Braingent

Guides

Local Dashboard

A read-only Bun + React + TanStack dashboard over your live tasks — runs locally, never writes to your memory repo.

The Braingent dashboard is a small local web app that gives humans a read-only view of multi-agent work in progress. It reads the same Markdown files agents write to (tasks/active/*.md and indexes/*) and renders them as a queue you can scan in a browser.

It’s optional. If you only ever read raw Markdown and git log, you’ll never need it. But once you have several agents working in parallel, the dashboard makes the live state easy to see at a glance.

What it shows

  • Live queue of tasks/active/*.md with status, priority, and owner.
  • Filters by status, priority, owner, and free-text search.
  • Task detail view with goal, acceptance criteria, plan, closeout, raw Markdown, and an append-only activity log.
  • Dependency graph between tasks.
  • Recent activity — fixed-height paginated feed across all tasks.
  • In-app guide explaining the contract.
  • Synthetic sample data when no real memory repo is connected, so you can demo the UI safely.

The dashboard is strictly read-only. Agents and humans still capture through their normal flow; the dashboard is just a window onto the files.

Stack

  • Bun — package manager and runtime.
  • TanStack Start, Router, Query, Table — app framework + data layer.
  • React 19, TypeScript 6, Vite 8.
  • lucide-react for icons.
  • Playwright for end-to-end tests.

Same files. Same Git history. Same agent contract. The dashboard adds no schema and no service.

Run the example in place

The manifesto repo ships a runnable example with synthetic data.

cd ~/Documents/repos/braingent-manifesto/examples/task-dashboard
bun install
bun run dev

Open the printed URL (typically http://localhost:3000). The synthetic data is deliberately public-safe — feel free to demo it.

Point it at your real memory repo

Set BRAINGENT_MEMORY_ROOT to your memory repo’s absolute path:

BRAINGENT_MEMORY_ROOT=~/Documents/repos/braingent bun run dev

The dashboard will read live tasks/active/*.md and the relevant indexes/* files from that path. It still never writes.

Copy it into your memory repo

If you want the dashboard to live alongside your memory (so multiple machines can run it without recloning the manifesto), copy the dashboard/ directory from the starter pack into your memory repo:

# from the manifesto repo
cp -R examples/task-dashboard ~/Documents/repos/braingent/dashboard

# then
cd ~/Documents/repos/braingent/dashboard
bun install
bun run dev

The starter pack already includes a dashboard/ placeholder so the target path works out of the box.

When to use it

  • Multiple agents in parallel. Two Claude sessions plus a Codex run — the dashboard shows their hands-offs in real time.
  • Onboarding a teammate. “Open the dashboard” beats “let me explain what’s in flight.”
  • End-of-day scan. Glance at active tasks and recent activity before closing the laptop.

If your typical day is a single agent on a single task, you can skip the dashboard entirely and read the Markdown.

Verifying it loads

The first thing you should see when the dashboard starts:

  • A queue of tasks (synthetic or real, depending on BRAINGENT_MEMORY_ROOT).
  • Filters at the top.
  • A “Recent activity” feed in the sidebar.

If the queue is empty and BRAINGENT_MEMORY_ROOT is set, check that tasks/active/ actually has files. The dashboard ignores tasks/archive/ and tasks/done/ — those are deliberately out of scope for the live view.

Limitations on purpose

The dashboard intentionally does not:

  • Write to the memory repo.
  • Trigger captures or commits.
  • Keep its own state outside the file system.
  • Replace the CLI or the agent contract.

Those choices keep the dashboard cheap to build, easy to trust, and harmless to run alongside any agent.

Where to go next