Widgets

What a widget is

A widget is the smallest content unit on a canvas. Think of it as equivalent to one slide, one spreadsheet cell, or one Notion block — but more general. A VizChat widget can be a chart, a paragraph of text, an entire embedded webpage, or an interactive component running JS.

Each widget owns its data and its configuration, and defines its own set of operations. Those fields and operations belong to the widget itself and evolve with it — the agent looks them up when it needs them rather than assuming a fixed shape.

Two kinds of widget

Built-in widgets

The widgets VizChat ships with, covering the common cases: charts and data (including maths — coordinate planes, number lines, solids in space, distributions, Venn diagrams, probability trees, tables), rich text and code, PDFs, embedded pages and links, images and infographics, and slide covers. See the widget types overview for the full set and what each one does.

Custom widgets

When the built-ins don't cover what you need, the agent can build a widget for you: a timer, a kanban board, a calculator, or any bespoke interactive component. A custom widget is generated at runtime, stored in your library, and reusable across documents. Typical cases:

• Visualizations outside the standard set (Sankey, calendar heatmap)
• Components that need state and event interaction (filters, date pickers)
• Embedding third-party libraries

Custom widgets mount inline in the canvas by default, and can opt into a sandboxed iframe (nested mount) when they need a fully isolated realm — a controlled API talks to the host canvas either way. They are private to you by default, and can be published to the Marketplace so other people can use and favorite them.

Widget independence

Each widget is an independent mini-app. It has:

• Its own data and configuration, stored in the document
• Its own lifecycle (mount, render, destroy)
• Independent edit / copy / delete operations

How the AI works with widgets

When you ask for something, the agent works through roughly this path:

1. Find a widget — search_widgets searches built-in and user-published widgets from the same pool. Widgets you have favorited, or mentioned with @, are considered first.
2. Learn its contract — get_widget_operations returns the fields and operations that widget actually accepts.
3. Write it into the document — the widget and its initial data are written into the document, and later changes are made as precise path edits with edit_yaml_path.
4. Validate — validate_board checks the document structure, that every referenced widget exists, and that referenced workspace documents exist.

If nothing in the library fits, the agent can fall back to building a new custom widget for you instead.

Next step

• Canvas mental model
• Built-in widget types
• Agent workflow