Every good idea starts as a mess
A dozen open tabs, a 2am note, a screenshot that stuck with you. Drop it all on one canvas, connect the pieces, and watch the shape of your idea appear, before you build a thing.
The blank page
An idea never shows up whole.
“No idea seems good enough, and it's driving me crazy.” It's a 2am note, a dozen open tabs, a screenshot of something that worked for someone else. Most builders hand you a blank prompt box and wait for a finished sentence. Yours isn't a sentence yet. It doesn't have to be.
How it works
Catch the idea first. Shape it after.
The scratchpad is where the whole pile lands. No blank canvas to structure first, no format to invent. Just the idea, caught, then connected.
A canvas that holds the whole pile
Drop a note, paste a link and it becomes a card, drop an image. Pan, zoom, and connect the cards with typed links. Nothing you throw in gets lost.
Connect the pieces, see the shape
Draw links between cards to show what depends on what. The pile turns into a map you can read and reason about, before a line of code exists.
A private board to think on
You get your own scratchpad to think in. Everything saves as you go, so a stray idea at 2am is still there in the morning.
Honest edge: turning the board into a pitch and a scope happens in the build agent. See Harness.
Where it fits
From a caught idea to a built app.
Once the shape is clear, the build agent takes the board and turns it into a working app: data, screens, and logic. The scratchpad is where the loop begins.
Start with the messy idea
Open a scratchpad, drop in what you've got, and watch the shape appear.