Napkin quickstart

You'll rough out a real idea — say, the shape of a ticket-triage automation you're considering — get a second pair of hands on the board, and end with zv1 looking at the sketch and telling you what it sees. No setup beyond signing in.

1. 1
   Open Napkin and create a sketch

   Go to napkin.zerowidth.ai, sign in, and click New sketch. There's no naming dialog — you land on a blank canvas with the pen ready. Name it later from the gallery or the ⋯ menu if it turns out to matter.

2. 2
   Get the idea down

   Draw the rough shape: a box per stage with the rectangle (R), labels with text (T), the flow of work with arrows (A), open questions on sticky notes (S), and freehand annotation with the pen (P) — strokes thin and thicken with pen pressure, or with speed on a mouse. Ugly is fine; that's the register. Pan with space-drag, zoom with pinch or the corner controls, undo with ⌘Z.

3. 3
   Drop in a real thing

   Press @ and search for a flow, page, dataset, or decision — pick one and it lands on the board as a reference card — the live entity itself. Switch to the connector tool (C) and drag from a sketched box to the card — the connector binds to both ends and re-routes as you move things. Now the diagram points at the actual object you're discussing. More in Reference cards & connectors.

4. 4
   Pull someone onto the board

   Click Share, create a Can draw link, and paste it into Slack. Whoever opens it is drawing within seconds — no account, no sign-in. They appear as an ephemeral guest ("Swift Marmot", with their own cursor color), and you see their strokes as they make them. Workspace teammates who open the link get routed to the normal board view instead. Details in Multiplayer & share links.

5. 5
   Ask zv1 about it

   Open the docked assistant (or chat.zerowidth.ai) and ask: "Look at my triage sketch — what's missing?" zv1 finds the board, renders it, and reads what's actually drawn — the boxes, the arrows, the sticky-note questions, the flow card you dropped in. Its reply can carry the sketch as a clickable card, so the conversation and the drawing stay attached. More in zv1 can see your sketches.

6. 6
   Take it with you

   From the ⋯ menu, Export as PNG — the full sketch, the current view, or just a selection — for the doc or deck the sketch was feeding. The board itself stays live for the next session.

That's the loop: think out loud in ink, anchor the sketch to real objects, bring in the people — and the AI — who need to see it.

What's next