Create Worlds
That Hold Together
CanonBoard is a story development platform that helps writers turn concepts into well-developed narratives with clarity and precision.
Free to build. No card required.
“A world doesn’t fall apart all at once — it contradicts itself one detail at a time.”
Scattered canon and silent contradictions are what quietly wreck a world — long before anyone notices.
Every answer exists somewhere — a wiki, a script, a group chat. No single place holds all of them at once.
The kind of slip a reader catches long before you do. One broken detail and the whole world loses the room.
Small inconsistencies compound. What started as a loose thread becomes an expensive rewrite.
Your Entire World, One Living Canvas
Characters, rules, timelines, relationships — connected and continuously stress-tested. When something breaks, you know before your audience does.
From Blank Canvas to Living World — in Four Moves
Three Tools That Compress Weeks Into Minutes
Import a whole world in minutes, draw the canon out of your own head, and catch every contradiction before it ships. It never writes your story — it just gets you from idea to organized world in a fraction of the time.
Bring Your Audience Into Development
Open a project to a public audience and they pitch ideas, vote on what belongs, and back the ones they believe in with real money. You decide what becomes canon, and every pitch is stress-tested against your world before it's real.
Votes and backing are signal, not control. The creative decision is always yours.
See how the Board works →Test the Scene First
Try a line of dialogue, poke at a character, see where a scene wants to go — your whole world beside you, nothing touching canon.
It has a name and a method: zero drafting.
The Signal Room
Eli Vance climbs the ninety-seven steps he has climbed every night for eleven years. Tonight the lamp burns a color he cannot name.
Maren: You are not supposed to be up here.
Eli: Neither are you. You drowned eleven years ago.
Everything Else in the Engine
Beyond Smart Import, Refine, Conflict Detection, and the Board, every world is backed by a full toolkit. Here's the rest of it.
“You can't write your way out of a logic problem.”
Your World Lives in Five Places — That's the Problem
Notion, Google Docs, a whiteboard, and two notebooks. When episode 4 changes a character, episode 7's writer finds out at the table read.
| Capability | Writing apps | Wikis & docs | CanonBoard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Works before anything is written | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Actively flags contradictions as you build | — | — | ✓ |
| Cross-entity relationship graph | — | — | ✓ |
| An audience that pitches, votes, and funds development | — | — | ✓ |
| Intentional mysteries the engine won't flag | — | — | ✓ |
| Formatted full export for studios | — | — | ✓ |
Writing apps start when the world is already supposed to hold. CanonBoard is the layer before — and the stage that funds what comes after.
Keep It Private and Airtight — or Open the Board to Your Audience
From a Single Project to an Entire Studio
Free to build. Upgrade when the team grows or the Board opens.
- ●1 project
- ●1 seat
- ●Workspace Canvas + The Board
- ●AI credits/mo — shared pool
- ●Smart Import, Refine, Conflict Detection
- ●Priority support
- ●Unlimited projects
- ●3 seats included, +$5/seat
- ●Workspace Canvas + The Board
- ●15 AI credits/mo — shared pool
- ●Smart Import, Refine, Conflict Detection
- ●Priority support
- ●Unlimited projects
- ●10 seats included, +$5/seat
- ●Workspace Canvas + The Board
- ●40 AI credits/mo — shared pool
- ●Smart Import, Refine, Conflict Detection
- ●Priority support
The Questions Every Creator Asks
What is CanonBoard?
CanonBoard is a world logic engine — a tool for building and stress-testing the logic of a story world before a word of script is written. You build your canon as connected cards on an infinite canvas — characters, locations, world rules, lore, plot threads, timeline — and Conflict Detection reads the whole thing and flags contradictions. It's for screenwriters, showrunners, IP developers, and writers' rooms. It is not a writing app; it never writes for you.
What is The Board?
The Board is an optional, per-project mode where — once your world exists — you open it to a public audience. They read your canon, submit pitch ideas, vote on each other's submissions, and can back the ones they believe in with real contributions. You review everything, pull what fits, and make it canon. Nothing enters your world without your approval.
Do I lose control of my story?
No. The Board is a queue, not a vote. Your audience signals what they want. You decide what's canon. The creative authority never leaves you.
What does backing actually do?
Backing a pitch buys it visibility — it surfaces higher in the queue so you and other voters are more likely to see it. It doesn't guarantee canonization. The best ideas still win on merit. Backing goes directly to you as the creator.
What do Smart Import, Refine, and Conflict Detection do?
These are the AI power tools, available on Core and above. Smart Import turns a script or treatment into a built-out board; Refine interviews you to draw canon out of what you already know; Conflict Detection reads your whole world and flags contradictions with an explanation. They organize and pressure-test your world — they never write your story.
Will Refine write my script?
No. Refine interviews you — one question at a time — and organizes what you already know into structured canon. It excavates; you decide. Nothing is invented for you.
Can I bring in a world I've already written?
Yes. Smart Import reads a script, treatment, PDF, or doc and builds your board automatically. Available on Core and above.
Who owns my world?
You do. Always. CanonBoard never claims rights to your IP. We never train on your content. Your story is yours — we just help you keep it airtight.
Will my work be used to train AI models?
No. Your story content is never used to train AI models — not ours, not our AI provider's, not anyone's. Content only leaves CanonBoard when you trigger one of the three tools that need it: Smart Import, Refine, and Conflict Detection. Everything else — the canvas, relationship mapping, the timeline, the Vault, version history — runs on our own infrastructure and never goes anywhere. When those three do send content to our AI provider, it goes under commercial API terms that forbid training on it and cap how long it can be retained. That's a standing contractual commitment from the provider, not a promise we're making on their behalf. Changing any of this would take your explicit opt-in, never a quiet update to our terms.
Build the World, Fund the Development, Keep the Creative Call
Start free, build a canon that holds together, and open it to your audience whenever you choose.