docs/dashboard.md

Dashboard (ctx-monitor)

Local HTTP dashboard for ctx's currently supported live observables: loaded skills, agents, MCP servers, and installed harness records; session timelines; the knowledge graph; the LLM-wiki browser; quality grades + scores; durable queue state; graph/wiki artifact versions; filterable audit logs; generic-harness validation/escalation state; a live event stream; and cataloged harness wiki/graph browsing.

ctx-monitor serve              # http://127.0.0.1:8765
ctx-monitor serve --port 8888  # custom port
ctx-monitor serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8888  # LAN-visible HTML only (explicit opt-in)

Zero Python dependencies added by the dashboard. Everything runs on stdlib http.server, using daemon request threads so a live /api/events.stream client cannot block normal dashboard or JSON API requests. The graph page uses a built-in list renderer and does not load third-party JavaScript.

Usage

Every page in the dashboard has the same top nav, so getting around is Home -> jump anywhere. The dashboard indexes skills, agents, MCP servers, and harness pages in wiki/graph views. Harness installation, update, and uninstall run through ctx-harness-install; dashboard load/unload POSTs reject harnesses with the exact dry-run command to use. Quality scoring is shown for sidecar-backed skills, agents, and MCP servers. Generic/API/local harnesses that call ctx-core validation tools write to the runtime lifecycle ledger. The dashboard exposes that ledger at /runtime and as JSON at /api/runtime.json.

Check queue and artifact state - /status

The status tab shows the durable wiki/graph maintenance queue and the generated graph/wiki artifacts that ctx can ship or consume. It reports:

• queue DB availability and job counts by state (pending, running, succeeded, failed, cancelled)
• the 20 most recent queue jobs with kind, attempts, source, worker, and last error; counts and the recent-job window are bounded in the queue DB, not by loading the whole queue into dashboard memory
• explicit crash recovery state: expired leases are requeued until their retry budget is exhausted; exhausted leases become failed; operator cancellations become terminal cancelled jobs
• a visible queue DB error callout when the queue file exists but cannot be opened or queried
• artifact presence and byte size for generated ~/.claude/skill-wiki/graphify-out/{graph.json,graph-delta.json,communities.json} plus the runtime Skills.sh catalog under ~/.claude/skill-wiki/external-catalogs/skills-sh/catalog.json, falling back to ~/.claude/graph/skills-sh-catalog.json.gz or the repo graph/ directory during source checkouts. The status page also reports the full wiki-graph.tar.gz artifact when present.
• artifact promotion metadata, including the latest promoted hash when the crash-safe promotion path has recorded it

Browse the LLM wiki — /wiki

The wiki tab requires full wiki markdown content from ctx-init --graph --graph-install-mode full or local/private wiki entities. The default runtime graph install powers recommendations and graph stats but does not expand every entity page. When entity pages exist, the wiki tab is a filterable card grid over a deterministic, bounded dashboard sample: up to 500 pages per dashboard-supported entity type under ~/.claude/skill-wiki/entities/{skills,agents,mcp-servers,harnesses}/. MCP server pages use the sharded layout entities/mcp-servers/<first-char-or-0-9>/<slug>.md; the dashboard routes /wiki/<slug> to the same shard convention. Harness pages use the flat entities/harnesses/<slug>.md layout. Each card shows:

• the slug (click to open /wiki/<slug>?type=<entity>)
• the quality grade pill (A/B/C/D/F) when the entity has a sidecar, otherwise a skill, agent, mcp-server, or harness type badge
• the frontmatter description
• up to 6 tags

The left sidebar has a text search over the visible sample that matches slug, description, and tags, plus skill/agent/MCP/harness type checkboxes. Pair them to answer questions like "show me all grade-B agents related to testing" — check agent, type testing in the search box.

Dashboard-supported entity pages (/wiki/<slug>?type=<entity>) render a bounded markdown preview and a bounded frontmatter table on the right, plus a quality banner with deep links to /skill/<slug> (sidecar detail) and /graph?slug=<slug>&type=<entity> (1-hop neighborhood). Long body previews and frontmatter values are visibly marked as truncated.

