Canvas helped me discover a way of working that fits me extremely well. PLEASE keep supporting it!

I am a ChatGPT Plus user. I wanted to write this because I have been unusually frustrated and disappointed over the past couple of days after discovering that Canvas does not seem to work properly with GPT-5.5.

What frustrates me is not the loss of a feature itself. It is the possibility of losing a workflow that I only recently discovered and that fits me extremely well.

For years, I have had many long-term ideas and research projects that I wanted to develop. One example is a theoretical model about dream communication. I first started thinking about it years ago. The problem was never a lack of ideas. The problem was that I never had a good environment in which those ideas could continuously grow and develop.

Two years ago, I already wanted to work this way, but AI was simply not good enough yet.

Over the past few months, while writing my thesis, I discovered Canvas. For the first time, I felt that I had found a genuine research workspace rather than just a chatbot. I could keep a project alive, return to it repeatedly, revise it, expand it, rethink it, and gradually turn scattered thoughts into something larger.

In fact, I appreciated this workflow so much that I even thanked OpenAI in the acknowledgments section of my thesis.

The dream communication project was only the beginning. I was planning to move more and more of my long-term projects into ChatGPT after finishing my thesis. I have a long-term historical research project, several theoretical projects, and many ideas that have been sitting in my notebooks and my mind for years.

Then I discovered that Canvas no longer seemed to be available in GPT-5.5.

What disappointed me was not the feature itself. What disappointed me was that I had just discovered a way of working that felt uniquely suitable for me, and suddenly I became uncertain whether that way of working would still exist in the future.

If I only wanted reasoning ability or long-context conversations, I could easily use other AI products such as Claude. The reason I chose ChatGPT was not simply because it was the smartest model. It was because ChatGPT felt like an integrated workspace. Writing, documents, files, projects, research, and AI assistance could all exist in one place.

That integration is what makes ChatGPT special for me.

Honestly, I would gladly pay significantly more for a stable long-term project workspace. I care at least as much about project continuity and workflow stability as I do about model intelligence.

I sincerely hope OpenAI continues supporting Canvas or provides an equivalent long-term workspace in future models. For users like me, ChatGPT is no longer just a tool for asking questions. It has become a place where long-term intellectual projects can grow over months and years.

Losing that possibility would be far more disappointing than losing any individual feature.

I’m asking OpenAI to consider restoring Canvas as an optional mode rather than fully replacing it with Writing Blocks.

From a developer/business workflow standpoint, Canvas was valuable because it acted like a persistent working surface tied to the conversation. It made it practical to iteratively build and revise structured documents such as technical plans, implementation guidance, policy drafts, requirements, and project direction without constantly rehydrating context or copying content between tools.

Writing Blocks may be useful for smaller writing tasks, but they do not appear to replace Canvas as a durable collaborative workspace. The difference matters when the output is not a one-off answer, but a living artifact that needs repeated refinement across a planning or implementation discussion.

For teams evaluating ChatGPT for internal business and development workflows, Canvas was a meaningful differentiator from tools like Microsoft Copilot. Without it, ChatGPT becomes harder to justify for collaborative drafting, requirements development, and project guidance work.

Thank you for sharing this request. The core capability you described is now available. Please see GPT-5.5 in ChatGPT for current availability and setup details. We’re closing this topic while keeping it visible for reference.