Haystack Editor

The canvas is the core of Haystack Editor. Instead of stacking tabs, you place editors anywhere on an unbounded board and zoom in for detail or out for the whole picture. Drag a file or a function out of the sidebar and it stays where you put it, so the layout reflects how you think about the code rather than the order you happened to open files. It's the part that makes the tool feel different from a normal editor.

When one piece of code calls another, Haystack draws a connection between the two editors. Open a function and the editor pulls in what it calls, so the call graph appears as you navigate. This is the feature that turns a flat list of files into something closer to a map. You can follow a path through several levels of the hierarchy without losing where you came from.

The explorer gives you a file tree as your starting point, the same way you'd expect from VS Code. From there, you drag what you need onto the canvas and leave the rest behind. It keeps the familiar way of browsing a project while the canvas handles what you want to keep in front of you. For people switching from VS Code, the sidebar feels immediately familiar.

Haystack keeps keyboard navigation at the center, so you can move between editors and jump to code without reaching for the mouse. The project treats fast navigation as a core feature rather than an add-on, which matters on a canvas where panning and zooming could otherwise slow you down. Shortcuts carry over from VS Code, so muscle memory keeps working.

The editor includes an AI feature that drafts a function for you. You describe what you want and it produces the code, which you can then place and connect on the canvas like anything else. It's aimed at the blank-page moment when you know the shape of a function but don't want to type the boilerplate. It works alongside the rest of the editor rather than as a separate chat window.

Because Haystack is a fork of VS Code, the editing experience, extensions, settings and keybindings carry over. You can import your existing VS Code configuration on first run, so the theme, shortcuts and extensions you rely on show up without rebuilding them. The bundled extensions add language support, code completion and go-to-definition for the languages you work in, using the same building blocks VS Code uses.

The canvas rewards a big display. On a normal monitor you get more code in view than a tab column allows, and on an ultrawide or multi-monitor setup you can spread a whole subsystem across the screen. Pinned editors can hold parts of the screen while you work elsewhere. It's a small thing to describe but a big part of why the canvas layout is worth the switch.