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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/redsheep913/Canvas-Card-Materializer/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Once Canvas Card-Materializer is installed and enabled, turning your Canvas brainstorm into a structured set of Markdown notes takes only a few clicks. This guide walks you through the entire workflow — from opening a Canvas file to reading the connected-node backlinks inside your first materialized note.
1

Open a Canvas file in Obsidian

In the file explorer, open any .canvas file. If you don’t have one yet, create a new Canvas via File → New Canvas. The Canvas editor will open in the main workspace pane.
2

Create or identify text cards to convert

Add text cards by double-clicking an empty area of the Canvas and typing, or locate existing text cards you want to promote to permanent notes. The plugin works on text-type nodes — cards that contain inline text written directly on the Canvas.
3

Select the cards you want to materialize

  • Single card: Click the card once to select it. A blue highlight border appears around it.
  • Multiple cards: Hold Shift and click additional cards, or click and drag a selection rectangle over a group of cards. All highlighted cards will be materialized together.
4

Right-click and choose Materialize cards to files

With one or more cards selected, right-click anywhere on the selection to open the context menu. Click “Materialize cards to files”. The plugin immediately begins processing every selected card.
5

Inspect the generated folder structure

A folder named after your Canvas file is created in the same directory as the .canvas file. Inside it, sub-folders are created for each color present among the materialized cards. Each .md file’s name is derived from the first line of the card’s text (sanitized to remove Markdown headers, backticks, and illegal characters).For a canvas file at Documents/Project-ASR.canvas with cards of different colors, the output looks like this:
Documents/
└── Project-ASR/
    ├── Default/
    │   └── Theory-Note.md
    ├── Yellow/
    │   └── Bug-Analysis.md
    └── Green/
        └── Command-List.md
The original Canvas is updated in-place: every materialized text card is replaced by a file node pointing to the new .md file, so your visual layout is completely preserved.
6

Open a generated file and inspect its contents

Click any newly created .md file in the file explorer. Every materialized file contains:
  • YAML frontmatter with canvas_id (the node’s original Canvas ID) and canvas_color (the numeric color code).
  • The body text from the original card (everything after the first line, which became the filename).
  • A Connected Nodes: section appended at the bottom — but only if the card had at least one arrow connecting it to another materialized card.
A typical materialized file looks like this:
---
canvas_id: abc123def456
canvas_color: "3"
---

This is the body text from the original card.

---
**Connected Nodes:**
- [[Related-Note]]
- [[Another-Note]]
The canvas_color value maps to Canvas’s internal color scheme: "0" = Default (grey), "1" = Red, "2" = Orange, "3" = Yellow, "4" = Blue, "5" = Green, "6" = Purple.
Establishing a consistent color convention before you start materializing pays off quickly. For example: Yellow for problems and observations, Grey (Default) for abstract theory, Green for actionable commands and checklists, and Purple for Map-of-Content index notes. See Color Workflow for the full recommended system and how it maps to folder names.
The canvas_color frontmatter written into every materialized file powers the Visual Sync feature. If you drag a materialized .md file back onto any Canvas — even a different one — the plugin reads canvas_color and automatically restores the card’s original color, so your color coding is never lost. Learn more at Visual Sync.

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