World's Fair 2025
tldraw.computer - Steve Ruiz, tldraw
Overview
This talk introduces tldraw.computer, a platform that leverages AI for creative and functional applications. It showcases how a hackable canvas, built with standard web technologies, can serve as a foundation for AI-driven tools. The core thesis is that by treating AI models as programmable components within a visual interface, users can build complex applications, iterate rapidly, and achieve novel results, blurring the lines between design, coding, and AI execution.
Who should watch
- AI Engineers exploring new paradigms for AI application development.
- Product Managers and Builders interested in rapid prototyping and AI-powered tools.
- Developers looking for flexible canvas SDKs and AI integration patterns.
- Anyone curious about using AI for visual creation, code generation, and complex task execution.
Key takeaways
- Tldraw.com is a free whiteboard application, and tldraw.dev provides an SDK for building custom applications on its canvas.
- The tldraw canvas is built with standard web technologies like React, allowing for the embedding of other web applications like YouTube, code editors, and Figma.
- The "Make Real" concept demonstrated how AI vision models could translate wireframes or diagrams into functional web prototypes.
- Tldraw.computer enables users to create visual workflows where AI models act as programmable nodes, executing instructions, generating text, images, and speech based on inputs.
- AI models can perform computational tasks, like arithmetic, by inferring numerical values from non-numeric inputs, showcasing their flexible reasoning capabilities.
- The platform supports long-running, asynchronous processes and complex workflows, such as generating pop songs and analyzing sentiment, by creating loops and conditional logic executed by language models.
- Tldraw's approach treats AI as a virtual collaborator, allowing users to interact with AI-generated content, correct it, and use it as input for further AI processing.
- The underlying philosophy is to create a computer that works intuitively, where users express desired outcomes and the system orchestrates the AI components to achieve them.
Notable quotes
Steve Ruiz: *The idea would be like, well, what if we could take the diagrams that we were drawing, the wireframes that we were drawing, and we could just kind of kind of make them real?*
Steve Ruiz: *I want a computer that works the way that I thought a computer worked before I knew how a computer works.*
Unofficial community note. Prefer the recording for nuance.