I would like you to suggest that they make the canvas a generally compatible file type not a cursor special file .. as an electronics engineer, I would have been told off and pointed out to me how silly that is to lock in particular proprietary formats .. I was working in defence environments and that sort of shenanigans wouldn’t go unnoticed because it is taking unnecessary risk .. commercial software is always slack unfortunately .. programmers need to apply more discipline. 
Hey, thanks for the feedback. The lock-in concern makes sense, but here’s the good news: Canvas isn’t stored in a closed binary format.
Each canvas is a plain-text .canvas.tsx file (standard TypeScript/React source) that lives on your machine. You can open it, copy it, view diffs, and keep it under version control with normal tools. There’s no proprietary binary file.
What’s Cursor-specific is the interactive renderer. The canvas file itself doesn’t build as a standalone React app outside Cursor. For sharing externally, you can publish the canvas as a web link that others can open in a normal browser.
If you need a specific format for interoperability with your workflow (like exporting to PNG/PDF or storing it inside a repo), there are separate threads collecting this request. It’d help to add your details there:
- Implement "Save to file" for canvas
- [Canvas] Export preview to PNG/PDF + useCanvasAction exportCanvas
- Allow .canvas.tsx inside workspace repo (Git) with optional sync to managed canvases
Tell me what exact format or scenario you need, and I’ll pass it to the team.