# What CoLateral looked like, from 2025 to today | CoLateral Source: https://colateralai.com/blog/colateral-visual-history [Home](/) [Blog](/blog) [History](/blog/category/history) # What CoLateral looked like, from 2025 to today CoLateral has looked like four different products since July 2026. [Nic Vandewetering](/blog/authors/nic) - October 8, 2026 - 8 min read Covers September 2025 to October 2026 Image: The CoLateral Project Canvas in October 2026: a Command Centre card, two notes and a spreadsheet card in four slots, under a top bar with a project picker, an agent counter and an Arrange control ### On this page 1. [How did CoLateral start, and why is there no screenshot of it?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#how-did-colateral-start-and-why-is-there-no-screenshot-of-it) 2. [What did CoLateral look like in early July 2026?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#what-did-colateral-look-like-in-early-july-2026) 3. [When did CoLateral turn blue?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#when-did-colateral-turn-blue) 4. [What did the CoLateral canvas look like in August 2026?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#what-did-the-colateral-canvas-look-like-in-august-2026) 5. [What did CoLateral look like in September 2026?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#what-did-colateral-look-like-in-september-2026) 6. [How did the CoLateral website change?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#how-did-the-colateral-website-change) 7. [What does CoLateral look like today?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#what-does-colateral-look-like-today) 8. [How were these captures made?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#how-were-these-captures-made) 9. [How can I see the current version of CoLateral?](/blog/colateral-visual-history#how-can-i-see-the-current-version-of-colateral) 10. [Frequently asked questions](/blog/colateral-visual-history#faq) A dark purple canvas in early July 2026, a pale Office Blue canvas two weeks later, a board of paged slots in August, and the glass-and-top-bar workspace you see today. This post shows each era with a real capture of the app or the public website, taken from the source code at a named commit rather than redrawn from memory. The repository began on 2025-09-29, but the first Project Canvas appeared only on 2026-06-29, so the visual story starts there. ## Key takeaways - The CoLateral Project Canvas has had five looks between 2026-06-29 and 2026-10-07: a left-sidebar canvas, a dark purple canvas with a floating dock, a light Office Blue canvas, a board of paged slots, and a glass-card workspace with a grouped top bar. - The CoLateral accent colour moved from blue to Dracula purple on 2026-07-03 and back to Office Blue by 2026-07-14, and the dark theme followed to blue on 2026-07-26. - On 2026-08-12 the CoLateral Project Canvas stopped being an infinite plane and became a board of arrays, pages of slots that each hold a card, which is why Arrange replaced Tidy. - Every screenshot in this post was captured from the CoLateral source at a named commit, with invented example content and no real user data. Series The history of CoLateral 1. Part 0 [The history of CoLateral, 2025 to October 2026](/blog/history-of-colateral) 2. Part 1 [How CoLateral began: September 2025 to June 2026](/blog/colateral-origins-2025-2026) 3. Part 2 [From tool dashboard to Project Canvas, June to July 2026](/blog/from-tool-dashboard-to-project-canvas) 4. Part 3 [CoLateral goes desktop with Tauri, July to August 2026](/blog/colateral-goes-desktop-with-tauri) 5. Part 4 [From tool shelf to agentic workspace, Aug to Oct 2026](/blog/from-tool-shelf-to-agentic-workspace) 6. Part 9 What CoLateral looked like, from 2025 to today ## How did CoLateral start, and why is there no screenshot of it? The repository was created on 2025-09-29 with two commits, an "Initial commit" holding a two-line README and a stock workflow file, then sat idle until 2026-05-08, so there is nothing to photograph from 2025. When work began, CoLateral was a set of tools the founder built for engineering work. The [full history of CoLateral](/blog/history-of-colateral) tells that story in words. We have not reproduced those early screens, or the first Project Canvas of 2026-06-29 (commit debd70b), a page with a left sidebar for adding cards, because they show the founder's engineering tools and the website does not. A day later commit 98e16ec replaced the sidebar with a floating, translucent top dock so the canvas could run full-bleed behind it. The first capture below picks up there. Definition - Project Canvas: The Project Canvas is the CoLateral workspace where notes, spreadsheets, files, terminals and AI agent cards sit side by side as movable cards, and everything saves on your own machine. 