Known Limitations

Moved out of the main README to keep it scannable. See the Guide index for everything else. These are stated plainly on purpose — no known rough edge is hidden.

• Custom key-value properties are text values only, no dropdown/date/number field types yet.
• MKV and AVI video files may not play (a Chromium codec limitation). MP4 (H.264) and WebM are recommended. Kanvaz tells you plainly when this is why a video card failed, instead of a generic “missing media” message.
• .blend preview requires a local Blender install (checked at a few common install locations, or on your system PATH) — Kanvaz has no .blend parser of its own, since none exists that’s safe to bundle. Without Blender found, a dropped .blend file becomes a plain file-reference card instead of failing outright. Maya (.mb/.ma) and Houdini formats aren’t supported yet — planned as the same kind of optional-external-tool conversion, not yet built.
• PDF preview only covers viewing (scroll/zoom/page nav). There’s no text selection, search-within-PDF, or annotation on top of a PDF page yet.
• Cross-board connections between two independent cards aren’t possible from the UI (only one board’s cards load at a time, so the “Connect to” picker only offers cards on the board you’re on). As of 6.4.0, sharing the same card across boards is possible and covers most of what people actually want this for.
• A .kanvaz file on a shared drive or NAS is not a collaboration format. Kanvaz warns you if the file changed on disk since you opened it (Overwrite / Save as copy / Cancel), but there is no merging, and two saves landing in the same instant can still overwrite each other. Treat it as one person editing at a time.
• “Always on top” keeps Kanvaz above other windows, including apps that raise themselves into the topmost layer (ZBrush, Blender) and borderless full-screen windows: it re-raises itself within about half a second whenever another app takes the top, without stealing focus. The one thing no ordinary window can do is draw over a program in true exclusive full-screen mode (some games), which takes over the whole display. The macOS full-screen behavior is implemented but has not been tested on a Mac.
• Autosave writes to a recovery file only. “Unsaved changes” in the status bar clears only on explicit Save (Ctrl+S). The recovery file is cleared on every clean close, so the “Recover unsaved board?” prompt only appears after an actual crash.
• The base installer bundles zero plugins by design (see SECURITY.md’s Plugin System section). Theme Creator, MCP Bridge, AI Export, and Template Maker & Manager all install separately, the same way any third-party plugin does.
• registerPropertyFieldType (custom Properties panel field types via a plugin) is still unimplemented.
• 3D model cards embed the file (like image/video/audio) rather than pointing at it. A .gltf that references external .bin/texture files by relative path won’t fully resolve (only a self-contained .gltf or a .glb is guaranteed to render everything); .fbx support is best-effort, since it’s the most complex and least standardized of the four formats. Custom user-swappable textures aren’t supported yet (planned as a future plugin).
• Per-profile plugin storage is isolated, but installed plugin code is still shared across all profiles on one machine, since installing a plugin is treated as a machine-level action, not a per-profile one.
• Materials built from procedural nodes (noise, gradients) have no image to export from .blend, so they come through as a flat colour.
• The macOS build isn’t code-signed yet (no Apple Developer ID), so it can’t auto-install updates or register as a default file handler the way the Windows build can — “Check for updates” and “Open with” both fall back to a direct link/manual step there instead.