I'd say this is more of an interesting take on page transitions. I was expecting mouse wheel scroll to zoom, so I instinctively scrolled expecting some kind of zooming effect.
I remembered there was a website featured here on HN that had an interactive tour of the scale of the universe ranging from the very microscopic world (if I remember correctly I think it even went down to Planck length) all the way to the macroscopic (black holes, galaxies). I'd be interested in such a zooming library that achieves something like that.
Thanks for bringing to my attention. I haven't tried but I can spot some differences in philosophy:
- Musel Cloud doesn't embed Google Docs or Sheets, it has its own text engine; the word processor is built-in. There's no reliance on Google for docx, xlsx editing. Musel's built-in, natively on canvas. File formats such as docx, xlsx are compatible with any other software.
- Musel renders everything using a canvas (and WebGL), it doesn't use HTML at all. It is truly a whiteboard through and through. Everybody else has to rely on HTML for their rich text layout. Musel Cloud doesn't rely on third-party apps or popup a separate modal. Because everything is entirely natively rendered using the canvas, layers work really well, zooming works really fast, and performance is great. Items on Musel are more like Photoshop objects; they're all raster.
- has a built-in drive that syncs (but only supports Windows right now). No reliance on Google Drive or Dropbox.
Musel delivers on the promise of seamlessness. Works on files you already have on your devices.
Hi HN, I soft launched Musel Cloud, a collaborative whiteboard where you can drag and drop files (docx, xlsx, pdf) on the board and edit them in-place. These are all natively rendered on the canvas so they blend in seamlessly with other items. It has a built-in file explorer that syncs with your devices. Is it a whiteboard with a Drive or a Drive with a whiteboard? I'm not sure, but it greatly reduces context switching.
Speaking of context, I made an interesting discovery while working on Musel Cloud. Those who work with Claude Code, Codex, etc... will quickly realize that you'll spend the majority of the time wrestling with context management. With proper context, the LLM can be consistently reliable whereas prompting alone can be hit-or-miss. It turns out whiteboards are really good at managing context and interfacing with LLMs.
Whiteboards are a really crowded category; I didn't even intentionally set out to develop one. I was building a RAG app and needed a way to gather and lay out documents. To my surprise, there weren't any existing product where I can drag and drop forms, documents, contracts, books, etc.. onto a board and then edit them.
I'm working on brand new type of collaborative whiteboard that allows anyone (or team) to drag-n-drop items from their devices onto the board.
The problem I'm solving: On a team, people and their files are scattered everywhere.
Solution: A canvas that attempts to open (and edit) as many file types as possible (images, xlsx, pdf, docx, cad). This means you can have people and files on the same page.
It's the only whiteboard that can natively render docx and pdf so far; these can also be edited directly on the board without having to use dedicated software.
It has a built-in Drive where you can store/backup files that syncs across your devices.
There's a few widgets such as Kanban, sticky notes, cards.
And of course, there's agentic LLM (Gemini 3 Pro) that can take actions such as viewing the board, reading documents on the board, and editing items on the board. For example, you can tell it to read a pdf, then write a spec sheet (in docx), or create tickets on a kanban.
I'm launching a private beta next month if anyone is interested in testing it out and giving feedback.
I've just finished creating a Magic the Gathering rules engine, and now I'm currently training an LLM agent to play games against itself through reinforcement learning.
I remembered there was a website featured here on HN that had an interactive tour of the scale of the universe ranging from the very microscopic world (if I remember correctly I think it even went down to Planck length) all the way to the macroscopic (black holes, galaxies). I'd be interested in such a zooming library that achieves something like that.