Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk
Details
- External ID
- 48372138
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk
- Website domain
- github.io
- Launched
- June 2, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 188
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9521857923497268
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Hi!This is an infinite canvas note-taking tool where notes are laid out in a non-Euclidean, hyperbolic geometric space. As you drag and navigate through the view, you’ll experience a unique fluid distortion that naturally leverages your brain's spatial memory.I’ve been obsessed with the concept of space in HCI for years. Many modern UI patterns are essentially workarounds for the lack of screen real estate. While researching zoom-based UIs a while back, I stumbled upon old HCI papers that used the Poincaré disk model of the hyperbolic plane to organize data. It elegantly projects an infinite space into a finite disk, keeping everything contextually visible.I wanted to build an experimental app around this concept years ago, but the non-Euclidean math was a significant roadblock. Recently, I decided to give it a shot with the help of LLMs. It turns out that LLMs can handle the mathematical heavy lifting quite well, specifically in designing the coordinate systems and optimization algorithms, provided that you guide them with a solid architectural design.This is still an experimental demo, but I hope it leaves an impression. I’d love to know if you find this paradigm practical for organizing your thoughts.
Enrichment
- Theme
- interactive simulations and creative experiments
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Content generation
- Audience
- Prosumer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- non-euclidean canvas note-taking app
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial A basic web canvas with note cards can be vibe coded, but rendering and stably navigating a zoomable, pannable hyperbolic space via the Poincaré disk model requires complex non-Euclidean transformation math.
What it would actually take: The frontend requires an interactive rendering engine (Canvas 2D or WebGL with Pixi.js/Three.js) implementing complex Möbius transformations and hyperbolic geometry primitives to calculate distance, projections, and smooth transitions in the Poincaré conformal disk. It also requires spatial indexing adapted for hyperbolic coordinates to handle layout, collision detection, and text wrapping without severe distortion glitches. Developing this requires specialized knowledge in non-Euclidean differential geometry and custom shader/canvas rendering pipelines.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Paperverse, Google Cursive app, Traditional mind maps
Concerns raised: Disorienting rotation/holonomy effect when navigating, Text and images don't deform in hyperbolic space, causing overlap, Overwhelming for neurodivergent learners, Not intuitive for spatial memory tied to Euclidean geometry, Stylus/pen input not supported on tablets
Feature requests: Lock orientation to prevent rotation disorientation, Visual indicator or color difference for horizon/orientation, Render text in hyperbolic space to eliminate overlap, Stylus and pencil input support (iPad/Android), LLM text compression/summarization integration
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 49 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #5 of 50 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 214 days after the earliest competitor.
- Paperverse, an Hyperbolic Presentation · hn · 2026-03-16 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- A geometric analysis of Chopin's Prelude No. 4 using 3D topology · hn · 2026-02-20 · 50 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Non-Linear · ph · 2026-09-25 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.38
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- A canvas-based note taking and organizer app · hn · 2026-07-19 · 61 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Ex Situ · hn · 2026-07-21 · 51 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- gcdatlas · github · 2026-09-25 · 76 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- Strange Attractors · hn · 2025-10-31 · 804 upvotes · similarity 0.37
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a content generation tool for Government yet.