Explore the knowledge graph — /graph

The graph tab is a built-in list view over the dashboard-supported skill/agent/MCP/harness graph. The shipped graph bundle also contains remote-cataloged Skills.sh skill nodes. Harness nodes are browsable and filterable here; install/update actions remain in ctx-harness-install. When you arrive with no slug selected, the page shows:

• a stats line with the total node + edge counts
• a Popular seed slugs panel — the 18 highest-degree entities rendered as clickable entity-type chips. Click a chip to explore that entity's 1-hop neighborhood
• a search box — type any valid skill, agent, MCP, or harness slug and press explore (or hit Enter)
• the graph list panel itself, which activates as soon as you pick a seed

Inside the graph list view, entity pills identify the node type. The focus row has depth=0 in the page data, and neighbor rows are filterable by entity type and shared tag/token text.

The JSON endpoint still includes blended graph edge weights, combining semantic similarity, explicit tag overlap, and slug-token overlap where available. Tap any row to navigate to that entity's wiki page. The type checkboxes hide or show skills, agents, MCP servers, and harnesses without reloading the graph.

Read the quality KPIs — /kpi

The KPI tab is the browser equivalent of python -m kpi_dashboard render. It aggregates the quality + lifecycle sidecars under ~/.claude/skill-quality/ into a single page with six tables:

1. Header banner — total entity count, subject breakdown, grade pill counts, link to the raw /api/kpi.json payload, link back to /skills.
2. Grade distribution — A/B/C/D/F count and share.
3. Lifecycle tiers — counts for active, watch, demote, archive.
4. Hard floors active — which override reasons are currently pinning entities to F (never_loaded_stale, intake_fail, etc.) and how many entities each one catches.
5. By category — per-category count, average score, and full A/B/C/D/F mix. This is the row most useful for "where are my D/F skills concentrated?"
6. Top demotion candidates — up to 25 active-or-watch entities graded D/F, sorted by consecutive-D streak desc then raw score asc. Click a slug to jump to its sidecar.
7. Archived — slugs currently in the archive tier, with their last-known grade.

If the quality sidecar directory is empty (no scoring has happened yet), the page shows a helpful empty-state pointing at ctx-skill-quality recompute --all.

Routes

Top navigation

Every page shows the same nav bar. The eleven tabs cover the dashboard-supported observable surface of ctx:

Home · Loaded · Skills · Wiki · Graph · Status · KPIs · Runtime · Sessions · Logs · Live

HTML views

Harness catalog entries are visible in wiki and graph routes. /loaded shows installed harness records from ~/.claude/harness-installs/*.json, not the full catalog. Harness installation, update, and uninstall remain ctx-harness-install workflows, while harness scoring is not exposed in the dashboard yet. Dashboard POST actions are available only from loopback clients and require the per-process monitor token injected into the rendered page.

