> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://askeditor.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# The editable canvas

> Some templates hand back an mp4, some hand back an editable timeline. Which one, and why it matters before you spend.

## Delivery: `file` or `canvas`

Every template declares a **`delivery`** on the menu, and it is the most
useful thing to read before you spend anything. It tells you what the run is
guaranteed to hand back:

| `delivery`   | What you get                                                                                                                                            | Example                                      |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| **`file`**   | An **mp4**. The run ends in an encoder, `outputUrl` is the product. A canvas usually comes too, but the file is the promise.                            | `remove-background`, `tighten`, `launch-cut` |
| **`canvas`** | An **editable arrangement**, and no mp4. `canvasId` is the product: the value is *which* word, *when*, in *what layer order* — and it stays adjustable. | `text-behind`                                |

It is a floor, not an exclusive. `remove-background` returns both and is still
`file`, because the file is what it promises.

<Note>
  **Why a canvas template does not just render you an mp4 as well.** Its price is
  bounded by the EFFECT — text-behind mattes at most four moments of four seconds
  — while a render is bounded by the RECORDING. Auto-exporting a 20-minute take to
  show four words would cost far more than the effect did. So you ask for the file
  when you actually want one, after you have looked at the result.
</Note>

Check `delivery` before you promise a user a video file. A `canvas` template
delivering exactly what it should still has no `finalUrl`, and that is not a
failure.

## What the canvas is

For a `canvas` template this **is** the deliverable; for a `file` template it
arrives alongside the mp4. Either way it is the same
edit, open in the AskEditor editor as real layers:

* clips with their trims (often windows onto your *original* material, so
  adjusting a cut point is a drag, at master quality),
* text, music and effect elements, live and selectable,
* the animations the template applied, as editable properties.

## Why it changes the integration

A flat file makes every revision a re-run. A canvas makes the common
revisions (nudge this cut, swap that word, try the other music) a
30-second human edit. For agent products this is the escape hatch that
keeps users happy when "almost right" happens, which in video is often.

## Semantic layers, not render dumps

Templates deliver canvases **decomposed the way a human editor would want
them**, not as a literal translation of the render. A background built from
hundreds of per-frame swaps arrives as one background element with its
source plates in the media library; a subtractive cut arrives as one clip
per kept span with the removed material still behind the trim handles. Each
template's page notes its delivery shape.

## Provenance

Canvases carry a stamp of *how* they were made: the template and version,
the parameters per layer, so the edit can be re-derived or re-run against
changed inputs later.