Boards

Boards

A board is an Excalidraw whiteboard stored as a file in your Git repository, drawn by several people at once. The file is an .excalidraw.svg: it opens as a picture in any viewer and as an editable board in Folio, because the scene is embedded in the SVG.

Create and draw

Press + in the tree and choose a whiteboard (or create one from the welcome screen). In Edit mode you get Excalidraw's shapes, arrows, freehand, text, grouping and undo, plus Folio's additions:

• Sticky notes. A palette of six colors at the top right: click for a note in the middle of your view, or drag a color onto the canvas.
• Reactions. Select one shape and press the smiley at its corner: 11 emoji, the first three are check, cross and wrench ("in progress"). Chips with counts show under the shape; click to add or remove yours, point to see who reacted.
• Make heading. Select a free text block and press Make heading: the first line becomes a title at 1.4 times the size, the rest stays the body. Not offered for labels inside shapes.
• Live co-editing. You see other people's named cursors and every change as it happens; the corner shows Live while connected. Different shapes edited at the same time both stay.

Boards can be embedded in documents and are versioned like everything else.

Where it lives

The server writes the board to disk about a second after the last edit. Git commits after about 90 seconds of quiet, or on Sync; the author is the last editor in the window. Each version is a commit. A board opened before is cached in the browser and stays editable offline, catching up when the connection returns.

Export

The board's export menu has PNG, SVG and copy to clipboard. The .excalidraw.svg file in the repository is itself an SVG you can open anywhere.

Convert an Obsidian canvas

A .canvas file opens read-only. Convert to Folio board (editors, in the canvas toolbar) makes a new editable board next to it in one commit, and lists first what changes: Markdown becomes plain text, long text is cut, note cards become a title with a link, large images and audio, video and web cards become links, group backgrounds and nesting are dropped, curves become right-angled arrows. The canvas stays.

Agents

Through MCP or Folio AI an agent can create a board from a compact list of nodes and edges, read a board as a summary, and adjust shapes by id (align, distribute, move, resize, auto-layout). Scenes are validated before anything is written. With a write token only; if someone has the board open, the change appears live.

Limits

• Reactions are not in Git. They live in the board's live state (the database snapshot), so they are not in history and do not travel with a clone.
• A reaction goes on one selected shape, not on arrows, lines or freehand strokes; a note inside a group is selected as the group.
• A reader without edit rights sees a static picture; the Excalidraw editor is not enabled for them. On public sites a board is a picture too.
• Viewers can see reactions but cannot add them.
• Offline: boards you opened before stay editable and a new board can be created offline (the editor is fetched a few seconds after Folio opens); they sync when the connection returns.

See also

Blog: Folio boards on Excalidraw · Folio vs. Miro · Graph · Video