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
895bd89b2b