Email Canvas

Overview

The email canvas puts an email draft next to the assistant's chat so the two of you can work on it together. You type in the draft, you ask the assistant for changes in plain words, and the changes appear in the draft itself — not in a card you have to approve, and not in a copy you have to paste back.

It works with the assistant's wide view: press Alt + W (or click the expand icon in the assistant's header) and the assistant fills the page, with the conversation on the left and room for a draft on the right. Press Alt + W again to go back to the docked panel. Your conversation is kept either way.

Opening a draft in the canvas

There are four ways in:

• New email — in the wide view, click the new email icon in the assistant's header. A blank draft opens on the right.
• From the assistant's reply — when the assistant creates a draft for you, its reply includes an Open in canvas button.
• From your Drafts — every draft in your Drafts folder has a Canvas button. The same button is in the regular email composer, so a draft you started there can continue in the canvas.
• Automatically — when the assistant creates or updates a draft during a conversation you are having in the wide view, the draft opens in the canvas by itself once the reply finishes. It never does this over a draft you already have open, and if you close a draft it stays closed for the rest of that conversation. Turn this off under the model selector below the chat composer (Open drafts in the canvas).

The draft saves itself as you work, and it appears in your mailbox's Drafts folder like any other draft.

Asking for changes

With a draft open in the canvas, the assistant knows which draft you mean. Ask in plain words:

• "Change October to November."
• "Make the second paragraph shorter."
• "Add my partner to Cc."
• "Rewrite the whole thing — friendlier, and lead with the deadline."

To point at a specific passage, select it in the draft first and then ask. The selection travels with your question, so "make this firmer" means exactly the text you highlighted.

Small changes land as you watch

A small change — a word, a sentence, a short line — appears in the draft the moment the assistant finishes, with a brief highlight on the text that changed. There is nothing to approve.

If you don't like it, one Undo puts it back exactly as it was: press ⌘ Z (Mac) or Ctrl + Z (Windows), or use the Undo and Redo arrows at the left of the formatting toolbar. Each change the assistant makes is one undo step, so one press reverts the whole change, not a piece of it.

Bigger changes wait for you

A longer change, a rewrite of the whole body, or any change to the recipients or the subject is shown as a preview before anything happens:

• Text that would go is shown struck through; the new text appears beside it in the canvas's accent colour. While the assistant is still writing, you can watch the new text arrive.
• Recipient changes show as pending chips in the To, Cc or Bcc row, and a proposed subject appears beside the current one.
• A bar at the top of the draft says what is proposed. Click Accept (or press Enter while the bar is focused) to apply it, or Reject (or Escape) to leave your draft untouched.

You can keep typing while a preview is showing. If you change the text the assistant was about to edit, that part of the proposal is dropped rather than applied in the wrong place, and the assistant is told.

After an Accept, the whole change is still one undo step.

The assistant always knows what happened

Whether a change landed, was previewed, was accepted or was rejected, the assistant learns the outcome on your next message. You can carry on the conversation — "actually, keep the original greeting" — and it works from the draft as it really is.

Attachments

The canvas is the full composer: attach files with the paperclip, drag them onto the draft, or paste a screenshot into the body. Everything about attachments works exactly as it does in the regular composer.

Working from more than one device

A draft can be open in the canvas on one device at a time. If you open it on a second device, you'll see which device has it and a Take over button. Taking over moves the draft to the device you are on; the other device finishes saving, then switches to read-only. No change is ever lost in the hand-off.

A canvas you leave untouched for 30 minutes pauses itself so it doesn't hold the draft hostage — reopen it to continue.

Good to know

• The canvas needs the wide view and a reasonably wide window. On a narrow window the assistant shows the canvas as a tab beside the chat.
• Sending works from the canvas as it does anywhere else: Send, or ⌘ Enter / Ctrl + Enter.
• The assistant can only edit a draft that is open in the canvas. For a draft that isn't open, it falls back to the usual approval card.
• When you open a draft in the regular composer, the assistant docks itself beside the composer so it is there if you want it, and goes back to how you had it when you close the draft.