Pad.ws

pad.ws is a whiteboard application that also functions as a development environment inside the browser. It targets developers who want to move between visual ideation, such as sketching a system design, and actually writing and running code, without switching between separate tools.

The whiteboard interface is built on Excalidraw for drawing and sketching, while Coder powers the underlying cloud development environments, giving access to terminals and VS Code directly within the whiteboard canvas. Users can also connect their own desktop clients, such as VS Code or Cursor, to the same virtual machine, and the environment is accessible from any device through the browser.

A managed instance is offered at pad.ws with free Ubuntu development environments during its beta. Self-hosting is supported through Docker Compose, using PostgreSQL for persistence, Redis for caching and session management, and Keycloak for OIDC-based access control, though the README warns the provided setup is for development and testing only and is not safe for production use without further hardening. It is written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license.