The dashboard
python3 scripts/dashboard.py, run by its path from the project root (${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/dashboard/scripts/dashboard.py under Claude Code), serves one site on localhost, port 8765 by default, with one section per mounted component: the flow’s records with the ranked list, each record with its links and back-references, the directions file and the validator’s verdict; the library’s cards with a ranked search, each card with our notes, extracts and citing sites, the candidates and watches and the check.
It is a renderer and nothing else.
Every page is the answer of the component’s command with --json, so the command line and the dashboard cannot disagree; no work is shown and no path into the library’s store is served.
It re-asks on every request, so a transition run in another terminal shows on the next reload.
It answers only a request addressed to it by name: --host 0.0.0.0 serves other devices under this machine’s names and its addresses, and --allow-host NAME adds a name a proxy or a tunnel uses; a page of another site never loads one of its pages in the background.
What it mounts
Components are found in this order, the first mount of a name winning: a --component CMD… on the command line; dashboard.toml at the project root, with [[component]] tables naming a command list; the skill directories beside this one whose component.toml names a command and a bindings file, mounted when the bindings file exists at the project root; the flow and library commands on PATH when their bindings file exists.
So a skill adds its pages to the one dashboard by being installed beside it — in the same skills directory, or as a sibling plugin of the same marketplace, each plugin read at its newest version — and bound in the project, and dashboard --list prints what would be mounted.
Writing a component
A component is any command that answers <command> --json pages with a page manifest and every other page as <command> --json <subcommand> …; references/protocol.md is the manifest’s shape — the mount, the navigation entries, the link patterns that turn an id in any text into a link across components, and the routes with their views: markdown, lines, list, record, tables, check.
A component ships a component.toml beside its SKILL.md naming its command relative to the skill directory and the project’s bindings file.
scripts/dashboard.py --selftest mounts a stub component and renders every view.