Novastart: An In-Depth Guide to the Infinite Canvas OS

Novastart organizes live apps across a persistent canvas so users can zoom between detailed work and a larger visual map.

Most desktop software asks users to manage a growing pile of windows inside a fixed rectangle. Novastart is built around a different idea: the computer itself can be an infinite, zoomable canvas. Applications still behave like applications, but they no longer have to compete for the same few square inches of screen space.

The product combines three ideas that normally live in separate categories: an infinite visual workspace, real-time team collaboration, and computer-use AI agents. The result is an operating-system-style environment intended for people who want to see more of their work at once and keep the relationships between tools visible.

The core idea: every app has a place

In Novastart, an application window is placed at a coordinate on a canvas. Open nine apps and they can sit beside one another rather than disappearing into a task switcher. Zoom out and the windows become a visual overview. Zoom in on Excel, a browser, a document, or an AI tool and you work normally.

The value is not only that the canvas is large. Positions persist. If a project has a browser on the left, financial model in the center, notes above, and a chat thread on the right, that arrangement can remain intact when the user returns. Spatial organization becomes a lightweight alternative to repeatedly reopening tabs, searching through recent files, and rebuilding the same desktop every morning.

Multiple canvases for multiple contexts

One endless surface would eventually become chaotic, so Novastart also supports separate canvases. A person might keep one for work, one for personal finances, one for a trip, and one for a renovation. A company might create canvases for sales, marketing, operations, recruiting, and individual projects.

This provides two levels of organization. The canvas handles spatial relationships within a context; the canvas list separates major contexts from one another. The result is closer to walking into different project rooms than switching between arbitrary virtual desktops.

A shared operating workspace

Traditional collaboration is usually application-specific. Google Docs is multiplayer, Figma is multiplayer, and a Miro board is multiplayer, but the desktop around them is still private. Novastart attempts to make the operating workspace itself collaborative.

Invite a teammate and both users can enter the same canvas with independent cursors. They can point at the same material without asking someone to “scroll up” on a screen share. The product’s current description also includes per-window streaming, which is designed to let a teammate interact with an application running on another person’s machine rather than streaming an entire desktop as one video.

AI agents with their own cursors

The agent system extends the same multiplayer model to software. Instead of placing an AI assistant in a chat box and waiting for a text response, Novastart can give an agent a cursor and keyboard so its work appears directly on the canvas. The interface supports a lead agent and multiple helpers, with the current product allowing a user-selected cap of up to ten helpers.

That visual approach makes delegation easier to inspect. A user can see separate tasks unfold in separate windows, pause agents, issue a correction mid-run, or reclaim a window. For complex work, the difference between “the AI says it finished” and “I watched the AI work in the actual application” can be significant.

Keep the apps you already use

A new operating environment is much more useful if it does not require a new application ecosystem. Novastart is designed around existing apps. Its public site describes Gmail, Excel, WhatsApp, Notion, and many other familiar tools opening as real signed-in windows. The intent is to change how apps are arranged and shared, not force users to recreate their workflow in a proprietary set of simplified widgets.

The software can run as an app on Windows or macOS, can be installed on a PC, and can be added to Ubuntu. That gives users a gradual adoption path: start with the canvas inside the computer you already have, then decide whether you want it to become the primary environment.

Local data and window-level sharing

Privacy becomes important when a workspace contains an entire day of computing. Novastart’s current product description says local data stays on the user’s machine until a canvas is shared, and that shared application content is streamed window to window rather than through a central video server. Permissions can determine which people can see or interact with shared material.

As with any collaboration or agent platform, organizations should still evaluate authentication, logging, data handling, AI-provider policies, and the sensitivity of the applications they expose. The key architectural idea is that sharing can happen at the application-window level instead of treating the whole desktop as one broadcast.

Where the model makes the most sense

Novastart is most compelling when a workflow is highly visual or highly parallel. A private-equity team could keep a model, data room, notes, market research, and communication tools in one deal canvas. A startup could maintain separate canvases for sales, marketing, finance, and individual employees. A student could keep readings, notes, research, and a presentation together. A family could organize shopping, travel, and planning without burying everything in browser tabs.

Large displays make the concept especially intuitive, but the infinite canvas is not dependent on a wall-sized screen. On a laptop, panning and zooming effectively turn one display into a viewport over a much larger workspace.

The bigger idea behind Novastart

The most important question is not whether an infinite canvas looks impressive in a demo. It is whether spatial persistence reduces the mental overhead of modern computing. If users can look at a canvas and immediately remember what a project contains, the interface is doing work that folders, task switchers, and tab bars currently place on human memory.

Novastart is therefore best understood as an experiment in what comes after the finite desktop. It keeps the applications people already know, but changes the container around them. The canvas is the desktop, people and agents can share it, and the screen becomes a camera moving through a larger digital room.