Show HN: LM Canvas – current chat interfaces suck, so I built a canvas for LLMs

[max-lee-dev]

hi guys! i’m 19, been coding since I was 8, and during high school worked as a SWE at Interaction/Poke (100M) and Founding Engineer at build.ai (100M). i’m building out lmcanvas.ai during my gap year after the demo hit 2.1M views, 15K likes on X.

i hated current chat interfaces for a long time:

1. Context switching hell — the moment you want to explore a different angle you either muddy the current thread or start over and lose everything you built up.

2. Memory degradation — LLMs get worse as conversations grow. Some queries need no memory, some need temporary context, some need everything. Branching solves this cleanly.

3. Parallel execution — why wait for one response when you can run multiple simultaneously? Every chat app makes you wait. That's absurd.

4. Model lock-in — OpenAI won't show you Claude's answer. Anthropic won't show you GPT's. LM Canvas connects to 300+ models and has no reason to hide any of them from you.

so i built a spatial canvas for working with LLMs — branch conversations, run prompts in parallel, compare models side by side. you can also import your ChatGPT conversations and they convert into branchable nodes on the canvas.

please give me the most spicy / raw feedback you have to offer. i’ll be in the comments for all day / night :)

[elief22]

I started using it for interview prep, its clean and it really works well w how i interact w LLMs some things I noticed

the canvas scroll doesnt work well especially when contents is near the edge of page (ive returned to previous page a few times)

i would love if BYOK was available

exporting chat would be nice (though w the branching it would need some thought behind it like exporting a certain branch flows vs entire chat)

hyperlinks in sticky notes would be cool

due to right click being in app options i cant auto correct works when misspelled

overall very impressed w this and can see it entering my daily workflow outside of interviews but for doc analysis/research/meeting prep

please let me know if ther is any way i can be helpful!