GitHub Copilot's canvas: when chat is no longer the right AI interface
The GitHub Copilot app has introduced canvas, a full-stack mini-app that runs inside the app without a browser shell, can communicate in both directions with the Copilot agent, and can call third-party APIs or run code locally. The company argues that chat is a general-purpose fallback, while a canvas can be a better fit when users have a specific task. For example, a SQLite canvas can operate on a database directly instead of having an agent repeatedly spend tokens on actions such as “stage and commit.”