Apps are gaining another way in

Apps have always been controlled through interfaces made for people: windows, buttons, menus, gestures, and keyboard shortcuts. Those interfaces are still the heart of a good app. A visual tool like Reference should remain visual.

But AI introduces another way to work. Instead of learning where every command lives, you can describe an outcome: find the references that use warm materials, collect them into a region, prepare the board for review, and export it as a PDF.

The Model Context Protocol, or MCP, gives an AI tool a shared way to understand what an app can do and use those capabilities safely. Reference can support compatible tools without building a separate integration for every model or assistant.

We think of it as a new surface for the app: not another screen, but an interface made for tools that can reason.

From commands to outcomes

A traditional interface asks you to perform each step. With MCP, you can start with the goal. An AI tool can find the right Reference actions, propose a plan, and carry out the parts you approve.

The canvas is still the best place to see, judge, and adjust visual work. MCP becomes useful when a task spans several actions or needs context from other tools. That is what makes it feel less like a feature and more like an interface.

A board becomes something an AI tool can understand

Reference Board 1.3.7 introduces a local connection on Mac for Codex, Claude, and other compatible AI tools. Once you enable it in Settings, an approved tool can search your boards, understand image previews, and work with items and regions.

That can turn a request into a useful sequence. Find the strongest references for a direction. Explain the visual language of a board. Propose a cleaner arrangement. Add or move content after you approve the plan. Prepare the result for review and export it as a PNG or PDF.

The important part is that the tool understands Reference through boards, items, regions, and visual analysis rather than through buttons to click. It can work with the meaning of the app, while the canvas remains the place where you judge the result.

Two paths beyond the app window

We love Apple’s App Intents, and Reference already uses them to make actions and content available to Shortcuts, Spotlight, widgets, and Siri. We trust that Apple will make automation even more powerful as Siri AI grows more capable, and we want Reference to be ready for that future.

MCP does not replace App Intents. App Intents connect Reference deeply to the operating system. MCP opens another path into a broader ecosystem of AI tools and workflows. People are already exploring new ways to combine tools through Codex, Claude, and other hosts, and a shared protocol lets Reference participate without betting on only one of them.

Both interfaces start from the same belief: the useful parts of an app should not be trapped behind its windows.

A connection should be easy to trust

Anything that can act on your behalf has to earn trust. The connection in 1.3.7 stays local to your Mac and is off by default. It starts with read-only access, is protected by a pairing token you can replace at any time, and lets you decide whether a tool may add content or receive full control. Sensitive actions still require your approval.

Recent activity is visible in Settings, the contents of your boards are not included in analytics, and original media stays behind a separate permission. A useful connection should make its reach clear and easy to revoke.

Creative work will remain tactile, spatial, and personal. Sometimes the fastest route is still to drag an image or mark a detail yourself. At other times it will be easier to ask for a result, review the plan, and let a trusted client handle the sequence. Version 1.3.7 is our first step into that new interface.

Two ways to read a board

Mood boards are not always doing the same job.

Sometimes a board is a thinking space. You want to place images beside notes, compare moods, pull a video next to a color direction, and let the project stay loose for a while. That is where the canvas matters. It gives visual ideas room before they are ready to become tidy.

Other times, you are past arranging. You just want to see what you collected. You want a quick overview of the inspiration, the repeated colors, the strong images, the references you forgot were there.

That is why Reference now gives boards a grid view.

A cleaner overview for visual references

Grid view turns the images on a board into a masonry-style overview. Different image sizes can sit naturally together, so your mood board feels more like an inspiration wall than a rigid list.

It is useful when a board gets large, when the canvas has clusters and side paths, or when you simply want to scan your references without zooming around. For image-heavy mood boards, creative direction, product research, interiors, branding, fashion, film, UI design, and personal inspiration, that overview can be just as important as the open canvas.

The canvas helps you make relationships. The grid helps you read the collection.

Full screen when details matter

You can also open an image from the grid in full screen and quickly move through the rest of the board. That matters because visual research is often remembered by feeling before it is remembered by name. You know there was a texture, a product detail, a room, a layout, or a composition that fits, but you need to move through the material to find it again.

Full screen makes that return easier. A small image on the canvas might be enough while arranging, but review often needs a bigger look: the spacing, the edge, the material, the light, or the detail that made you save it in the first place.

More than one kind of mood board

Reference is built for mood boards, but not only for the traditional idea of a mood board as a static collage. Visual work keeps moving. You collect, compare, revisit, search, mark up details, and return to old references when a project changes shape.

