Cate v1.0 is out: The Infinite canvas workspace for developers

https://github.com/0-AI-UG/cate

Comments

citblMay 27, 2026, 8:00 AM
I appreciate the honesty of saying this is using electron.

I'm not sure what problem it actually solves or aims at solving other than being cool?

Visual orientation does matter in UX of the real world, video game worlds and to some degree operating systems, is this the goal?

NitpickLawyerMay 27, 2026, 6:57 AM
I really like the amount of exploration going on right now in this space. Even if this particular project (or the many terminal trackers/mergers/splitters, session managers, etc) don't end up being the thing, exploration is useful and might inform the next platforms.

The IDE has been "static" for most of the past ~20 years, with obvious improvements, but they were always incremental. The kind of exploration we see now is a bit more extreme, and I like it. It also seems like a lot of people are looking for alternatives, and I like some ideas. Even the funky ideas (I once saw a post comparing and proposing IDEs to follow RTS games UI) are interesting. Who knows what might stick.

piterrroMay 27, 2026, 7:48 AM
I like the idea, my fear is however that the lack of structure will cognitively overload my brain and at some point every canvas will become a mess. Think about how to expire unused/old windows. Maybe let use set a limit so that at some point they are forced to remove old window when they want to open a new one.

I have a miro board as a notepad, I constantly add new stuff but at the same time its unmanageable.

Another example could be browser tabs, since there's no limit my current window holds approximately 60 open tabs which (which I dont use ofc) - this is the effect of chrome not having a native way to save stuff for later in a semantic way (you cannot search through bookmarks the same way you would search through google).

The success of this project will be defined by how well and easy users are able to retain the context (or content) of their canvas.

TonyStrMay 27, 2026, 6:53 AM
Why use this instead of a native window manager? GNOME, KDE, Windows, MacOS, i3 all support virtual desktops where your window layouts are preserved
v3ss0nMay 27, 2026, 7:54 AM
agree , it should be WM isntead of a very limited electron app.
kidfijiMay 27, 2026, 6:56 AM
I feel that this single-pane-of-glass approach works better for some folks' mental models
dontfeedthemacMay 27, 2026, 7:24 AM
Nice, but I'd love to see something more native. Maybe rust written for better performance without using any sort of GPU acceleration to keep the battery running longer on laptops. Even better if we can have a headless setup where you can connect from any computer without using VNC or what's so ever. Probably can also have collaborative sessions and have AI-assisted sessions with a 2nd cursor rendered like in the OpenAI examples weve seen lately.
npw55036May 27, 2026, 7:07 AM
To be honest, I still prefer a finite canvas; an infinite canvas doesn't align with most people's intuition.
BlueBerry2001May 25, 2026, 10:57 AM
Been sharing progress on Cate here for a while. v1 is finally in a pretty solid state now: https://github.com/0-AI-UG/cate, https://cate.cero-ai.com

Cate is an open source desktop workspace built around an infinite canvas. Instead of constantly switching between terminals, editors, browser previews, docs, and AI tools, you arrange everything spatially in one place.

Big improvements since the earlier posts:

docking, tabs, and splits detachable native OS windows git worktree support unified Cmd+K search much smoother rendering/performance on larger canvases AI provider + MCP integration Stack: Electron, React, Monaco, xterm.js/node-pty, Zustand.

Runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux. MIT licensed.

Would love feedback from people with heavy multi-window or terminal-based workflows.