange	(viewState: ViewState) => void	Called on pan/zoom

BoardierCanvasRef

Access the engine via React.useRef:

const ref = useRef<BoardierCanvasRef>(null);

// Get raw engine instance
ref.current?.getEngine();

// Export
const blob = await ref.current?.exportToPNG();
const svg = ref.current?.exportToSVG();
const json = ref.current?.exportToJSON();

// Scene persistence
const data = ref.current?.getSceneData();
ref.current?.loadScene(data);

BoardierEngine

For advanced/headless usage:

import { BoardierEngine, defaultTheme } from 'boardier';

const engine = new BoardierEngine(canvasElement, { showGrid: true }, defaultTheme);

engine.setTool('rectangle');
engine.undo();
engine.redo();
engine.deleteSelected();
engine.selectAll();
engine.zoomToFit();

// AI-facing API
const summary = engine.getSceneSummary();
const results = engine.searchElements('button');
engine.moveElement(elementId, 100, 200);

Element Factories

import { createRectangle, createText, createArrow } from 'boardier';

const rect = createRectangle({ x: 100, y: 100, width: 200, height: 100 });
const text = createText({ x: 150, y: 300, text: 'Hello' });
const arrow = createArrow({ x: 100, y: 100 });

Themes

import { defaultTheme, defaultDarkTheme, createNotierTheme } from 'boardier';

// Use built-in themes
<BoardierCanvas theme={defaultTheme} />
<BoardierCanvas theme={defaultDarkTheme} />

// Create a custom theme
const myTheme: BoardierTheme = {
  ...defaultTheme,
  canvasBackground: '#f0f0f0',
  elementDefaults: {
    ...defaultTheme.elementDefaults,
    strokeColor: '#e03131',
  },
};

Mermaid Conversion

import { mermaidToBoardier } from 'boardier';

const elements = mermaidToBoardier(`
  graph TD
    A[Start] --> B{Decision}
    B -->|Yes| C[Do something]
    B -->|No| D[Do nothing]
`);

// Add to scene
ref.current?.getEngine().scene.addElements(elements);

Documentation

Full auto-generated documentation is available at the /docs endpoint of the website, built from @boardier-* JSDoc annotations in the source code.

To regenerate the docs data:

npx tsx scripts/parseDocsFromSource.ts

Project Structure

boardier/
├── index.ts              # Public API entry point
├── core/                 # Engine, Scene, Renderer, History, Clipboard, Types
├── elements/             # 16 element types + registry/factory system
├── tools/                # 13 tool implementations + base class
├── themes/               # Theme types + default/dark/notier themes
├── ui/                   # React UI components (canvas, toolbar, panels, etc.)
├── utils/                # Math, colors, export, ID gen, rough drawing, mermaid parser
├── scripts/              # Build-time scripts (docs parser)
└── website/              # Next.js marketing site + /demo + /docs

Annotation System

Boardier uses custom @boardier-* JSDoc tags for documentation generation:

Tag	Purpose
@boardier-module	Module identifier
@boardier-category	Grouping (Core, Elements, Tools, Themes, UI, Utilities)
@boardier-description	Module description
@boardier-since	Version introduced
@boardier-usage	Code example
@boardier-see	Cross-references
@boardier-ai	AI-specific notes
@boardier-type	Type documentation
@boardier-class	Class documentation
@boardier-function	Function documentation
@boardier-param	Parameter documentation
@boardier-props	React props interface
@boardier-ref	React ref interface

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Community

Boardier is a community project. No license restrictions — use it however you'd like. Built with care by Notier.ai.