That is why having more than one view matters. Some moments need space. Some need clarity. Reference now gives you both: an open canvas for exploring ideas, and a grid view for seeing your inspiration at a glance.

Together, they make a board easier to use after the first burst of collecting is over.

Structure that appears when you need it

Regions already made large boards easier to revisit. Smart Regions build on that by making the canvas a little more aware of the structure that is already forming.

When you place items close to each other, Reference can now recognize that cluster as something you may want to keep. A group of images, notes, sketches, or references can be suggested as a region before you have stopped to organize it yourself.

That matters because boards often become organized before you formally organize them. A few images gather around an interface direction. A material study starts to separate from a color idea. A device reference sits beside details that clearly belong together. Smart Regions help notice those moments earlier, so the useful shape of a board does not depend entirely on naming everything by hand.

You can still make your own regions, rename them, and shape the board yourself. Reference is simply getting better at seeing the patterns you are already creating.

A board that fits the way you work

This update also makes Reference more personal. Light mode is now available, so the app can feel brighter when that suits the work, the room, or the time of day. Dark mode is still there for a quieter canvas.

Theme colors add a second layer of that same idea. Reference can now take on more of your own style, whether you want the interface to stay neutral or give it a color that feels closer to the project you are working on.

The canvas itself is more deliberate too. Snap to Grid gives you a subtle grid background and a cleaner way to line things up when a board needs order. Some boards should stay loose. Others become easier to read when images share an edge, notes fall into rhythm, and the whole layout feels less accidental.

Keep references close

Reference is often most useful when it sits beside the work, not behind it. You can now keep a board above your other views, so the references stay visible while you move through the rest of your workflow. It is subtle, but it changes the role of the app: the board can become a companion surface while the actual making happens somewhere else.

Easier to share, easier to archive

Boards can also leave the app more cleanly now. Export to PDF makes it easier to share a layout, review a direction, or keep a record of where a project was at a certain point. PNG export gives you a simpler image version when you just need a quick visual.

Exports are not meant to replace the living board. They are for the moments when a board needs to become portable: a handoff, a review, a reference in another document, or a quiet archive of work that has moved on.

Together, these changes make Reference feel more complete across the small moments around creative work: easier to arrange, easier to keep visible, and easier to share when the board needs to move into the rest of the project.

When the color is the memory

Visual search often starts before you have the right words. You might remember a washed blue, a warm concrete tone, a specific red, or the way a group of images felt together before you remember the subject, source, or filename.

That is why color search matters. A palette can be the strongest part of a reference, especially when you are trying to shape a mood, compare directions, or find the image that belongs beside another one. Reference already understood colors in saved images, but the search flow now makes that more immediate.

You can pick a color directly and use it as a search filter. Instead of choosing from a small set of named colors, you can search with the tone you actually have in mind. It is a small interaction, but it makes the board feel closer to the way visual memory works.

Search that stays visual

The point is not to turn color into another strict filing system. Most creative references do not fit cleanly into labels like blue, green, or brown. A color might be slightly dusty, almost black, soft but saturated, or somewhere between two names.

The improved color search gives Reference a little more room to find nearby matches. That makes it more useful when you are gathering references by palette, looking for related material across a larger board, or trying to return to something you saved because of its atmosphere rather than its content.

Search should not always ask you to translate the visual thing into language first. Sometimes the visual thing is already enough.

Links belong beside the images

This update also makes boards better at holding the context around a reference. You can add website links, Tweets, and Maps links to a board, and Reference turns them into cards that sit alongside the rest of your material.

That is useful because not every reference starts as an image file. A source article, a post, a place, a location, or a small piece of web context can be part of the same thought. If it has to stay in a browser tab, a note, or a separate app, it is more likely to disappear from the direction you are building.

Cards keep that context visible. A website can sit beside the image it explains. A Tweet can stay close to the idea it sparked. A Maps link can become part of a board about a place, a route, a neighborhood, or a location-based project.

A board with better memory

Together, better color search and richer link cards are both about the same thing: making a board easier to come back to.

Collecting references is quick. Understanding why they mattered later is the harder part. Color, source, location, and surrounding context are all part of that memory. The more of it Reference can keep close to the canvas, the less you have to reconstruct when you return.

The board stays visual first. It just remembers a little more of what made the reference useful.

Mark the thought while it is still fresh

There is a small kind of thinking that happens before a note becomes a sentence. You circle something. You draw an arrow. You underline a detail, cross out a direction, or add a quick line that explains why two references belong near each other.

