Drawings and text files

Two small programs, each with one job. The drawing program is for diagrams and sketches: a flowchart of how a day runs, a rough plan of where things go. The text editor is for plain text and code files: Markdown notes, a checklist, a CSV list, a short script.

Both open as a tab in the browser panel beside your chat, and in both the agent works in the file you have open — it can draw a flowchart from a description, or write and rewrite lines of a text file, with each change one step you can undo.

Drawings

File ▸ New ▸ Drawing opens the Drawings list. Type a name and press New drawing, and the drawing opens. File ▸ Open ▸ Drawing… and View ▸ Drawings ▸ All Drawings open the same list.

The drawing area is Excalidraw, with its own toolbar of shapes and tools above the canvas. A drawing holds rectangles, ellipses, diamonds, text, arrows, lines, freehand strokes and pictures. Its menu keeps two things: clearing the canvas and changing the canvas’s background colour.

The bar at the top of the drawing carries its name, whether it is saved, Image…, Save and the ⋯ menu.

• Image… adds a picture from your computer: a PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP file of up to 10 MB. SVG files are refused.
• ⋯ ▸ Export as PNG… and Export as SVG… save the whole drawing, with its background and a small margin, wherever you choose. The drawing then says where it was saved.
• The same menu holds Versions…, Rename…, All drawings and Delete…, as every program’s does — see The office for saving and earlier versions.

The agent in a drawing

Ask for a diagram in words and the agent draws it. Things you can ask for:

• A flowchart from a description. The agent lays out the steps as labelled shapes joined by arrows, as one change, to the right of anything already in the drawing. The arrows stay joined to the shapes.
• Shapes, text, arrows and lines, many at once, joined where you say.
• A change to one item — its text, colours, position or size. Arrows joined to it follow it.
• Items removed, together with their labels and the arrows joined to them.
• What is in the drawing, read back to you or used to answer a question.
• A PNG of the whole drawing, saved to your download folder. The agent exports PNG only.

After each change a note at the top says what the agent did — for example The agent drew a diagram of … items. — with Undo beside it.

Text files

File ▸ New ▸ Text File opens the Text files list. A text file’s name includes its extension — the name box suggests New file name, like notes.md — and New text file makes and opens it. File ▸ Open ▸ Text File… opens the list.

Import… on the list brings in any text file from your computer, whatever its name, up to 5 MB. It has to be UTF-8 text; anything else is refused with a sentence saying it isn’t a text file. The text comes in exactly, with its line endings kept.

Above the text is an editing bar:

• Find opens find and replace, also on Ctrl+F.
• Undo and redo, also on Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z.
• A status line naming the kind of file, how many lines it has, and its line endings — for example Markdown · 24 lines · LF.

The editor colours the text by the file’s extension: Markdown, JSON, CSV and TSV, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python and SQL. Anything else is shown as Plain text. ⋯ ▸ Export… saves a copy wherever you choose.

The agent in a text file

Ask the agent to write a file, add to it or tidy it up. It can:

• Read the file, by line number, to answer a question about it.
• Write lines — insert new ones, replace a range, or delete a range — keeping the file’s line endings.
• Replace every occurrence of a piece of text, and say how many it changed.
• Work on what you selected: it can read your selection, with its line numbers, so “rewrite the lines I have selected” works.

Each change is one step, shown in a note such as The agent replaced lines … with Undo beside it.

What you are asked

The rules are the ones every program shares, set out in The office. In short:

• Reading a drawing or a text file of yours runs without asking.
• Making a new one asks once. The main answer, Allow changes to “name” in this chat, also lets the agent go on changing it in this chat without asking again.
• Changing one you already have asks once per chat, with the same main answer.
• Removing items from a drawing, or deleting lines from a text file, counts as a change here, not a deletion: once changes are allowed it runs without a further question. Each one is a single step, so Undo brings it back.

Good to know

• Drawings cannot be imported. The Drawings list has no Import….
• Text files have no submenu under View. Reach them through File ▸ New or File ▸ Open, or the All text files entry in an open file’s ⋯ menu.
• Neither program prints: there is no Print or save as PDF… for drawings or text files. Export a drawing as PNG or SVG instead.
• Exporting a text file suggests its name with .txt added, such as notes.md.txt; change the name in the save dialog if you want to keep the original.
• The agent cannot export a text file; use Export… yourself.
• Imported text files must be UTF-8 and at most 5 MB.