Show HN: DAC – open-source dashboard as code tool for agents and humans(github.com)
102 pointsby karakanb4 days ago19 comments
  • hasyimibhar20 hours ago
    Why not use Vega-Lite[0]? It’s my go-to data viz DSL with Claude.

    [0] https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/

    • karakanb19 hours ago
      There are quite a few libraries for charts and visualization, there are not as many for actually combining many of them with layouts, different components and including the actual implementation of the backend. Dac aims to provide all that as a standard and an implementation.
      • hasyimibhar19 hours ago
        I mean that's what the Vega team is doing no? They are building the standard grammar (Vega-Lite), along with an implementation (Vega). And they are already quite established with rich ecosystem, and supports a ton of components[0]. The only thing missing is that it expects a CSV or inline data source. But it's probably not too hard to build an extension that connects to a data warehouse with an SQL query.

        [0] https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/examples

        • karakanb14 hours ago
          I am not sure we are on the same page, as far as I am aware Vega doesn't do layout, does it? E.g DAC could use Vega for the charts and still take care of everything else around it.
    • dleeftink16 hours ago
      Observable Framework[0] attempted to fill this niche for a while as well, and we'll likely see some of the implementation details in the new Observable Notebook 2.0 format too.

      [0]: https://github.com/observablehq/framework

  • 5-0a day ago
    DaC might be more distinguishable from DAC, although the context obviously also helps readers telling them apart.

    Yours sincerely, came here for another DAC

  • lexha day ago
    Consider adding that snazzy gif in the README to the docs landing page. I went straight to the docs and then hunted for a screenshot to no avail.
    • karakanba day ago
      That's a great idea, will do very quickly, thanks!
  • gervwyk12 hours ago
    Well done on the launch! We’ve doubled down on the apps as YAML paradigm a few years ago and its pay great dividends on all fronts, esp now with code gen spinning out apps faster than ever for us (generated yaml). Our largest app is well over 500k lines of yaml - for those complaining about 1000 lines lol. With the right tool stack and conventions its so much easier to read, write. review and maintain. Shameless plug, we’ve built Lowdefy (open source) and 100s of dashboards using it. Have a look and keen to unpack if you’re interested in sharing experiences. Specially have a look at what we did with operators for dynamic needs. https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy
  • crefiz21 hours ago
    I reckon this is a simplification of existing BIAC tools (eg, https://github.com/lightdash/lightdash)
    • karakanb20 hours ago
      Partly, yes. It is a simplification with the perspective that the agents would be the primary builders.
  • Hnrobert4216 hours ago
    Have you thought about how these dashboards could be built for an eink screen?

    For a while, I was thinking about starting a side project of selling E-ink screens with easily configured dashboards. The project would support hobbies who want to build dashboards powered by a raspberry pi or something. I never pursued it, but it seems like you are now halfway there.

  • pryanshu8917 hours ago
    I would really hesitate to use a 1000 lines of yaml and modify them. I never found YAML easy to modify after a certain size.
    • Hnrobert4216 hours ago
      You have trouble with them when you are modifying them by hand or using an LLM to do it? The purpose of this project is having LLMs do it. I found they are about as good at writing yaml as they are writing anything else.
  • xixixao18 hours ago
    Why do ppl think building something through yaml is ever a good idea??

    (I know why: for a platform it’s simpler to parse a yaml than to run code, but it’s almost never a good idea for anything that needs to scale in complexity)

    • cyberge9917 hours ago
      What is a better format that allows inline comments, is human readable, and can be easily converted to other formats (json, xml, et al)
      • Hnrobert4216 hours ago
        The comments are why I prefer YAML for config over JSON. Of course, JSON is great for many purposes, especially machine to machine. For human to machine, I prefer YAML.
    • karakanb14 hours ago
      DAC currently supports YAML and JSX, what else would be a good alternative?
  • m_ramdhan15 hours ago
    The "agents as primary user" framing is what makes this stand out from other dashboard-as-code tools. Having agents generate dashboards is one thing, but making those dashboards reviewable and standardized is the actual hard part. Curious about the semantic layer — when an agent modifies a metric definition in semantic/, how does validation work? Does DAC flag downstream widgets that would break, or is it more of a "trust but verify" model where you catch issues at render time?
    • karakanb14 hours ago
      Thanks! DAC does that kind of validation partially, although doesn't validate the usage of the downstream dashboards. That's a very nice idea though.

      In terms of validation it will validate queries, metric definitions, chart definitions and all ahead of time, before render. That way agents tend to validate their work much quicker.

    • seattle_spring12 hours ago
      Is this an AI generated comment? The format follows almost exactly the format of your other comments, down to the location of the em-dash.
  • MuffinFlavored20 hours ago
    Might want to add how this compares to other products in the space.

    Some that come to mind that are potentially tangentially related/similar:

    https://github.com/evidence-dev/evidence

  • MSaiRam1019 hours ago
    Semantic layer + validation is the interesting part imo, everything else is table stakes. would lead with that
    • karakanb14 hours ago
      That's a good point, thanks!
  • SomeHacker4421 hours ago
    The blurb about this is repeated several times but it is unclear to me what it actually does.
    • karakanb21 hours ago
      You write a few lines of YAML or JSX and you get a dynamic, interactive dashboard out of it. Do you have any suggestions on how to make it simpler?
  • sumeno14 hours ago
    Yet another "Show HN" that has existed for less than a week. I wish the rules against AI generated content were applied to all these too.
    • karakanb14 hours ago
      The project has been under development for over 6 months. We just open sourced it with a clean history. I am not sure what you expect here, should a project exist for months before it is worthy of a show post?
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