posthog/building-a-dashboard

Building a dashboard

A dashboard is a collection of insight tiles on one page. Your job is to figure out which insights belong on it, reuse what already exists, create what's missing, and lay them out sensibly — not to blindly generate charts.

Create vs update

First work out whether you're creating a new dashboard or changing an existing one.

• Search existing dashboards with dashboards-get-all (its search param does fuzzy name/description matching). If the user is clearly describing something that already exists, they probably want an update.
• Read a candidate with dashboard-get to see its current tiles before you change anything.
• If the request is ambiguous — "get my financial metrics together" could mean build new or add to an existing one — ask a short clarifying question rather than guessing.

Use templates as reference

PostHog ships vetted dashboard templates for common topics, and orgs can share their own. Consult them before you build — they're a strong signal of which insights pair well on a topic.

1. dashboard-templates-list — browse templates (use search for a topic, scope to narrow to global / team / organization). This returns names, descriptions, and tags only.
2. dashboard-templates-retrieve — open the closest template to see its tiles: which insights it groups together and how each is queried.

Treat templates as examples, not a spec. Take inspiration from the insights and their groupings, but tailor every insight to the user's own events, properties, and intent. Don't copy a template verbatim, and don't force a template onto a request it doesn't fit — a good bespoke dashboard beats a mismatched template every time.

Select the insights

Prefer reusing existing insights over recreating them.

• Search with insights-list and read promising ones with insight-get to check they match the user's intent and actually have data. Full-text search misses things named differently, so list broadly before concluding an insight doesn't exist.
• For anything missing, create it with insight-create (see the product-analytics insight skills for query shape).
• Keep the set minimal — only the insights the request needs. A focused dashboard is more useful than an exhaustive one.

Assemble the dashboard

• New dashboard: dashboard-create with a short (3–7 word) name and a concise description, then add the insight tiles.
• Existing dashboard: dashboard-update. Adding, replacing, or removing insights means sending the full intended set of tiles — insights you omit are removed, so include the ones you want to keep.
• Layout: by default preserve existing tile placement. Only reflow (dashboard-reorder-tiles) when the user explicitly asks to rearrange, reorder, or move tiles.
• Verify with dashboard-insights-run to confirm the tiles return data, then summarize what you built and invite the user to refine it.

When not to use this

• Saving a single insight — just create the insight; it doesn't need a dashboard.
• Adding non-insight widget tiles (text cards, widgets) — see the widget tools (dashboard-widget-catalog-list, dashboard-widgets-batch-add) instead.