Widgets bind to a message name and read it live off the socket the editor
already had — lifted out of the flow editor so a dashboard route gets the
same values, which also gives the home page live data for free.
The input widgets close the loop the other way: a slider publishes into
the graph and whatever consumes that message runs. Verified end to end in
the running app — moving a slider set a flow input, and the stat bound to
what the flow computed from it followed.
View mode is plain CSS grid. A wall panel that only displays should not
download the code that lets someone drag things around, and it now does
not. Editing is a widget picker, a per-widget width control and a
settings card fed by the message catalog.
No new dependencies: the slider is a range input, the gauge is an arc,
and the markdown is a five-line subset. Charts are the one widget still
missing — they need a charting library and the chart tokens the design
guidelines reserved — so they are stored and validated but not offered.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011LF61rxW1FG5YCD2J9YqjY
A dashboard is its own document rather than widgets placed in a flow.
Node-RED's dashboard tab is 260 nodes, about forty of them pure layout,
which is exactly what the small-graph principle exists to avoid — and
since the graph is already wired by message name, a widget can bind to a
name without belonging to any flow.
Stored beside the flows in the same repository, sharing their write lock
and commit, under a directory the flow listing ignores. No draft/publish
split: nothing executes a dashboard, so edit mode is its own staging area.
Two things it needs from the engine. A message catalog spanning every
flow, because a wall panel shows the heating next to the solar and the
flow-scoped API is the wrong shape for that. And a way to put a value in
without owning a node — a slider is a real value that happened to come
from a person — which runs whatever consumes it and applies the same type
check a node's output gets. Only a message some flow declares can be
published to; flows own the namespace.
Charts also need more past than the 120 points a sparkline wanted, so a
chart widget declares its depth and the engine keeps that message's
series that deep.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011LF61rxW1FG5YCD2J9YqjY
stroblmeandClaude Fable 5