Authorship colours & inline autocomplete
See who wrote what in a canvas document, and let an AI finish your sentences.
When several people (and agents) edit the same canvas document, it's useful to see at a glance who wrote which sentence. Monad colours each contributor's text — including text written by AI — and gives you an inline AI autocomplete that you can accept with a single keystroke. Both features can be turned on or off per document.
Authorship colours
Open any canvas document and start typing. Other people who join the document will see your text in your colour, and you'll see theirs in theirs. The colour for each person is consistent across documents — the same person is always the same colour for you.
The document's creator is the "default" voice
The person who created the document is treated as the document's default voice — their text shows in the normal prose colour rather than a tint. This keeps the page readable: when one author has written most of the document, you don't end up with a wall of colour.
Everyone else who edits the document still gets a tint, so you can spot their contributions at a glance. The creator's text shows in the default colour for everyone viewing the document, not just for the creator themselves.
AI text gets a rainbow
Text inserted by an agent (including text you accept from the inline autocomplete) is shown in a rainbow gradient that runs across the page. The same gradient is used everywhere AI has contributed, so it stands out even when several different people have edited around it.
Turning the colours off
Open the ⋯ menu in the top-right of the document (next to the Subscribe, Resolved, and Archived buttons) and uncheck Show authorship colours. The document falls back to the normal prose colour and reads like a finished page. The setting is remembered per-document, with a per-user default that applies to any new document you open.
Inline AI autocomplete
When you pause for a moment at the end of a paragraph, Monad asks a fast model for three different continuations of what you were writing — one short, one medium, one long — and shows the short one as ghost text right after your cursor (dimmed, italic, in the same rainbow gradient that AI text uses elsewhere). You can preview what it will look like before you commit, expand it to the longer options if you want more, and accept whichever one is showing with a single keystroke.
The three sizes are:
- Sentence — finishes the sentence you're typing, or starts the next one. This is what you see by default.
- Paragraph — finishes the paragraph (or writes the next one). Usually a few sentences.
- Section — finishes the whole section under the current heading (or starts a new section). May span several paragraphs and can include a fresh heading line.
Accepting, expanding, and dismissing
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Tab | Accepts whichever suggestion is currently showing. The text is inserted at the cursor and attributed to the AI (so it shows as a rainbow run if authorship colours are on). |
| Alt + ↓ | Expands the ghost text to the next-longer suggestion (sentence → paragraph → section). |
| Alt + ↑ | Collapses back to the next-shorter suggestion. |
| Esc | Dismisses the suggestion without inserting it. |
| Type any other key | Dismisses the suggestion. Whatever you type is yours, not the AI's. |
| Move the cursor | Dismisses the suggestion. |
| Pause again | A fresh trio of suggestions is requested for whatever you've now written. |
The suggestion is never inserted automatically — nothing lands in the document until you press Tab. Other people don't see the suggestion until you accept it; it's purely a preview for you.
When you'll see suggestions
Suggestions only appear when:
- Your cursor is at the very end of a paragraph (not in the middle).
- You don't have any text selected.
- The document has at least a sentence or two of content (very short drafts don't yield useful completions, so we skip them).
- The toggle is on (see below).
Today, suggestions are limited to plain prose paragraphs — they don't fire inside lists, headings, code blocks, or table cells.
Turning autocomplete off
Same ⋯ menu in the top-right of the document → uncheck Inline autocomplete. No more suggestions for that document. Like the authorship toggle, the setting is remembered per-document with a per-user default.
How it's stored
Authorship is part of the document itself, so it travels with the document — exporting and re-importing keeps the colour mapping in sync with the people who actually wrote the text. Toggle settings are stored per-(person, document), with a per-person default that applies to any new document you open. Both toggles default to on for new users.
Permissions
Anyone who can read the canvas can see authorship colours; anyone who can edit the canvas can use inline autocomplete. Read-only viewers won't see autocomplete suggestions. Other people's authorship colouring is determined by the document, not by what each viewer has toggled — so two people looking at the same document see the same colours for the same authors.