The Problem
After dozens of development sessions, project state is scattered across session summaries, git history, test output, and plan files. Answering "how is this project doing?" means reading five different sources and synthesizing the answer yourself.
Dedicated dashboard tools exist, but they require infrastructure — a database, a CI integration, a hosted service. For a single developer or small team using DevArch, that's overhead that doesn't earn its keep.
DevArch skill used: /dashboard
The dashboard skill reads the project's existing DevArch artifacts — session summaries, plans, test grader output, git history, and the .devarch marker — and generates a single self-contained HTML file. All CSS inline, no JavaScript required, dark mode by default.
What It Reads
The skill scans sources that already exist in a DevArch-managed project. It creates nothing new — it surfaces what's already there.
Project Identity
Name, DevArch version, active capabilities, last commit hash from .devarch and git.
Health Pulse
Last commit time, commits this week, days since last session, blocker count. The at-a-glance row.
Current Plan
Phase table from docs/context/plan.md with DONE/CURRENT/PENDING badges.
Test Health
RED/YELLOW/GREEN grade distribution from the test grader, or pass/fail counts from the test runner.
Session History
Last 10 sessions with date, branch, status badge, and goal summary. Total count noted.
Archived Plans
Completed plans from docs/work/ with title and date.
Open Blockers
Unresolved blockers aggregated from sessions with INCOMPLETE or BLOCKED status.
What It Produces
A single HTML file at docs/context/dashboard.html. Open it in any browser. No server needed. The design adapts to light and dark mode, works on desktop and mobile, and uses the DevArch color palette — deep navy background, amber accents, green/yellow/red for status.
The dashboard is regenerated fresh each time. It's a snapshot, not a live monitor. Run it at the start of a session to see where things stand, or before a standup to get the numbers.
Live Example
This is the actual dashboard output from the Sharpee project, embedded directly.
Open full size →Why This Matters
DevArch already captures structured session data — every work summary has a status field, every plan has phase states, every test gets graded. The dashboard skill turns that latent data into something a human can scan in 10 seconds.
- No new infrastructure. No Grafana, no database, no CI plugin. The data is already in markdown files and git history.
- Self-contained. Email it, commit it, open it offline. One HTML file with everything inline.
- Adaptable. Ask for different sections, different styling, different data sources. The skill defines a default, not a rigid template.
- Point-in-time. Each generation is a snapshot. Compare dashboards across sessions to see trajectory, not just current state.