Route	What it shows
/	Home: seven stat cards (loaded, sidecars, wiki entities, graph nodes, runtime checks, audit events, sessions), grade distribution pills, recent sessions table, recent audit events
/loaded	Currently-loaded skills, agents, MCP servers, and installed harness records from ~/.claude/skill-manifest.json plus ~/.claude/harness-installs/*.json; skill/agent/MCP rows expose supported live actions
/skills	Every sidecar as a filterable card grid: left sidebar (search by slug, grade checkboxes, skill/agent/MCP toggle, hide-floored), card shows grade pill + raw score + links to sidecar/wiki/graph
/skill/<slug>	Full sidecar breakdown: four-signal score (telemetry · intake · graph · routing), hard-floor reason, computed_at timestamp, per-skill audit timeline
/wiki	Wiki entity index - bounded card-grid sample of up to 500 pages per dashboard-supported entity type under ~/.claude/skill-wiki/entities/{skills,agents,mcp-servers,harnesses}/, including sharded MCP server pages and flat harness pages. Left sidebar: text search over the visible sample (slug, description, tag), skill/agent/MCP/harness checkboxes.
/wiki/<slug>?type=<entity>	Dashboard-supported wiki entity page rendered: markdown body + full frontmatter table + grade banner + deep links to sidecar and graph-neighborhood views. The optional type query disambiguates duplicate slugs such as langgraph.
/graph	Graph explorer landing page - node/edge count header, a "Popular seed slugs" block (18 highest-degree skill/agent/MCP/harness entities as clickable chips), search box for any skill/agent/MCP/harness slug, and the built-in graph list panel. Clicking a seed chip navigates to /graph?slug=<slug>&type=<entity>.
/graph?slug=<slug>&type=<entity>	Built-in 1-hop neighborhood around the target skill/agent/MCP/harness slug. Entity pills identify skill, agent, MCP server, and harness rows. Tap any node to navigate to that entity's typed wiki page. Type and tag filters run client-side.
/status	Durable queue and artifact status: job counts by state, recent queue jobs, graph/wiki artifact sizes, and crash-safe promotion metadata.
/kpi	KPI dashboard — total entity count with subject breakdown, grade distribution pills, two-column tables for grade counts and lifecycle tiers (active · watch · demote · archive), hard-floor reasons with counts, By category table (count · avg score · A/B/C/D/F mix per category), Top demotion candidates (active/watch entries graded D or F, sorted by consecutive-D streak desc then score asc), and the Archived list. Same shape as python -m kpi_dashboard render but HTML
/runtime	Generic harness runtime ledger from CTX_RUNTIME_LIFECYCLE_DIR or ~/.ctx/runtime/events.jsonl: validation totals, failed/error checks, recent validation rows, and open escalations.
/sessions	Index of every session (audit + skill-events), first/last seen, counts of skills loaded/unloaded, agents loaded/unloaded, MCPs loaded/unloaded, and lifecycle transitions
/session/<id>	Per-session audit timeline showing the load → score_updated → unload triad with timestamps
/logs	Last 500 audit events in a filterable table (client-side filter on event name, subject, session id)
/events	Live SSE stream of new audit events

JSON API

Route	Returns
GET /api/sessions.json	All sessions with aggregated counts
GET /api/manifest.json	Raw skill-manifest.json passthrough
GET /api/status.json	{queue, artifacts} payload: durable queue counts/recent jobs plus graph/wiki artifact file status and promotion metadata
GET /api/skill/<slug>.json	Raw sidecar for one slug
GET /api/graph/<slug>.json?type=<entity>&hops=1&limit=40	Dashboard-shaped skill/agent/MCP/harness {nodes, edges, center}; type is optional but recommended for duplicate slugs, hops is [1, 3], limit is [5, 150].
GET /api/kpi.json	DashboardSummary passthrough — {total, by_subject, grade_counts, lifecycle_counts, category_breakdown, hard_floor_counts, low_quality_candidates, archived, generated_at}. Returns {total: 0, detail: "no sidecars yet"} when the quality directory is empty
GET /api/runtime.json	Runtime lifecycle summary: source path, validation count, failed/error count, open-escalation count, latest validation, recent validations, open escalations, and session IDs.
GET /api/events.stream	Server-sent events tail of ~/.claude/ctx-audit.jsonl

Mutation endpoints

Dashboard GET views are read-only. When ctx-monitor is bound to a non-loopback host, /api/* JSON and SSE routes are disabled; keep the default loopback bind for local automation. Both POST endpoints enforce same-origin (browser tab open on another origin can't forge a request), require the per-process X-CTX-Monitor-Token injected into the dashboard page, and reject any slug failing the shared safe-name validator. That validator blocks path separators, Windows drive-relative strings, malformed names, and Windows reserved device names such as con.txt and nul.. There is no harness load/unload mutation endpoint yet.

Route	Body	Calls
POST /api/load	{"slug": "...", "entity_type": "skill"}	skill_install.install_skill(slug)
POST /api/load	{"slug": "...", "entity_type": "agent"}	agent_install.install_agent(slug)
POST /api/load	{"slug": "...", "entity_type": "mcp-server"}	mcp_install.install_mcp(slug, command?, json_config?, auto=True)
POST /api/unload	{"slug": "...", "entity_type": "skill"}	skill_unload.unload_from_session([slug])
POST /api/unload	{"slug": "...", "entity_type": "agent"}	remove the agent row from skill-manifest.json and append an unload row
POST /api/unload	{"slug": "...", "entity_type": "mcp-server"}	mcp_install.uninstall_mcp(slug, wiki_dir=...)

