Novastart

Novastart starts from the idea that the traditional desktop, with its stacked windows and taskbar, is a poor fit for juggling several projects. Its answer is an infinite canvas. Open apps from the dock and they land side by side on a whiteboard. Zoom into one to edit a spreadsheet, then zoom out to see the whole project. The demo shows a household budget in Excel surrounded by separate workspaces for wedding planning, a vacation, an apartment search and work, each with its own apps.

Canvases are saved, so tomorrow every app, position and tab is where you left it. Folders hold canvases the way desktop folders hold files.

The AI side lets up to 10 agents work on a task at once, each driving its own window with its own mouse and keyboard. In the example, a user asks for a ski trip plan, and the agent splits it into parts, opens a window for each beside the user's notes and assigns a helper to each. You can watch and type a correction mid-run. Each run's steps, clicks and screenshots are logged on your machine so you can check what happened.

Team Collaboration shares a canvas live from one person's computer to teammates, who can use the shared apps, chat and see each other's agents labeled as AI.

There are two ways to run it. The app runs the whole Novastart OS in a window on a Windows PC or Intel Mac, which the site says brings a little lag and is best for a first look. Novastart OS installs as the operating system on a PC of its own, with drivers, for everyday use. The free plan allows one folder with two canvases and four windows each. Pro, at $10 a month, removes those limits, and Team, at $20, adds collaboration. Agents cost $0.02 per use, paid from credits starting at $25.

The privacy policy, from Marketplace Distributors LLC in California, says canvases, apps and their positions stay on your computer and only leave when you share a canvas, which streams directly to the people you invite. When you use AI agents, the screenshots and instructions they need are sent to OpenAI to run the agent. Since agents see your screen, it's worth keeping sensitive windows out of the canvas while one is working. Installing a whole operating system is also a bigger step than trying an app, which is why the in-window version exists.