1. June 30, 2026 - A floating dock replaces the sidebar: Commit 98e16ec moves card creation into a floating top dock. 2. July 3, 2026 - Dark and purple: Commit e9f7253 recolours the brand primary to Dracula purples. 3. July 13, 2026 - Office Blue: Light, then Office Blue, become the defaults (commit 83ac9d6). 4. August 13, 2026 - A board of arrays: Tidy gives way to Arrange and cards belong to slots (commits 748564d, 4f37df1). 5. September 9, 2026 - Glass cards and a Marketplace button: Cards become adjustable glass (commit 83d2fec). 6. October 7, 2026 - The workspace today: A grouped top bar, light and dark themes and a matching website (commit 088a579). ## What did CoLateral look like in early July 2026? Image: The CoLateral Project Canvas in July 2026 in its dark theme with a purple accent: a floating dock of rounded buttons along the top, a note titled Palette practice, a to-do card and a spreadsheet card, and a small overview map in the top right corner Captured from the CoLateral source at e9f7253, July 2026. Dark theme, with invented example cards. In the first week of July 2026 CoLateral was dark. Named editor themes, Dracula among them, had arrived on 2026-06-05 (commit 8706e65), and on 2026-07-03 commit e9f7253 recoloured the brand primary across the interface from blue to purple to match Dracula. The capture shows what the Project Canvas had become by then: a floating dock of pill buttons for Text, Notes, New folder, Tool, Upload, Agent, Select, Draw, Spreadsheet, To-Do, Calendar, Slideshow, Tidy and Settings, a small overview map pinned top right, a search box and a command box along the bottom, and the Beam Buddy mascot beside them. Agent Cards were new: commit ff7eb25, dated 2026-07-02, had added Agent Cards, Output Cards and Custom Tool Cards to the canvas, which is the point where it began to become a place agents could work. ## When did CoLateral turn blue? Image: The CoLateral Project Canvas in mid-July 2026 in its light Office Blue theme: a pale grey-blue backdrop, a floating dock of white pill buttons, and three white cards, two notes and a spreadsheet, with a small overview map at the top right Captured from the CoLateral source at 83ac9d6, July 2026. Light theme, with invented example cards. The purple lasted about a week. On 2026-07-12 commit 09d2320 made "CoLateral Light" the default theme everywhere that previously fell back to dark. The next day commit 83ac9d6 made Office Blue the default, and on 2026-07-14 commit d3e4f13 removed the remaining purple overrides from the default theme. On 2026-07-26 commit 00f8f25 recoloured the dark theme's accent from purple to blue too. The capture shows the result: white cards with blue selection on a soft grey-blue backdrop, with the dock now reading as white pills. Two weeks later, on 2026-07-28, commit 4f7e847 gave the product a new face. The brand mark had been an abstract blue letter C, and the commit made Beam Buddy, the pixel-art mascot already on the canvas, the logo itself in the top bars, public page headers and the favicon. ## What did the CoLateral canvas look like in August 2026? Image: The CoLateral Project Canvas in August 2026: a floating dock along the top and a page of four equal slots holding a note, a to-do card and a spreadsheet card, with the fourth slot left empty Captured from the CoLateral source at 4f37df1, August 2026. Light theme, with invented example cards. August changed the shape of the canvas. On 2026-08-12 the canvas stopped being an infinite plane you zoomed across and became a board you travel along, page by page (commit ee8ef65). The same day, commit 748564d replaced Tidy with Arrange. Its message states the reason plainly: > Tidy packed variable-size cards into rows on an infinite plane. That plane is gone, so Tidy is gone with it. Source: CoLateral commit 748564d, 2026-08-12 Arrange repacks every card into pages of one, two, four, six or nine slots, in an order and scope you choose. A day later commit 4f37df1 retired folders, since a card now belongs to one slot on one page, and floated the filmstrip, the map of those pages, at the top of the screen. The capture shows the effect: three cards in three of four equal slots, each the size of its slot. ## What did CoLateral look like in September 2026? Image: The CoLateral Project Canvas in September 2026 in four slots: a Command Centre card with a Chief of staff conversation, a note, a to-do card and a spreadsheet card, under a single row