Harness load/unload POSTs are rejected with the exact ctx-harness-install ... --dry-run command to run instead. Skill rows emit skill.loaded / skill.unloaded, agent rows emit agent.loaded / agent.unloaded, and MCP rows emit toolbox.triggered with meta.entity_type="mcp-server" and meta.action set to loaded or unloaded. All dashboard-driven rows use actor=user and meta.via="ctx-monitor" so they appear in the session timeline.

KPIs, measures, scores

The dashboard surfaces every quality signal ctx currently computes for sidecar-backed skills, agents, and MCP servers. Harness scoring is not yet exposed in the dashboard. Nothing is aggregated-only — you can always drill from a headline number to the raw sidecar that produced it.

On the home page

Card	What it means
Currently loaded	Count of entries in skill-manifest.json[load]. Clicking the card drills to /loaded
Sidecars	Total sidecars in ~/.claude/skill-quality/
Wiki entities	Count of dashboard-supported wiki pages (skills + agents + MCP servers + harnesses)
Knowledge graph	Dashboard-supported skill/agent/MCP/harness node count + edge count from graphify-out/graph.json
Runtime checks	Validation totals, failed/error checks, and open escalations from the generic runtime lifecycle ledger
Audit events	Line count of ~/.claude/ctx-audit.jsonl
Sessions	Unique session IDs seen across audit + events
Grade pills	A / B / C / D / F counts across all sidecars, colored

On /skills

Every card shows:

• grade — A / B / C / D / F pill (A=green, F=red)
• raw score — float in [0, 1] before the hard-floor override
• subject_type — skill, agent, or mcp-server
• hard floor reason — never_loaded_stale, intake_fail, etc. when the floor is active

Cards sorted by (grade, -raw_score) so high-scoring A's come first.

On /skill/<slug>

The full four-signal breakdown from the sidecar:

Signal	Weight (default)	What it measures
Telemetry	0.40	Load frequency + recency from skill-events.jsonl. Rewards skills that are actually used.
Intake	0.20	Structural health: frontmatter fields present, H1 present, minimum body length, description length. Zero if intake_fail floor is active.
Graph	0.25	Connectivity in the knowledge graph: degree, average edge weight, community size
Routing	0.15	Router hit rate from ~/.claude/router-trace.jsonl: how often this skill was among the top-K recommendations when surfaced

The final score is sum(weight[i] * signal[i]). A hard floor (never_loaded_stale, intake_fail) can override the score to force an F grade regardless of other signals.

The skill detail page also shows the audit timeline for this slug specifically: every skill.loaded, skill.unloaded, skill.score_updated row with its session_id, so you can trace exactly why the score changed when it did.

On /session/<id>

The per-session view lets you watch a skill's lifecycle inside one session:

skill.loaded        fastapi-pro       session-abc  @ 10:23:05
skill.score_updated fastapi-pro       session-abc  @ 10:31:47   grade C->B
skill.unloaded      fastapi-pro       session-abc  @ 11:04:02

The load → score_updated → unload triad is the canonical observability proof that ctx's telemetry pipeline is live.

Security

• Binds to 127.0.0.1 by default. Use --host 0.0.0.0 only if you actually want LAN-visible. No authentication; the server is intended for a local developer's own machine.
• Same-origin gating on mutation. Any POST with an Origin header that doesn't match Host returns 403. Curl and direct tool calls are allowed (no Origin header at all).
• Slug allowlist on all paths. Anywhere the dashboard resolves a skill, agent, MCP, or harness slug to a file path (/wiki/<slug>, /graph?slug=<slug>&type=<entity>, /api/graph/<slug>.json), the slug is validated through the shared safe-name helper — no path traversal, no absolute paths, no UNC shares, no Windows reserved device names.

Stopping

Ctrl+C in the terminal. Request handling is threaded for local dashboard responsiveness, and shutdown signals any open SSE workers. The monitor is still not suitable for shared/production serving.