Most marketing creative is variants of work you’ve already done. New SKU launches use the same hero-shot workflow. Each new campaign follows the same brand-anchor → style-analysis → output structure. UGC ads for every product use the same character-sheet → clip → stitch flow. Setting up these workflows once and reusing them is the difference between “Melius is faster than the old way” and “Melius is 10x faster than the old way.” This page covers the mechanics for making canvases reusable.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.melius.com/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Duplicate a canvas
The simplest pattern. You’ve built out a workflow on one canvas, it works, you want to run the same workflow for a different input (next product, next region, next campaign).From the project view, right-click the source canvas
Hit Duplicate. A copy appears in the same project.
Rename the copy
Name it after whatever variant it’ll handle — “Spring email banners — SKU 2” or “Localization batch 1”.
Open the duplicate
Same nodes, same connections, same prompts — fully populated, ready to swap inputs.
Use the Upload node for input-swapping
If you’ve built a workflow where everything downstream depends on one source image, the Upload node turns that into a clean swap point.Build your workflow with an Upload node as the entry point
Right-click → New upload node. Connect it to whatever the workflow consumes the image for (image-to-image input, style analysis reference, product pack shot).
Build a project-level template canvas
For workflows you’ll use across many campaigns — your standard “static ad batch” build, your “UGC video” build, your “product photography” build — keep a clean template canvas in each project. The template canvas has:- The brand anchor as a text node, pre-populated
- Empty Upload nodes for the inputs that change per campaign
- The workflow nodes wired up with prompts and model choices
- A short text annotation at the top explaining what the template is for
Use templates / presets (the built-in ones)
Melius ships with a set of presets that wrap common workflows into one drop-in node group. Useful ones:- Image Style Analysis — turns a moodboard into a usable style description. See Static ads from a reference style.
- Product Swapper — pre-configured product-into-scene workflow. See Product photography & swaps.
- Image -> Boomerang — turns a static image into a short looping animation, useful for Reels and Stories.
Use Claude (MCP) to spin up canvases programmatically
For the highest-volume workflows — daily/weekly variant batches, scheduled production runs — the MCP path is the right answer. Instead of duplicating a canvas by hand, you brief Claude with a standing instruction:Multiplayer and shared canvases
Repeatable workflows often live inside a team, not in one person’s head. A few practices that help:- Naming convention. “Template — [workflow name]” for templates, “[Campaign name] — [variant set]” for active work, “Archive — [date]” for completed campaigns. Consistent names make it easier for teammates to find the right canvas.
- Sticky notes for documentation. Drop sticky notes on a template canvas explaining what each section does. Press
N(or right-click) to add one. Future you, and your teammates, will thank you. - Comments for handoffs. When you finish a draft and want a designer to review, drop a comment with
Cand@mentionthem. They get notified, can reply on the canvas, and resolve the thread when done. - One project per client / brand. Don’t mix clients in one project. The MCP path, in particular, works best when each project maps to one brand.
Common pitfalls
- Rebuilding the same workflow from scratch every time. If you’ve done this twice, save the canvas as a template and copy it on the third pass.
- Templates that include real campaign content. A template canvas should have placeholders, not the last campaign’s specific images. Strip the campaign-specific stuff before parking the canvas as a template.
- Skipping the naming convention. A project with 40 canvases all named “Untitled” is unsearchable. Name everything.
- Not putting the brand anchor in the template. If every workflow starts by re-pasting the brand anchor, you didn’t bake it into the template. Bake it in.