AI Canvas
AI Canvas is an interactive investigation workspace where you ask questions about your system and the assistant lays out its findings on a spatial canvas. Each question starts a new canvas; the assistant's reasoning — incidents queried, monitors checked, time-series data retrieved — appears as cards you can pan and zoom around.
INFO
AI Canvas requires an active license with the AI Canvas feature enabled. If your license does not include AI Canvas, the Canvas entry does not appear in the sidebar. Contact your administrator to upgrade your license.
Getting started
Navigate to Canvas in the sidebar to open the canvas list. Type a question in the prompt and press Ask (or Enter) to start a new canvas. Pulse sends the question to the AI assistant and opens the canvas as the assistant begins working.
You can also start a canvas from the Query page: click the Ask AI for help button (✦) in the query builder toolbar to open a new canvas with a pre-filled prompt that guides the assistant to help you build a time-series query.
You can ask about anything related to your monitored system — for example:
- "Are there any active incidents on the production line?"
- "Show me the signal trend for Sine0 over the last hour."
- "Which monitors are currently unhealthy?"
- "Which of my devices have critical open CVEs?"
The canvas
Once the assistant has returned results, the canvas opens in a split view with two separate panels:
- Left — investigation board: The assistant's findings appear as cards on a free-form spatial canvas. Each card represents one tool result — a data query, incident list, monitor list, or CVE findings. Cards appear as the assistant pins them and stay on the board between sessions.
- Right — conversation: The chat panel shows the full conversation: your questions and the assistant's text responses. Tool calls the assistant made are accessible here via a Show tool calls toggle.
When the board is empty — before the assistant has pinned anything — it shows a Nothing pinned yet message as a reminder that findings land here and the conversation stays in the chat.
The assistant presents times in your organization's configured timezone when writing responses and reports. Internally it works in UTC; the conversion is automatic.
Cards
Each card on the board shows the result of one tool call the assistant made:
| Card type | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Data query | A time-series chart from a data point query |
| Incidents | Incidents matching the assistant's search |
| Monitors | Monitors matching the assistant's search |
| CVE findings | Vulnerability findings matching the assistant's search |
| Tags | Tags matching the assistant's search |
Each card shows a timestamp indicating when it was captured. Data query cards have three tabs — Chart, Overview, and Values — for different views of the same result. When a tool returned more rows than it can display, the card shows a notice at the bottom.
Incidents, monitors, and CVE findings in cards link directly to their detail pages. When a result set is long, a Show more toggle lets you expand the full list.
You can resize any card using the width control in its header: Narrow, Wide, or Extra wide.
Navigating the board
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Pan | Drag empty board space, or hold Space and drag |
| Zoom | Ctrl / ⌘ + scroll wheel, or pinch on a trackpad |
| Scroll (pan without zoom) | Scroll wheel (without Ctrl / ⌘) |
| Zoom in / out | + / − buttons in the toolbar |
| Fit all cards to view | ⤢ (fit) button in the toolbar |
| Reset zoom to 100% | Reset zoom in the toolbar |
The current zoom level is shown as a percentage between the zoom buttons.
Board toolbar
The toolbar at the bottom of the board has two interaction modes:
- Select — Click cards to select them; drag cards to reposition them on the board.
- Pan — Drag to pan the board without selecting or moving cards. Useful when many cards are close together.
Switch between modes using the Select and Pan buttons in the toolbar. Holding Space temporarily switches to pan mode regardless of which mode is active, so you can pan without switching modes.
Tidy the board rearranges all cards into a clean grid, which is useful after a long session where cards have been scattered. The positions after a tidy are saved like any other drag.
Arranging cards
Cards can be freely dragged to any position on the board. Their positions are saved automatically and shared with anyone viewing the same canvas.
On touch devices and small screens the board is read-only — cards cannot be dragged or resized. The full arrangement is still visible; editing requires a mouse and a larger screen.
Renaming a canvas
Canvas owners can rename a canvas by clicking its title in the header bar. Edit the name and press Enter to save, or Escape to cancel.
Pulse also names the canvas automatically in two stages: as soon as you send the first message, the canvas takes a name from the first line of your prompt so it is identifiable while the run is in progress. After the run completes successfully, the assistant replaces that interim name with a short, polished title derived from the full conversation. A manual rename at any point locks the name — neither automatic stage overwrites it.
A canvas that has not yet received an automatic title appears as Untitled canvas in the list, the switcher, and the title bar. Clicking the title to rename starts with an empty field so you do not have to clear the placeholder text first.
The auto-generated title is written in the same language as your conversation — asking questions in German produces a German title.
Switching canvases
The canvas editor header contains a Switch canvas button (stack icon) on the right side. Click it to open a side panel listing all of your canvases. Select any row to jump directly to that canvas, or click New canvas at the bottom to return to the canvas list and start a fresh one.
Board and Chat tabs (small screens)
On small screens where the board and chat cannot appear side by side, two toggle buttons — Canvas and Chat — appear below the header bar. Use them to switch between the investigation board and the conversation panel. On larger screens both panels are always visible and the toggle is hidden.
Continuing the investigation
Owners can send follow-up questions using the text field at the bottom of the chat panel. Press Enter to send (or Shift+Enter to insert a new line). The assistant runs again and adds new cards to the canvas.
Non-owners see a read-only notice at the bottom of the chat panel that names the canvas owner and offers a link to start their own canvas. If the owner has left the organization, the notice says so instead.
Managing canvases
The canvas list page shows all canvases you own or can view. Each row shows the canvas name, owner, and when it was last updated. A colored status badge appears next to the timestamp for canvases that are running (pulsing amber) or failed on their last run (red).
When your list grows beyond a handful of canvases, a Filter input appears above the list. Type any part of a canvas name to narrow the list. The filter applies only to the loaded list — it does not search the server.
To delete a canvas, open the row's action menu (⋯) and choose Delete. Confirm the deletion in the dialog. Deletion is permanent — the canvas history and all its findings are removed.
Related documentation
- Query — Build ad-hoc time-series queries on your monitor data directly.
- Monitors — The monitors the assistant can query on your behalf.
- Incidents — The incidents the assistant can search and summarize.
- Vulnerabilities — CVE findings the assistant can query and analyze.