Reference now makes more room for that kind of thinking on iPad. With Apple Pencil support, you can draw directly on the canvas through a simple interface that feels native to the device. The tools are familiar: sketch, write, highlight, erase, and keep moving without having to learn a new drawing system. Tap the pencil icon to show or hide the tools, then annotate the board without leaving the space where the work is already happening.

The point is not to turn every board into an illustration. It is to make the canvas feel more immediate. When a detail matters, you can mark it in the moment instead of translating it into a separate note.

Annotations that stay with the board

Handwritten notes are most useful when they remain part of the thing they are explaining. A line around a shape, a quick label beside an image, or a rough route through a cluster only makes sense because of where it sits.

That is why Pencil annotations stay fixed to the canvas. They move with the rest of the board, and they keep their place as you pan, zoom, and scale your work. The marks are not floating above the interface as a temporary layer. They belong to the board itself.

That makes them useful for moodboards, visual research, interface studies, art direction, architecture references, and all the messy middle stages where the relationship between things matters more than the individual items alone.

A faster way to respond visually

Creative work often depends on fast visual reactions. A reference catches your eye because of a corner treatment, a material edge, a lighting transition, a composition, a shadow, or a tiny alignment decision. Writing that down can be helpful, but sometimes it is slower than the thought.

Apple Pencil gives the board a more natural way to respond. You can circle the exact part that matters, write a short reminder beside it, sketch an alternate shape, or tap with two fingers to undo the last stroke while you are still annotating. It behaves the way an iPad drawing surface should behave: direct, familiar, and easy to trust.

It keeps the board closer to how creative work actually feels on an iPad: tactile, visual, and a little more fluid than typing everything into place.

Still a board first

Drawing support fits into the larger direction for Reference. Boards can already hold images, video, YouTube links, quotes, notes, regions, and other fragments of creative context. Pencil support adds another layer, but it does not change the basic idea.

Reference is still a place for collecting, arranging, and returning to visual material. The new drawing tools simply make it easier to leave intent directly on the canvas, close to the references that sparked it.

Sometimes the most useful note is not a note at all. It is a quick mark that says: this part.

A map for the canvas

The more useful a board becomes, the easier it is to lose your place inside it. A few saved images turn into a cluster. A cluster turns into a direction. Then, without really noticing, the board has become a small landscape of moods, features, notes, details, and half-finished thoughts.

Regions are a way to give that landscape a little more memory. You can save an area on the canvas, name it, and jump back to it later. Instead of zooming out, scanning around, and trying to remember where a particular group lives, the board can take you straight there.

It is a small navigational feature, but it changes the feeling of a large canvas. The space can stay open without becoming harder to move through.

Group themes without filing them away

Moodboards often make more sense when they stay in one place. A color direction might belong near a material study. A product detail might sit close to a typography reference because the relationship between them still matters. Splitting those things into separate boards can make them cleaner, but it can also make the project feel less connected.

Regions are meant for that middle ground. They let you group parts of a board by theme, feature, scene, or short project section while keeping everything on the same canvas. You can have one region for a visual direction, another for interface details, another for references that only make sense for a specific part of the project.

The point is not to turn the board into a folder system. It is to make the parts you already have easier to return to.

Faster returns to the right thought

Creative work involves a lot of returning. You come back to a board after a meeting, after a walk, after saving something new, or after the project has changed shape a little. The faster you can get back to the right area, the less momentum you lose on the way there.

That is where Regions are most useful. They make it easier to move from the whole project to the exact part you need: a feature idea, a styling direction, a small moodboard, or a temporary cluster for something you are still figuring out.

Reference has always been about keeping visual thinking close to the surface. Regions add another layer to that idea: a way to make big boards feel navigable without making them feel smaller.

Video, without the friction

There are plenty of moments when the thing worth saving is not a frame but the movement around it. A camera move, a pacing idea, a texture in motion, a performance detail. You can now copy and paste a YouTube link into Reference or drag it directly onto the canvas, and the app pulls in the important metadata automatically so the video is recognizable later instead of turning into a bare URL.

That matters because most people do not save a video reference at the exact moment they are ready to use it. They save it because they think it might matter later. A title, source, and thumbnail go a long way toward making that later moment easier. The app is not trying to become an offline video locker, and it does not need to. It just needs to preserve enough context that the reference stays legible.

That is the real upgrade here. Video can now live on the board in a way that feels useful instead of provisional.

