Project · collaborative-drawing
Slate
- How you run it
- In Moss
- Holochain version
- 0.6.0
- Activity
- active
- Checked
- 30 October 2026
What is Slate and what is it for?
Slate is a Holochain app for drawing together in real time, where several people work on the same canvas and see each other's strokes and shapes as they are added. It is made for groups that want a shared drawing space they can add to a Moss group, and it can also be used on its own as a stand-alone Holochain app.
Slate is a drawing app built on Holochain, the peer-to-peer framework, and made by Lightningrod Labs alongside a family of other Holochain tools. Its early purpose is documented in how it is offered: a drawing capability for The Weave and for use inside Moss, the group-workspace app, and also a stand-alone Holochain app in its own right.
In human terms, it is a shared canvas. Several people open the same drawing and work on it at once, and what one person draws shows up for the others as it happens rather than being saved and passed around. The drawing surface comes from Excalidraw, while the live back-and-forth between participants is handled by Holochain's Syn library.
That makes it useful to a group that already meets in a Moss space and wants to sketch a plan, a layout or a diagram together without leaving the space for a separate service. The code and the development instructions live at the project's GitHub repository, and Lightningrod Labs describes Slate on its own site.
How to get it
In Moss
- Get a Moss group running, then add Slate to it as a drawing capability for the group's shared workspace.
Source: https://lightningrodlabs.org/
Desktop app
- Set up the Holochain development environment and enter the nix shell in the repository root (`nix develop`, then `npm install`).
- Run `npm start` for a two-node network with both UIs, or `npm run dev` for a single-node development environment and open the local address it prints.
- To produce an installable build, run `npm run package`; it writes `slate.webhapp` into `workdir`, which is the file intended for installation with the Holochain Launcher.
Questions people ask
- How does Slate handle real-time collaboration?
- Drawing is provided by Excalidraw, while Holochain's Syn library carries the real-time collaboration between participants. source
- Can Slate be used without Moss?
- Yes. Holders of the project describe it both as a capability for The Weave and use in Moss and as a stand-alone Holochain app. source
- How is Slate packaged for installation?
- The repository's packaging step writes a slate.webhapp file into workdir, which is the build intended for the Holochain Launcher to install. source
From 3 public sources, checked 23 September 2026.
Try Slate
- Code on GitHubOpen on GitHub ↗Last change 16 October 2026.
- Releasev0.6.0Pre-release, published 16 October 2026.
- In Moss's tool library (Moss 0.16)lightningrodlabs.org/weave-tool-curation/0.16/curations-0.16.json ↗
Details & sources
- Source
- lightningrodlabs/slate
Evidence
- Release
- github.com/lightningrodlabs/slate/releases/tag/v0.6.0shipped in a release · seen since 20 October 2026 · github.release@1
- Last change
- api.github.com/repos/lightningrodlabs/slatelisted by a third party · seen since 20 October 2026 · github.repository@1
- Activity
- github.com/lightningrodlabs/slate/releases/tag/v0.6.0shipped in a release · seen since 20 October 2026 · liveness@1
- Moss
- lightningrodlabs.org/weave-tool-curation/0.16/curations-0.16.jsonlisted by a third party · seen since 20 October 2026 · moss.listed@1
Compatibility
- hdk
- 0.6.0 · Cargo.toml @ 86b4aa9
- hdi
- 0.7.0 · Cargo.toml @ 86b4aa9
- holochain-client
- 0.20.0 · ui/package.json @ 86b4aa9
- happ.yaml
- present · workdir/happ.yaml @ 86b4aa9
- web-happ.yaml
- present · workdir/web-happ.yaml @ 86b4aa9