Build the shape with AI
Click Build with Claude (or ChatGPT) in Shape’s top bar, or press ⌘N. A conversation panel opens on the right, titled “Build with Claude · The shape”.
What it does
The model is given your message, the text of any links and files you add (read on this Mac first), your pictures, and the shape as it is now, and asked to design what’s missing: node types with properties (Text, Number, Link or Boolean), which property is each type’s title, and relationship types between named pairs. The result is added to the shape at once, laid out on the canvas, and framed. It only ever adds: nothing is renamed or deleted. If the shape already covers it, the turn says “Nothing new: your shape already covers that.”
Each turn is one undo step: Undo on the result card, or ⌘Z. The card reads “Added 3 types, 8 properties and 4 relationships to the shape.”
Starting points
With an empty shape the panel asks What do you want to keep track of? and offers:
- Books, authors and ideas: “Books I’ve read, who wrote them, the ideas in them and which ideas build on which”
- People and their projects: “People, the organisations they work for, and the projects they’re on”
- A shape for an article: “Design a shape that would hold what this article talks about: ” (paste a link)
With types already there it asks What should the shape hold? and offers Add a new kind of thing (“Add a type for ”), Extend it for an article, and Add from a sketch (drop in a whiteboard photo).
The conversation
The composer takes text (Return sends, Shift-Return makes a new line), links in the text (each is read on this Mac when you send: “Reads nytimes.com on this Mac when you send”), and attachments: PDF, text, HTML, Markdown and pictures, by drag and drop, paste, or the paperclip. The model and effort menu sits beside it.
Each turn shows the steps and their timing: Reading <site> → Read <site> · “Title” · 1,234 words; Designing the shape · Sonnet · medium effort with the model’s thinking folded under it (click to read); then the summary in the model’s own words, the result card, and a meta line (Sonnet · medium effort · 23 s). Stop a turn with the ■ button.
Conversations are kept with the project. The clock button lists earlier ones (Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days…, each with what it added); the pencil starts a new one. Everything else the panel does is described in Build with AI.
From another AI app
The MCP tool design_shape does the same from Claude, Claude Code or Codex: it adds to the shape at once and the turn appears in this panel marked “Sent from Claude”, undoable the same way. See Other AI apps.