Most video games start a player off alone, and they only turn interesting once other players show up and move at the same time. Working with AI has moved through similar stages, each changing how much a person has to steer while the AI works. Its third stage is the multiplayer one.
The plainest stage is a conversation, in which a person asks something, gets an answer and asks again. The person leads every step, and the AI answers only what it is asked. In the next stage, a person hands over a whole task and steps back while the AI works through it alone. One example is a standing task that drafts a reply to every unread email each morning. The person steers less, but one side still gives the instructions and the other carries them out.
Both stages run on the same loop: someone starts a task, the AI finishes it, and the person checks the result. The third stage breaks that loop, because the person and the AI work in the same space at the same time. It is like two people building on one whiteboard, watching each other’s changes appear. That idea sat at the center of Canvas 26, the annual event held by Miro, which makes shared digital whiteboards for team planning and brainstorming. Its headline reveal was Sidekicks, AI helpers that Miro calls active thought partners. They are built to watch a board, notice a pattern and suggest a next step before anyone asks.
In one example, a product team drops a new feature idea onto a shared list. A Sidekick can then gather customer feedback, support tickets and past interviews, and use that research to help place the idea on the team’s roadmap. Nobody asked for the research or checked on it, because it happened alongside the team’s own work, on the board they were already using.
That roadmap example was closer to a preview than a finished product. When Miro showed it at Canvas 26, the feature that links customer feedback to roadmap priorities was still rolling out and was not on every team’s board. Simpler Sidekicks, which work from what is already on a board, were live on every plan, in fuller form for teams that pay. What separated them from the preview was mostly how much outside information a Sidekick had been connected to.
