# Build brief — a focused alternative to Miro

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 53/100 · **Category:** Whiteboard
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/miro
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Miro. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Miro** — Online collaborative whiteboard for diagrams, workshops, and planning. It currently costs $10/mo.

A simple multiplayer whiteboard is doable; Miro's value is scale, templates, integrations, facilitation, permissions, and reliability with many users.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Miro that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Build a canvas with sticky notes, shapes, connectors, comments, and optional multiplayer sync.

- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Canvas library.
- WebSocket/collab backend.
- Database.
- Auth.
- Hosting.
- Optional template library.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build me a personal whiteboard app to replace Miro. Requirements:

- Do not write a canvas engine from scratch: build on the tldraw SDK (React +
  Vite). It already does shapes, sticky notes, connectors, and selection well.
- A local web app on localhost:4900 with a board picker: named boards with
  thumbnails, create, rename, delete.
- Each board autosaves its tldraw snapshot JSON to SQLite (better-sqlite3 behind a
  small Express API) 2 seconds after the last change, keeping the previous 20
  snapshots as undo insurance.
- A toolbar button exports the current board as PNG and SVG to
  ~/Whiteboards/<board-name>.png.
- A template row on the new-board screen seeded from JSON files in templates/:
  retro grid, brainstorm columns, weekly plan.
- Works fully offline, binds to localhost, no accounts, no telemetry.
- Optional: share-with-one-person mode over my private network using tldraw's sync
  package, two cursors max. Skip it if the sync setup starts to sprawl.
- Out of scope: workshop facilitation tools (timers, voting), integrations, and
  performance tuning for 50-person boards. This is my thinking canvas, not a venue.
- README: dev and build commands, and where board data lives on disk.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Large-board performance.
- Templates.
- Integrations.
- Facilitation tools.
- Permissions, presence, and shared workflows are difficult to simplify.
- The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.
- Maintain every third-party integration as APIs and OAuth rules change.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [tldraw](https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw) — Open-source canvas/whiteboard SDK and app; excellent prior art for DIY whiteboards

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