Introduction

Dashfy is an open-source framework for building dashboards using declarative configuration. Instead of manually building dashboards in a UI, you define them as structured configuration. Dashfy connects to APIs and data sources, composes widgets, and renders real-time interfaces.

Dashfy is designed to make dashboards developer-friendly, composable, extensible, and maintainable. It is published as a set of npm packages (for example @dashfy/server, @dashfy/ui, @dashfy/themes, and @dashfy/ext-*), and the dashfy CLI scaffolds new apps and resolves extensions from a hosted registry.

Why Dashfy

Developers build dashboards to monitor systems, track metrics, visualize APIs, and power internal tools — but building and maintaining them is harder than it should be. Traditional dashboards are often:

• tightly coupled to UI implementations
• difficult to version and review
• hard to extend and evolve
• manually constructed and maintained

Dashfy treats dashboards as structured configuration instead of handcrafted UI. You define dashboards declaratively, connect APIs and data sources, and Dashfy handles rendering, real-time updates, and composition. The result is dashboards that are easier to maintain, version, extend, and reproduce across environments.

How Dashfy is different

Dashfy is designed around a simple principle: dashboards should be defined as code, not built manually in a UI.

• Declarative, not manual — dashboards are defined using structured configuration, making them easy to version, review, and maintain.
• Developer-first — integrates naturally with version control, CI/CD, code review, and infrastructure as code.
• API-native — connects directly to APIs and data sources through extensions, not tied to a specific backend or database.
• Extensible architecture — extensions add widgets and data sources without modifying the core.
• Real-time by default — a server–client architecture built on WebSockets and subscriptions, with no polling hacks or manual refresh.
• Composable and reproducible — dashboards can be versioned, reused, shared, and reproduced across environments.

Where to go next

• Installation — scaffold a new Dashfy project.
• Quick start — set up the server and client together.
• Configuration — define dashboards in TypeScript, JSON, or YAML.
• CLI — scaffold apps and manage extensions.