of dock buttons that now includes Marketplace Captured from the CoLateral source at 83d2fec, September 2026. Light theme, with invented example cards. By September the board had a Command Centre card. The [Command Centre](/blog/orchestrator-command-centre-chief-of-staff) was reworked on 2026-08-12 (commit 27cf508), and on 2026-08-23 commit 77c85d7 gave it a Chief of staff. In the capture it sits top left with a conversation pane. The dock had also grown a Marketplace button as expansion packs and the store arrived at the end of August. Definition - Command Centre: The Command Centre is the CoLateral card that gathers the day's calendar, tasks and inbox beside a Chief of staff conversation, so you can see what needs attention before opening any other card. The other change is surface. Commit 83d2fec, dated 2026-09-09, made the whole card glass, not only its title bar, with header, body and blur each on a slider (defaults 22 percent, 22 percent and 18 pixels). Over a wallpaper, the old canvas showed a glass bar on an opaque box. The dock was still one long row of pills. ## How did the CoLateral website change? The public website was separated from the application on 2026-07-26 (commit db9e1ce). That first standalone site reflected the product's origins in engineering tools, so we have left it out. The two captures below show the discipline-neutral site, five weeks apart. Image: The CoLateral website home page in September 2026: the Beam Buddy mascot above the wordmark CoLateral, the line The agentic workspace, a Buy CoLateral button, and faded example cards for an agent, a note and a sketch floating around the heading Captured from the CoLateral website source at 391a28a, September 2026, built with that commit's own site build. One example card was hidden for this capture. The September home page opened with the mascot, the wordmark and a short line. Commit 391a28a, dated 2026-09-01, was about proof: its message says the site had described CoLateral in prose, so a visitor never saw the canvas, an agent working or a tool being built, and it added a walkthrough film. Image: The CoLateral website home page in October 2026: a navigation bar with Home, Modules, Arcade, Pricing, About, Merch and Buy CoLateral, a currency switch and a light and dark theme toggle, the Beam Buddy mascot with a speech bubble, the line The all-in-one agentic workspace, and floating example cards Captured from the CoLateral website source at 088a579, October 2026, built with that commit's own site build. One example card was hidden for this capture. The October navigation gained links for Arcade, Pricing, About and Merch, plus a currency switch and a theme toggle. The Canadian-dollar display and the dark-mode toggle arrived on 2026-09-08 with commit 5f72d92, and the merch page followed on 2026-09-27 with commit 1d9f18a. The label above the wordmark now reads "The all-in-one agentic workspace". For what that workspace costs, see [pricing](/pricing). ## What does CoLateral look like today? Image: The CoLateral Project Canvas in October 2026: a top bar with a Beam Buddy logo, a project picker, an agent counter with Manage agents and Pause all buttons, then Agent, Board, New array, Select, Draw, Arrange and More, above a Command Centre card, two notes and a spreadsheet card in four slots Captured from the CoLateral source at 088a579, October 2026. Light theme, with invented example cards; the dark theme shows in a dark browser. The current canvas looks calmer than July's, mostly because of the top bar. On 2026-09-12 commit 0bf61bc regrouped seventeen pills in a row into six labelled clusters: Create, Tools, Agents, Board, Modes and Arrange. The bar in the capture also carries a project picker, an agent counter with Manage agents and Pause all, and a More menu. The bottom-left corner holds a slim usage strip, which reads "Pair an agent card to see usage" until an agent is connected. The repository docs describe it as showing how much of each command-line subscription the machine has spent and when each window resets, because every Terminal Card runs on the person's own Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot account. The logo top left is Beam Buddy, as it has been since July. ## How were these captures made? Each commit was extracted from git history, served as static files and photographed with a headless browser at 1600 by 1000 pixels in a fresh, signed-out profile, so no real project or account data appears. The example cards are invented and discipline-neutral, and a script placed them: a note titled "Palette practice", a to-do called "This week" and a small visitors spreadsheet. The website pages