Steve Ruiz

Steve Ruiz

Steve Ruiz is founder and CEO of tldraw, a London-based startup building an infinite canvas component for the web. The company is known for its tldraw SDK as well as for many viral AI demos including Make Real and tldraw computer. Prior to tldraw, Steve worked on several open source tools for creative products, including perfect-freehand and perfect-arrows.
Agents on the Canvas With tldraw
Web Engineering Summit 2026Web Engineering Summit 2026
Upcoming
Agents on the Canvas With tldraw
At tldraw, we've been exploring the infinite canvas as a surface for real-time collaboration between multiple agents and multiple users. Learn about what works, what doesn't, and whether the future AI might live on the canvas.Our work with AI on the canvas began with makereal.tldraw.com, often cited as the first "vibe coding" tool to reach escape velocity in November 2023. We later did work with realtime drawing (drawfast.tldraw.com), autocomplete, and a canvas interface for AI with (teach.tldraw.com). In 2024, we shipped an AI workflows app (tldraw.computer) and then returned to our canvas AI learnings with a public starter kit for working on the canvas with cursor-style AI agents (https://tldraw.dev/starter-kits/agent) and then later our spatialized agents-on-the-canvas experiment (fairies.tldraw.com).
Agents on the Canvas With tldraw
JSNation 2026JSNation 2026
Upcoming
Agents on the Canvas With tldraw
At tldraw, we've been exploring the infinite canvas as a surface for real-time collaboration between multiple agents and multiple users. Learn about what works, what doesn't, and whether the future AI might live on the canvas.Our work with AI on the canvas began with makereal.tldraw.com, often cited as the first "vibe coding" tool to reach escape velocity in November 2023. We later did work with realtime drawing (drawfast.tldraw.com), autocomplete, and a canvas interface for AI with (teach.tldraw.com). In 2024, we shipped an AI workflows app (tldraw.computer) and then returned to our canvas AI learnings with a public starter kit for working on the canvas with cursor-style AI agents (https://tldraw.dev/starter-kits/agent) and then later our spatialized agents-on-the-canvas experiment (fairies.tldraw.com).
What's Under the Pointer?
React Advanced 2025React Advanced 2025
30 min
What's Under the Pointer?
Hit testing is easy, right? Learn how tldraw's canvas editor decides which shape is beneath the user's cursor. This talk is a deep dive into five hundred of the most confusing lines of code in tldraw, the infinite canvas SDK.
Make Real: Tldraw’s Accidental AI Play
React Day Berlin 2024React Day Berlin 2024
32 min
Make Real: Tldraw’s Accidental AI Play
This is the full story behind "Make Real", tldraw's viral AI experiment that lets you turn your low fidelity drawing into a functional website. It's half startup rollercoaster ride and half moral tale about betting on React — as Make Real was only possible because of the ability to put any React component onto tldraw's canvas.

Here's the full behind-the-scenes perspective, and everything we learned along the way.
Make Real: tldraw's AI Adventure
React Advanced 2024React Advanced 2024
28 min
Make Real: tldraw's AI Adventure
This is the full story behind "Make Real", tldraw's viral AI experiment that lets you turn your low fidelity drawing into a functional website. It's half startup rollercoaster ride and half moral tale about betting on React — as Make Real was only possible because of the ability to put any React component onto tldraw's canvas.

Here's the full behind-the-scenes perspective, and everything we learned along the way.
Arrows (At Length)
React Advanced 2022React Advanced 2022
23 min
Arrows (At Length)
Love linking lines? Join me in considering the humble arrow as both a programming problem and a user experience challenge. In this talk, I'll present the many complex problems and solutions that I've encountered when working with arrows in my open source library perfect-arrows and later in tldraw (tldraw.com). With a narrow scope and plenty of animations to guide the way, we'll look at intersections, arrow heads, arrow head angles, and all of the different user interface issues behind authoring and adjusting arrows between shapes, other shapes, and points.