Fighting the empty board syndrome

Kosmik has a new canvas and it's not spatial.

As you know we’re completely overhauling Kosmik and getting ready to launch Kosmik 3. A new version rewritten from the ground up with a new UI, new sync engine and better multiplayer support.

But one thing kept bugging us… Kosmik still lacked a home.

The kind of place that would always be there for you to come back to, a place to start, a place with everything you care about, without having to open a document! Today we want to give you a sneak peek of that feature: the feed.

What is the feed?

There’s always been a problem with open-ended tools like Kosmik. What should you do when you first log-in? Some tools try to solve this issue by adding a big template library, others add mock content or documents in your account when you log-in. None of these solutions felt quite right to us.

The feed is our answer to that problem.

Prototype design for the feed in Kosmik 3 upcoming UI.

There’s a lot to unpack here but, to keep it short, we’re not happy with how Kosmik greets you when you launch it. Our goal with Kosmik is to give you a place to create, search, and share. If we are to become your other desktop, we should always restore a predictable state. Currently we send you to a universe directly, in a board, with no clear indication as to which board it will be and at which zoom level/position.

So we asked ourselves: what if the feed could be your home, like your Mac desktop or iPhone home screen?

📍 A place to start

We’ve noticed that more of our users are using Kosmik to store large amounts of data (notes, images, bookmarks) and that it would be nice to have a central place to browse through them all. A universe is a document, there is an intent when you create one: to build a moodboard, to start a new project, to have a brainstorming session, etc.

Here's what makes the feed special:

• It's the aggregation of all the content you've ever stored in Kosmik

• The feed is organized chronologically. New content automatically bubbles to the top

• You can drag & drop content directly onto the feed (perfect for those "I'll organize this later" moments)

• For new users, we'll include thoughtfully curated mock content to showcase Kosmik's capabilities

In some ways the feed is an aggregation of smart folders, spotlight and the “recents” folder of macOS.

Spotlight first version.

The “recent items” folder in macOS that stores everything in chronological order has become a very useful feature over the years.

🎃 Tricks of the feed:

Here's where it gets really interesting: search is becoming not only a necessity but a great way to create collections of content. So in Kosmik 3, we'll make search and the feed more powerful by allowing you to "save" a query on the feed home screen as a collection or in a universe as a stack. The coolest part? Anytime an object matches the search terms (helped by an LLM to tag objects) we will automatically add it to the collection and the stack!

This is the first step towards realizing our vision of a proactive canvas. Open Kosmik → check your collection. Want to share a “fuzzy idea” with your colleagues? Drag the stack on the canvas and let them browse through it!

We'll share more details in the coming weeks as we get closer to our launch, including some deep-dive videos on our YouTube channel! If you'd like to learn more about what we mean by "proactive canvas" check out these articles:

• 🧞 Making a proactive canvas

• 🪑 Our workspaces and us

• 🌳 The computer in the woods

Want early access? If you’d like to test Kosmik 3 while it’s still in beta you can enrol right here.

Until next time —

Paul 👩‍🚀