Nexthena — A Local-First Whiteboard App Built on Excalidraw

blackstar-baba — Sat, 30 May 2026 14:53:31 +0000

Managing 50+ whiteboard files locally shouldn't be this hard. So I built something.

First, a Big Thank You

Before anything else — a huge shoutout to the Excalidraw team. What they've built is genuinely one of the most elegant and expressive diagramming tools out there. If you've never tried it, you're missing out. I've been a heavy user for years.

And that's exactly how Nexthena was born.

The Problem: 50+ Files and No Good Way to Manage Them

I'm a visual thinker. Over the past few years I've accumulated over 50 Excalidraw files — architecture diagrams, API flows, brainstorm sketches, system designs. They're scattered across folders, named things like draft_v3_final_FINAL.excalidraw, and there's absolutely no way to search, organize, or roll back changes to any of them.

Excalidraw itself is fantastic for creating — but it doesn't try to be a file manager. That gap is completely reasonable for a web tool. But for someone managing dozens of files locally, it's a real friction point.

I wanted:

A clean local interface for all my .excalidraw files
The ability to create, view, rename, and delete files in one place
Version history and rollback when I inevitably break something
Eventually: AI-assisted diagram generation to sketch out structure fast

So I built Nexthena.

What Is Nexthena?

Nexthena is a local-first desktop whiteboard application powered by the Excalidraw rendering engine, built with Tauri 2.

It's not trying to replace Excalidraw — it wraps and extends it with the file management and workflow layer that I personally needed. All your data stays on your machine. No account. No cloud sync. No subscription.

Platforms: Windows · macOS · Linux
Pricing: Free on Windows & Linux — one-time $2 on macOS

Core Features

📁 Local File Management

The main thing Nexthena adds over raw Excalidraw usage: a proper file browser. You can:

Create new whiteboards from scratch or from templates
Open and edit existing .excalidraw files
Rename and delete with a clean UI
Search across all your local files

No more hunting through Finder or Explorer.

🕰️ History & Rollback

Every time you save, Nexthena keeps a history snapshot. Made a mess of that diagram you spent an hour on? Roll back to any previous version. It's the kind of safety net that changes how freely you're willing to experiment.

🤖 AI Generator

This is the feature I'm most excited to keep developing. Once you configure an LLM provider (any OpenAI-protocol-compatible API — OpenAI, local models via Ollama, etc.), the AI generator can take a text prompt and produce a whiteboard skeleton for you.

Right now it accepts text input and generates Excalidraw elements directly onto your canvas. Image and voice input are on the roadmap.

It's not trying to generate pixel-perfect final diagrams — the goal is to give you a structural scaffold in seconds so you can focus on the thinking, not the drag-and-drop setup.

📦 Excalidraw Library Compatibility

Nexthena is fully compatible with Excalidraw's shape library format. If you've built up a library of custom components or downloaded community libraries, they work here without any conversion.

🎨 Templates

Built-in templates for common diagram types (flowcharts, sequence diagrams) so you're not starting from a blank canvas every time. More templates are coming with each release.

Tech Stack

For those curious about what's under the hood:

Frontend: Excalidraw (React) + custom file management UI
Desktop shell: Tauri 2 — Rust-based, lightweight, cross-platform
AI integration: Any OpenAI-protocol-compatible LLM provider

Tauri was a natural choice here. It produces small binaries, has excellent cross-platform support, and lets the Excalidraw React frontend run as-is inside the webview. The local file system access Tauri provides is exactly what the file management layer needed.

Current Status: v1.16

Nexthena is actively maintained and has iterated through 16 releases. It's stable enough for daily use — I use it myself every day.

That said, it's still early. There are rough edges, missing features, and plenty of ideas on the backlog. Your feedback is genuinely what shapes the roadmap.

Things actively in progress:

Image and voice input for the AI generator
More built-in templates
Improved search and tagging
Better onboarding for new users

Try It Out

Official docs & download: https://blackstar-baba.github.io/nexthena-doc

If you're an Excalidraw power user who's been struggling with local file management, I'd genuinely love for you to give it a try and tell me what's missing or broken.

And if you build something cool with it — I'd love to see it.

Thanks for reading. And once more, thank you to the entire Excalidraw team for making something worth building on top of. 🙏

Nexthena app

blackstar-baba — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:23:50 +0000

Built a local-first AI whiteboard app — free on Windows/Linux, $2 one-time on macOS [OC]

Hey all — I built Nexthena, a desktop whiteboard that runs entirely on your machine. No account required, no cloud sync, completely offline capable.

Why local-first?
Cloud whiteboard tools frustrate me. Login walls, sync delays, monthly bills, and your sketches living on someone else's server. Nexthena keeps everything local — your files, your machine, your control.

The AI part:
Type a prompt and Nexthena generates whiteboard elements or images for you — flowcharts, diagrams, concept visuals. You can edit them or insert them directly into your current canvas.

Full feature list:

Create from scratch, local files, or templates (flowcharts, sequence diagrams)
AI generation from text prompts
Excalidraw-compatible shape library
File search, trash & restore, export to image/file
Light/dark mode, keyboard shortcuts
Windows, macOS, Linux

Pricing:
Free on Windows and Linux. $2 one-time purchase on macOS (App Store). No subscriptions, no tiers, no upsells.

Would love feedback — especially from Mac users on whether $2 feels right or not.

WebSite: https://blackstar-baba.github.io/nexthena-doc/

DEV Community: blackstar-baba