Put diagrams on your flashcards with Canva and Braineos

Some cards are fine as words. "Capital of Peru: Lima." Others are fighting the format. Try learning the parts of a plant cell, the chambers of the heart or the layers of the OSI model from text alone, and you end up memorising a list instead of seeing how it fits together.

A diagram fixes that. Making one used to mean a design tool, an export, a download and an upload, card by card. With two connectors in Claude, it's one request.

What you need

The Braineos connector in Claude: https://braineos.com/api/mcp.
The Canva connector in Claude, signed in to your Canva account.
A deck you own with a card that would benefit from a picture.

Claude can use both connectors in the same conversation. It designs in Canva, then hands the finished image to Braineos.

One request, two connectors

Use Canva to make a simple labelled diagram of a plant cell, then attach it to the "Chloroplast" card in my Biology deck.

Here's what happens:

Claude finds the card. It looks up your Biology deck and the Chloroplast card in Braineos.
Claude designs the diagram in Canva, from your description.
Claude exports it and gets a link to the finished image.
Claude attaches it to the card. Braineos fetches the image and stores its own copy, so the card keeps working even if the Canva link later changes or expires.

The image shows with the front of the card, next to the term or question, wherever you study: on the website, in the app or in a quiz.

Tips for diagrams that help you remember

A diagram on a flashcard has a different job from one in a textbook. It's there to be recalled at a glance:

One idea per diagram. A whole-cell diagram is good for "Name the parts of a plant cell". For a Chloroplast card, ask for one that highlights just the chloroplast.
Don't give away the answer. If the card asks "What does the mitochondrion do?", a diagram labelled "Mitochondrion: makes ATP" answers it before you've thought. Ask for labels on the structure, not the function, or for an unlabelled version.
Keep it simple. Clean shapes and a few labels beat a detailed illustration. You'll see this image dozens of times; it should be readable in a second.
Use colour with purpose. "Highlight the left ventricle in red" turns a generic heart into a card about one chamber.

Doing a whole deck

Once one card works, scale it up:

Go through my Heart anatomy deck. For each card about a structure, make a simple Canva diagram highlighting that structure and attach it. Show me the list of cards first.

Asking for the list first lets you skip cards that are better as words. Attaching an image to a card that already has one replaces it, so you can also say "redo the diagram on the Aorta card, with bigger labels."

Credit where it's due

Images you make yourself in Canva are yours to use. If you want to note where an image came from, Claude can attach an attribution, a licence and a source link alongside it, which helps if you mix in images from elsewhere. Images on public decks are visible to anyone studying them, so only use images you have the rights to share.

Limits worth knowing

Images can be PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 3 MB. Canva exports fit comfortably.
Each card has one image, shown with its front.
Claude can only add images to cards in decks you own.
The image link must be a public https URL. Braineos refuses links to private networks.

Try it

Add both connectors in Claude. For Braineos, use:

https://braineos.com/api/mcp

On claude.ai, go to Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste the URL and sign in to Braineos, then add Canva from the connector directory. In Claude Code, run claude mcp add --transport http braineos https://braineos.com/api/mcp, then /mcp to sign in. If you added the Braineos connector before images arrived, reconnect it to pick up the new tool. Full details are on the Claude connector page.

Then find the card you always get wrong, and ask Claude to draw it for you.