# devdotfast/whiteboard: the product is Whiteboard, the manifest says Review Desktop > An MIT-licensed desktop canvas where humans and coding agents review a branch together. The README calls it Whiteboard, the root package.json still calls itself the Review Desktop monorepo at version 0.0.0, and the newest release adds sharing the README says is only planned. **devdotfast/whiteboard** — open-source canvas for thoughtful software design - Repository: https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard - Website: https://whiteboard.dev.fast/ - Stars: 3,054 · Forks: 151 - Language: TypeScript - License: MIT - Published: 2026-10-08 · Updated: 2026-10-08 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/devdotfast-whiteboard ## What the app is supposed to replace The README frames Whiteboard as a shared workspace where people and agents architect software together. The concrete flow is in the Quickstart: download the app, connect Claude Code, Codex or another coding agent from the welcome screen, then ask the agent to review your current branch against main and open the result in Whiteboard. On macOS there is a Homebrew path: ``` brew install --cask devdotfast/tap/whiteboard ``` The design bet underneath that is that an agent's review is worth more as a diagram than as a wall of text. Clicking a sequence diagram, an entity relationship diagram or a quote from the agent's trace jumps to the underlying code, with keybindings and language server support supplied by the vendored Code OSS fork. The argument for a desktop app rather than a web page is that the tool runs against your local checkouts, which is also how the privacy story works: telemetry excludes code, diffs, Whiteboard text, prompts and model output. ## The naming mismatch runs through every layer The README, the logo alt text and the download link all say Whiteboard, and the homepage is whiteboard.dev.fast. The root package.json says something else entirely: the name is @dev.fast/review-workspace, the description reads Review Desktop monorepo, and the version is 0.0.0 with private set to true. The desktop app lives under apps/review-desktop, the tooling references a @dev.fast/whiteboard package, and the license section points at apps/review-desktop/LICENSE. So the same codebase carries two identities. Read the marketing and you are looking at Whiteboard 0.2.0, published on 2026-10-02. Read the manifest and you are looking at a private 0.0.0 workspace that was never published, built with pnpm workspaces across apps/, packages/, tools/ and scripts/. There is no real conflict, since the version numbers live in different places, but it does mean the repository tells you nothing useful through npm and everything through GitHub releases. Contributors are not left guessing either, since AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md and a .claude-plugin directory sit at the root. ## The semantic diff viewer is the actual technical claim Two features carry the weight. The first is a semantic, AST-aware diff viewer written in Rust, which exists because raw diffs are noisy. Large added functions are summarized as pseudocode, unit tests and documentation changes are collapsed by default, and the whole thing is adjustable through a WASM-based plugin system. The second is a decision log, which the README frames as a response to a specific failure: it was hard to reason about what decisions an agent made autonomously and how those affected a change. The fix is to let agents query and link their own traces on the canvas, so the requirements you set, the implementation and the autonomous choices all appear in one place. The Guidance section is candid about the current state. It names GPT-6 Sol and Claude Opus 5.5 as the models it works best with, and it publishes example prompts because the right defaults are not yet baked into the system prompt, which the project gives as one reason the system is open source. ## Self-hostable forever versus a share button The Open source section states that Whiteboard is MIT licensed, runs against your local checkouts, that a hosted product for teams is planned, and that everything will always remain self-hostable. The Known limitations list says you can share reviews between machines with the share button, but updates made after a review is shared do not appear for others, so you have to re-share. The v0.2.0 release notes then add that whiteboards and documents can be shared without a Git repository, described as some semblance of plan sharing. Those three statements do not contradict each other, and that is the interesting part. Nothing is hosted, nothing is uploaded to a service you did not choose, and the sharing is a file you pass to another machine rather than a live document in the cloud. The practical consequence is the one in the limitations: sharing is a snapshot, so a review you shared yesterday is stale today. That is a real cost for a team trying to collaborate asynchronously through the tool, and no amount of self-hosting changes it. ## Why they vendored Code OSS instead of patching it The repository carries a vendored fork of Code OSS under apps/review-desktop/code-oss, and the README is unusually direct about why. Most forks maintain a patch set, and the stated problem is that coding agents struggle with patches. The second reason is subtraction: a large share of stock VS Code has become Copilot, roughly 45 percent by their count, and the fork does not need it. The result is a text editor purpose-built for reviewing diffs rather than writing them, with upstream security and feature patches merged in regularly. Microsoft licensing is preserved through the retained LICENSE and UPSTREAM files in the app directory. The known limitations section is equally direct. You cannot edit files in Whiteboard at all, and the project says so in the README and invites an issue if that is what you want. Multi-repo review is not well supported. The v0.2.0 notes add more preview-stage detail about the ask-agent feature, which is read-only by default, cannot comment on diagrams, cannot render diffs inline and does not yet fork the authoring agent's context. Thirty-two open issues sit against a repository pushed on 2026-10-06. ## Conclusion devdotfast/whiteboard is worth trying if your agent already writes code and you want a readable artifact instead of a transcript, and it costs you nothing but an install since the app is MIT and self-hostable. Two things to check first. The root manifest is named @dev.fast/review-workspace with description Review Desktop monorepo at version 0.0.0, so anyone reading this repository as a library will find no published package to depend on, only apps to run. And the reviewReady flag from v0.2.0 is the setting that decides whether the app interrupts you, which defaults to off. ## FAQ ### What is devdotfast/whiteboard used for? It is a desktop app where a coding agent and a person review a branch together on a shared canvas. The agent authors a review containing diagrams and quotes from its trace, clicking a diagram jumps to the underlying code, and a semantic AST-aware diff viewer written in Rust filters out tests and documentation noise. ### Is Whiteboard open source and does it send my code anywhere? It is MIT licensed and runs against your local checkouts. The README says a hosted product for teams is planned and that everything will always remain self-hostable. Anonymous telemetry explicitly excludes your code, diffs, Whiteboard text, prompts and model output, and can be turned off. ### Can I share a Whiteboard review with my team? There is a share button and v0.2.0 added sharing without a Git repository, but it is a snapshot rather than a live document: updates made after sharing do not appear for others, so you must re-share. Whiteboard also cannot edit files, and working across multiple repos in one review is not well supported. ## Sources - [devdotfast/whiteboard on GitHub](https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard/blob/main/LICENSE) - [Project website](https://whiteboard.dev.fast/) - [README](https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard/blob/main/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/devdotfast/whiteboard/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/devdotfast-whiteboard