---
title: Canvas update — Improved first time experience
date: 2026-04-24
author: Propane
excerpt: A clearer first-time Canvas experience: chat-first layout, collapsible document panel, eval actions in chat, quick-start suggestions, plus design polish and fixes.
---


New users arrived in Canvas with a blank document and no obvious starting point. Now, Canvas opens in chat-only mode until a document is needed. The document panel collapses when not in use. Eval status and actions surface directly in chat, so you can act without switching context. Quick-start suggestions now appear as options to steer early exploration from the first session.

## Design

- **Shared Canvas** — Mobile layout and company URL entry flow refined for smaller screens.
- **Canvas** — Chain of thought display simplified to reduce visual noise during reasoning.

## Fixes

- **Canvas** — Fixed a regression where new messages didn't scroll to the top of the thread.
- **Navigation** — External link warnings no longer trigger for `*.usepropane.ai` domains.
- **Messaging** — Fixed an issue where message timestamps failed to send correctly.

## Infrastructure

- **Dependencies** — Lodash updated to address known security vulnerabilities in the library.