Built a Full Web Dashboard for StreamStack in One Session

Just wrapped up a massive coding session building out the entire web dashboard frontend for StreamStack. This was Phase 8 Part 1, and honestly, I'm pretty stoked with how much ground we covered.

What Got Built

I went with a two-process architecture - Next.js 14 dashboard running on port 3000 that talks to the existing server.js API on 3001. No direct file access from the frontend, everything goes through proper API calls.

The dashboard itself is pretty comprehensive:

• Dashboard home with stats cards showing total videos, scripts, API status, plus a recent videos list
• Scripts page with a clean table view and inline JSON viewer for debugging
• Videos page using a grid layout with actual HTML5 video playback and download links
• Generate page where you can input topics, select scripts, toggle TTS/watermark settings, and kick off jobs across 9 different platforms
• Settings page (placeholder for now, but the foundation is there)

I stuck with the dark theme aesthetic that matches AdminStack - that #0a0f1a background with teal accents just hits different.

The Technical Bits

Using App Router with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS. Created a typed API client that handles all 7 backend methods cleanly. Had to enhance the server.js backend too - upgraded the scripts endpoint to return richer data and added proper HTTP range request support for video streaming.

One interesting challenge was handling video auth. Since <video> tags can't set Authorization headers, I had to pass the API key as a query param. Not ideal for production, but works perfectly for a local dev dashboard.

The Numbers

18 files changed, +2757 lines of code. 16 brand new files for the entire dashboard structure. Build passes cleanly, everything compiles without warnings.

I decided against pulling in a state management library - useState and useEffect are honestly sufficient for what this dashboard needs to do. Sometimes the simple solution is the right solution.

What's Next

Phase 8 Part 2 is going to focus on real-time job monitoring. Thinking WebSockets or Server-Sent Events for live status updates. Also need to build out the platform configuration page and proper API key management.

For now though, I'm calling this a win. Having a proper web interface instead of just CLI tools is going to make development so much smoother. Sometimes you don't realize how much you need a GUI until you build one.