#Use the admin WebUI

The admin WebUI is a browser dashboard for watching and joining a fleet's message traffic (Overview). It is the only surface that needs a running server — CLI commands write to SQLite directly and never require one. Its writes are messages and the monitor controls (the wake interval and the forced wake); everything else is read-only.

#Start the server

cafleet server

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000 (press ++ctrl+c++ to stop the server). Host/port overrides (--host / --port and the matching env vars) are documented in CLI options.

The built UI is embedded in the cafleet binary at build time, so the served dashboard always matches the binary — there is nothing extra to build or deploy at runtime.

#Pick a fleet

The first load lands on a fleet picker. Selecting a fleet opens the unified timeline: a sidebar of the fleet's members, a center timeline of unicast and broadcast messages, and a bottom input.

The timeline shows up to 200 deliveries selected by their latest status update, then arranged by creation time. Broadcast recipient counts and [ack] badges cover the deliveries shown. A large or older broadcast may appear only in part, so these counts do not establish whether all of its recipients have acknowledged it. Broadcast summary records do not add recipients or ACK badges. See timeline grouping for the selection and counting rules.

#Loading and retrying

The dashboard keeps the fleet and member selection in the page URL, so direct links and browser Back/Forward select the same view. Switching fleets clears the previous fleet's names, recipients, and message draft.

The dashboard refreshes every five seconds, even in a hidden tab. Refresh and a successful send also request an update. A slow refresh keeps the current view; repeated requests during that refresh produce one follow-up update.

An initial load failure shows an error with Retry, instead of claiming there are no messages. If an update fails after data has loaded, the last successful data stays visible with an update-failed notice and Retry. A connection failure keeps the selected URL. An invalid, missing, or deleted fleet returns to the fleet picker. Changing views cancels old reads so their late results cannot overwrite the new view.

#Send as the root Director

The bottom input parses @<member> text for unicast and @all text for broadcast. Every send goes out as the fleet's root Director — the member cafleet fleet create registered for the fleet — so you never register yourself as a member to use the dashboard.

#Inspect history

Clicking a member in the sidebar opens its detail panel with Inbox / Sent tabs. This works for deregistered members too — the WebUI is the only surface that shows them (Storage).

#Control the monitor

The header shows a monitor indicator — running or stopped — for the selected fleet's monitor loop (Monitoring). Clicking it opens a popover with the two monitor controls:

• Wake interval — edits the running loop's wake cadence; the change takes effect within one scan tick, and 0 disables the scheduled wake while the loop keeps running.
• Wake now — requests an immediate wake outside the schedule; the loop delivers it within one scan tick, even when the interval is 0 or the next scheduled wake is not yet due.

Both controls are disabled while the monitor is stopped: the interval is re-stamped from the CLI/env when the monitor starts, and a wake request needs a running loop to deliver it.

#API contracts

The /api/* request/response shapes behind the dashboard are documented in WebUI API.