Live dashboards

A notebook becomes a dashboard with three ingredients: the grid layout to arrange cells, auto-refresh to keep charts live, and variables to parameterize the whole board. Everything runs inside the console, no external dashboard tool required; for dashboards outside it, see the Grafana integration.

A live trading dashboard built from notebook cells in the grid layout

Grid layout​

The List | Grid toggle on the toolbar switches the notebook's layout. The grid snaps cells to fixed columns. Drag a cell by its header to move it, and resize it from its edges and corners. Cells pack upward to fill gaps, and new cells land full-width at the bottom.

Two shortcuts: double-click a cell's header to expand it to the full width, and double-click a side resize handle to expand the cell toward that side.

tip

For a clean dashboard, hide the SQL editors with Split/maximize view and use markdown cells for titles.

Auto-refresh​

Chart cells refresh themselves on a schedule. The schedule has a notebook-wide default, and any cell can override it.

The notebook default​

The Refresh charts split button on the toolbar refreshes every chart immediately; it is disabled when the notebook has no chart cells. Its dropdown sets the default interval: Auto (the default), Off, 1s, 5s, 10s, 30s, or 1m.

Per-cell overrides​

A chart cell's own interval dropdown (or Auto-refresh in its ⋮ menu) offers the same options, plus Notebook default to remove the override. A cell uses its own setting if set, otherwise the notebook default. Overridden cells are marked with a pink dot, and so is the toolbar control; when overrides exist, the toolbar dropdown gains Reset cell overrides.

The notebook auto-refresh menu with an active cell override

How Auto works​

Auto adapts the interval to how long your queries take: fast queries refresh often, slow ones back off. Charts only poll while they are visible: scrolled into view and with the browser tab in the foreground. They catch up as soon as you return. Off still draws the chart once, and a manual refresh always goes through.

Example: a live trading dashboard​

The dashboard pictured above, built on the demo trades table:

  1. Add a markdown cell as the title, and define @symbol := 'BTC-USDT' and @window := '$now - 1h..$now' under Variables.

  2. Add the price cell. Two statements in one cell draw candles with volume bars behind them; assign the volume query to the right axis in Chart settings and cap that axis so the bars stay low:

    1-minute candles and volume for the last hour
    SELECT timestamp, first(price) AS open, max(price) AS high,
      min(price) AS low, last(price) AS close
    FROM trades
    WHERE symbol = @symbol AND timestamp IN @window
    SAMPLE BY 1m;

    SELECT timestamp, sum(amount) AS volume
    FROM trades
    WHERE symbol = @symbol AND timestamp IN @window
    SAMPLE BY 1m;

  3. Add the supporting cells, pressing Draw on each: buy vs sell volume as a stacked bar (sum(amount) sampled by 5 minutes, partitioned by side), price vs a running session VWAP as two lines, and a per-symbol trade count partitioned by symbol.

  4. Switch to the grid layout, arrange the cells, and hide the editors with the Split/maximize view toggle.

  5. Set the notebook auto-refresh default to 1s.

tip

A coding agent connected over MCP can build this whole dashboard from a single prompt. So can the built-in AI Assistant, with no coding agent needed.

Next steps​