Skip to content
Surface Labs

Comments & Annotations

Both are canvas furniture: they never affect what the graph renders.

Comment boxes

Section titled “Comment boxes”

Comment boxes are resizable, recolorable labeled boxes drawn behind the nodes.

  • Press C to place one at the center of the viewport; it opens straight into inline text editing with the default text selected.
  • Press F to create an empty comment box automatically sized around the current selection (“frame selection”).
  • They are also in the node gallery under the Canvas category, and in the node context menu as Insert Comment Box.
  • Body text is rendered as Markdown.
  • Eight resize handles (four corners, four edges). Drag-to-move and the handles are disabled while the inline text editor is open, so text selection works normally.
  • Dragging a box moves the nodes it encloses with it. The set is fixed when the drag starts: a node counts as enclosed when its top-left corner sits inside the box.
  • A recolor dialog gives an HSV color wheel, a #rrggbb field and an opacity slider, all applying live. There is no confirm step.

Editing the text

Section titled “Editing the text”

Two ways in, both writing the same text:

  • Double-click the box to open the inline editor on the canvas.
  • Select the box and use the Comment field in the Properties panel. This is the reliable path: the inline editor is easy to miss, it competes with the canvas’s own double-click, and it is unavailable whenever the canvas is in a mode that swallows double-clicks.

Rename in the node context menu opens the inline editor too. Either way the edit takes an ordinary undo step.

A connected assistant sees and edits comment boxes as first-class objects, not as an afterthought on the graph: the graph tool’s describe action returns every comment with its geometry, its text and the node ids it encloses, and edit_graph can add, update and delete them. Jump nodes travel the same way. See MCP Server.

Annotations

Section titled “Annotations”

Annotations are freehand strokes drawn above everything else on the canvas.

  • Toggle annotation mode with the ✎ toolbar button (present on every platform), or bind the Toggle Annotation Mode action to a key; it ships unbound.
  • While annotation mode is on, any primary drag (one finger, Apple Pencil, or a mouse left-drag) draws a stroke. Hold Alt to pan instead. Middle-drag and trackpad gestures still pan normally.
  • Strokes are stored in world space and saved with the project.