Embedded web UI

Experimental

The embedded web dashboard is experimental. Its DOM structure, URL paths, CSS class names, and the env vars listed below can all change without a deprecation cycle. Treat it as a local browsing convenience; do not build production tooling on top of its HTML or hard-code its routes into automation.

DearDiary boots a small in-process web dashboard alongside the REST API. It supports browsing projects, experiments, and iterations recorded by the default user; inspecting parameters and metric charts for any iteration; and following parent/child trial trees.

Configuration

The UI starts by default. Three env vars control it:

DEARDIARY_ENABLE_UI=true        # set to false to skip booting the UI server
DEARDIARY_UI_HOST=127.0.0.1     # bind address
DEARDIARY_UI_PORT=9001          # port the dashboard listens on

DearDiary.run(; env_file=".env") boots the REST API and the dashboard on their respective ports. DearDiary.stop() closes both servers together.

Dashboard contents

Sidebar: A tree of projects, experiments, and iterations. Child trials nest under their driver iteration so lineage stays visible. Each iteration label carries a status glyph (✓ succeeded, ▶ running, ✗ failed, ⊘ killed), a per-experiment ordinal, and a relative timestamp (example: ✓ Iteration 3 · 12m ago). Link color (yellow running, red failed, purple killed, default succeeded) reinforces the status. The selected row keeps a highlight until another row is clicked. Ordinals are local to each experiment and are derived from creation order, so deleting a row renumbers the remaining iterations.
Detail pane: A heading carrying the per-experiment ordinal, a status badge, the experiment name, the canonical iteration id on its own ID: line, created and ended timestamps, the run duration, the parent iteration's ordinal when present, any run notes, any tags as chips, the parameter table, and an inline-SVG chart of every metric series keyed by step. Hovering a point shows a tooltip with the metric name, step, and value. The chart renders server-side with no external JS bundle.
Environment card: The reproducibility snapshot captured for the iteration: Julia version, git commit (flagged when the working tree was dirty), and entrypoint. Iterations without a snapshot, including child runs that inherit the driver's, report that none was captured.
Browser tab title: Tracks the selected iteration as #3 · ExperimentName · DearDiary, using the same per-experiment ordinal as the sidebar. The landing page renders as plain DearDiary.
Docs link: A Docs ↗ anchor at the bottom of the sidebar opens this documentation site in a new tab.

Disabling the UI

Set DEARDIARY_ENABLE_UI=false in the env file. The REST API on DEARDIARY_PORT continues to run unchanged. Use this for a headless CI runner or a container image that needs no browser-facing surface.

Known limitations

Single user. The dashboard reads as the seeded default user with no login screen and no multi-tenant view.
Read-only. Mutate state through the REST API or the Julia client. The UI exposes no edit affordances.
WebSocket-driven title updates. The browser tab title updates from the server via a live WebSocket. Slow connections may show stale title text for a second or two after a click.
Cold-start latency. The first request after DearDiary.run takes a few seconds while Bonito boots its renderer. Subsequent requests serve in tens of milliseconds. A PrecompileTools workload absorbs part of this cost into Pkg.precompile.