Sticky notes that think like a board

There is a similar idea behind sticky notes. Notes are most helpful when they behave less like documents and more like lightweight signals: a reminder, a question, a label for a cluster, a thought you want to keep near an image before it disappears. Sticky notes now come in different colors, which gives the board a little more structure without making it feel managed.

Color becomes a quick visual cue, but it is also practical. You can filter and search sticky notes easily, which means they do not get lost once a board starts getting dense. A yellow note can stay a to-do, a pink one can hold tone, a blue one can mark research, and the system stays flexible enough that you can decide what the colors mean.

Taken together, YouTube support and sticky notes push Reference further toward being a workspace instead of just a collection. The board does not simply store assets. It keeps the surrounding thought attached to them.

A calmer canvas

There is a temptation with creative tools to keep adding controls, panels, and metadata until the interface starts feeling more like a dashboard than a workspace. Reference is trying to move in the other direction. Boards now feel more spacious and more deliberate, which means the things you save can do what they are supposed to do: sit in front of you long enough to spark another thought.

That shift matters more than it sounds. When a board feels visually noisy, you tend to rush through it. When it feels calm, you linger. You compare two images a little longer. You notice that a texture belongs with a color study from three weeks ago. You see a connection that probably would have disappeared in a denser layout.

The goal here is not minimalism for its own sake. It is to make the app better at the quiet part of creative work, the part where you are still figuring out what the project wants to be.

Discovery that keeps moving

Reference also keeps getting better at the jump between one idea and the next. That sounds small, but it is actually where a lot of creative software falls apart. Saving an image is easy. Building momentum from it is harder. Search now does more of that connective work, helping you move by mood, color, subject, and visual similarity instead of forcing you to fully translate instinct into keywords first.

The effect is that the library starts to feel less archival and more alive. A good image can lead to another good image, which leads to a new cluster, which leads to a new board. Instead of interrupting the process, the app starts to reinforce it.

That is the larger theme of this release. Reference should not just hold inspiration after the fact. It should help you stay in motion while you are still discovering what matters.

Find the next reference faster

This feature is for the common moment when you know the direction is right, but the specific image is not quite there yet. Maybe the composition works, but the palette does not. Maybe the shape language is right, but the styling is too polished or too literal. Visual search lets you start from that almost-right image and keep moving.

That matters because creative search is rarely linear. You are often not looking for an answer so much as triangulating toward one. The more an app understands that, the less it asks you to interrupt your process just to operate the tool.

Reference can now use the image itself as the prompt in a more useful way, surfacing nearby options that feel connected in tone, subject, and atmosphere. The result is a search experience that feels more exploratory and less transactional.

A better bridge from collecting to building

There is also a practical payoff here. Once search starts returning the right kind of material more consistently, building a board becomes faster. You stop bouncing between separate apps or tabs. You stop exporting mental notes about why you saved something in the first place. The board can develop in one place.

That is really what this feature is about. Not search as a database trick, but search as a bridge between collecting references and actually shaping a visual direction.

Text, quietly indexed

Reference now reads visible text inside your saved images automatically, which means the app can remember details you probably were not thinking about when you hit save. That may be a headline, a product label, a bit of signage, or a tiny piece of typography that felt important in the moment and then vanished into the board later.

This is one of those features that sounds technical until you use it in a real workflow. Then it just feels obvious. Of course the title on the poster should be searchable. Of course the word on the packaging should help you get back to the image. Of course the app should remember the details you only half remember yourself.

By indexing text in the background, Reference becomes better at preserving the reasons an image was useful, not just the image itself.

Useful memory, not just more metadata

The key is that this does not ask you to do extra work. You are not expected to tag every asset by hand or maintain a perfect filing system. The app picks up context while you keep collecting.

That makes OCR feel less like a productivity feature and more like a memory feature. It helps the library stay legible even after it has grown large enough that you would normally start forgetting what is in it.

More than a static gallery

A good board is rarely just a stack of pretty images. It usually has context around it: a phrase that explains the mood, a note about why something works, a video clip that captures movement, a link that holds onto a source you are not ready to use yet but do not want to forget.

Reference now makes more room for that reality. Quotes, notes, video, and YouTube can sit alongside still images in the same space, which makes the board feel more like an active work surface and less like a gallery wall.

That distinction matters. A gallery is where you admire finished choices. A workspace is where you make them.

Context is part of the reference

When different media types can live together, the board gets better at holding intent. The image is still important, but so is the note beside it. So is the clip that explains the pacing. So is the quote that captures the tone you are after.

In other words, the context stops being something you have to keep in your head. It can live on the board where it belongs, next to the reference that sparked it.