MetaMedium experiment: sketching as an AI interface where the canvas reads what you draw
anselm · x · 2026-09-18
Product designer John Hanacek released MetaMedium, an experiment in semantic drawing as an AI interface beyond chat.
- How it works: the canvas reads your sketches in real time — a circle is a circle, two side-by-side boxes are a row, a word next to a shape is its name — and shows its reading back for you to argue with; name a pattern and the canvas learns your vocabulary
- Replayable loop: the demo isn't a video but the engine replaying its own event log in the browser, with an inspector showing every reading at every step; you can draw at any point
- The problem: tools from Illustrator to OneNote record pixels without meaning; Figma/Miro treat diagrams as layout, not computation — flowcharts don't flow, state machines don't run
- Vision: a "living metaphorical canvas substrate" where AI thinking morphs out as river/rocks/terrain metaphors — "less harness, more ecosystem"
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