were built with each commit's own site build. Two caveats. First, where a top bar carried buttons for the founder's engineering tools or an expansion pack, we hid them before capturing, because the website does not show those tools, and we dismissed the first-run hint card for the same reason. Second, the website captures hide one example card that carried a dollar amount, since blog posts here carry no prices. Everything else is as the code rendered it, quirks included. ## How can I see the current version of CoLateral? The [CoLateral download page](/download) offers the current desktop app. The workspace in the last capture is the one it runs, and the [history of CoLateral](/blog/history-of-colateral) explains how it got there, from a repository created in 2025 to a Tauri desktop app. If you want the blog's own starting point, [introducing the CoLateral blog](/blog/introducing-the-colateral-blog) says what each section is for. This post is the visual companion to that history. FAQ ## Frequently asked questions ### What did CoLateral look like at the start? The repository was created on 2025-09-29 but sat idle until 2026-05-08, and the earliest screens were built around tools the founder made for engineering work. The first Project Canvas arrived on 2026-06-29 with a left sidebar, and a floating top dock replaced the sidebar on 2026-06-30. ### When did CoLateral change from purple to blue? CoLateral recoloured its brand primary from blue to Dracula purple on 2026-07-03. Light became the default theme on 2026-07-12, Office Blue became the default palette on 2026-07-13, and the dark theme accent returned to blue on 2026-07-26. ### What is the difference between Tidy and Arrange in CoLateral? Tidy packed cards of varying sizes into rows on an infinite plane. On 2026-08-12 the canvas became a board of arrays, so Tidy was replaced by Arrange, which repacks every card into pages of one, two, four, six or nine slots in an order and scope you choose. ### Are the screenshots in this post real? Yes. Each was captured from the CoLateral source at the commit named in its caption, in a fresh browser profile with invented example cards. Buttons for the founder's engineering tools, the first-run hint card and one website example card were hidden, and the cards were placed by script; nothing else was altered. ### Where can I try the current version of CoLateral? The CoLateral desktop app is available from the download page at /download. Pricing is on the pricing page, and CoLateral works with your own AI provider accounts rather than supplying model credits. Written by ## [Nic Vandewetering](/blog/authors/nic) Founder and CEO, CoLateral Nic Vandewetering is the founder of CoLateral and builds the workspace in public, often live on YouTube. These posts record what changed and why. [About CoLateral](/about) [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@nicvandewetering) [X](https://x.com/nvandewetering) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nic-vandewetering-55358a1a5) [Post on X](https://x.com/intent/post?text=What%20CoLateral%20looked%20like%2C%20from%202025%20to%20today&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcolateralai.com%2Fblog%2Fcolateral-visual-history) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcolateralai.com%2Fblog%2Fcolateral-visual-history) [Newer post CoLateral Release Notes for 2026](/blog/colateral-release-notes-2026) [Older post From tool dashboard to Project Canvas, June to July 2026](/blog/from-tool-dashboard-to-project-canvas) ## Keep reading History ### [The history of CoLateral, 2025 to October 2026](/blog/history-of-colateral) The history of CoLateral from its first commit on 2025-09-29 to October 2026: tool dashboard, Project Canvas, Tauri desktop app and agentic workspace. Oct 8, 2026 - 13 min read Product updates ### [Introducing the CoLateral Blog](/blog/introducing-the-colateral-blog) The CoLateral blog is the written record of the all-in-one agentic workspace: release notes, history, AI model updates, expansion packs and founder notes. Oct 8, 2026 - 4 min read History ### [CoLateral goes desktop with Tauri, July to August 2026](/blog/colateral-goes-desktop-with-tauri) How CoLateral became a desktop app: the Tauri shell, the website split on 2026-07-26, a closed beta and releases 1.0.1 to 1.0.9 for Windows, macOS and Linux. Oct 8, 2026 - 7 min read ## Bring your next project together. CoLateral is a desktop workspace where your files, notes, tools and AI agents share one canvas. Connect your own provider account when an agent needs one, and see how it fits your work. [Get the desktop app](/download) [See pricing](/pricing)