Draft Canvas for VS Code has been retired

Draft Canvas for VS Code was an extension that opened .draftcanvas files in the hosted editor, inside an editor tab. Its last release is 0.2.0, which does nothing but say so. Draft Canvas continues as the web editor and the desktop app.

Your diagrams are unchanged#

A .draftcanvas file is plain JSON, and the extension never stored anything anywhere else: no extension storage, no hidden copies, no format of its own. Every file it saved opens as it is:

• In the desktop app. Open the file, or add its folder as a project. The desktop app saves back to the same file, so a diagram can keep living in your repository next to the code it describes — see Draft Canvas Desktop.
• In the web editor. Choose Import in the Library and pick the file. Export → Document → Editable writes it back as a .draftcanvas file whenever you want it in the repository again.

Two things to know:

• Unsaved edits. If VS Code was holding unsaved changes to a diagram in a tab (its hot exit), they are in VS Code's own backup, not in the extension: open the file with the text editor and save.
• Background images. The extension kept a canvas background image beside the diagram (name.draftcanvas.background.png or .jpg, .webp, .gif). Neither the web editor nor the desktop app reads that companion file; set the image again there if you want it.

What the last version does#

With 0.2.0 installed, a .draftcanvas file opens as text by default. Open With → Draft Canvas shows a page that says what happened, with Reopen as text; it loads nothing from the network and never writes to the file. Draft Canvas: Where did Draft Canvas go? in the Command Palette shows the same notice. Uninstall the extension to have .draftcanvas files open as text with nothing in between.

An older copy that was never updated (0.1.0 to 0.1.7) still frames the hosted editor's address. That address now shows the same notice instead of the editor, so nothing sits on a spinner.

Why#

Draft Canvas is a small, local-first tool made by one person. The extension framed the hosted web editor rather than bundling it, so it needed a network connection to open anything, its own release lane and Marketplace upload, and a message protocol kept compatible with every copy ever installed. What it did that the browser could not — keep a diagram as a file next to the code — the desktop app does without any of that. Web and desktop are the two platforms Draft Canvas can keep excellent, and this is the cost of keeping them so.

The extension's source, changelog and release notes stay in the repository's history, at the extension-v0.2.0 tag.