Improve Dashboard and Visualization Support

[blkdmr]

We’re looking for new contributors to help improve the Fenn dashboard.

The dashboard lives inside the main Fenn repository under:

src/fenn/dashboard/

It is a lightweight Flask-based interface used to explore .fn training/session logs generated by Fenn.

Current components include:

• session discovery/scanning
• overview pages
• project/session views
• JSON API endpoints
• frontend templates and static assets

This issue is intentionally broad and acts as a coordination hub for small beginner-friendly contributions.

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How Contributions Should Work

1. Choose a small improvement or feature.
2. Open a dedicated sub-issue describing:
   • what you want to improve
   • the proposed approach
   • affected files/components
3. Wait for confirmation/feedback.
4. Submit a PR linked to your sub-issue.

This helps avoid duplicated work and keeps tasks manageable for first-time contributors.

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Suggested Areas

You do not need to pick from this list exactly.

Frontend / UI

• Improve layout consistency
• Add loading states
• Improve mobile responsiveness
• Improve navigation between pages
• Add dark mode support
• Improve session/project cards

Backend

• Improve scanner performance
• Improve error handling
• Add filtering/sorting utilities
• Improve incomplete session handling
• Add caching

API

• Extend overview statistics
• Add pagination
• Improve API consistency
• Add validation/error responses

Developer Experience

• Improve documentation
• Add dashboard architecture docs
• Improve typing
• Add tests
• Simplify local development setup

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Contribution Guidelines

Please prefer:

• small scoped changes
• isolated improvements
• clear PR descriptions
• incremental changes over large rewrites

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Before Starting

When opening a sub-issue, include:

• a short title
• motivation/problem
• proposed solution
• expected files to modify

Example:

[Dashboard] Add project sorting by last activity

[topstar-ai]

Hi,
Is this issue still open?
I hope to join and solve this issue.
Best regards.

[blkdmr]

Hi @topstar-ai, sure! Please notice that this issue is not designed to be assigned to a single contributor. If you’d like to work on this, please select a specific topic and open a sub-issue explaining what you plan to do (for example, look at issues #97 and #99)

[topstar-ai]

Hi, @blkdmr .
I checked #97 and #99 and there are some comments and which one is still available?
I am going to start at immediately now.
Best regards.

[blkdmr]

No @topstar-ai, sorry, I expressed myself poorly. You need to do the same as for issue #99, which is a sub-issue of #97.

Open a new issue, reference this one (#98), and explain what you intend to do. Since this is quite a large task, we don’t want to risk multiple people working on it at the same time.

Open the issue, explain what you intend to do — choose something that isn’t too large — and then you can start working on it.

Once you’re done and have opened a PR, if you’re still available, you can open a new issue and continue.

[topstar-ai]

Hi, @blkdmr .
I clone repo - https://github.com/pyfenn/fenn.git to my pc and started on #98.
After get any progress, I will report to you.
Best regards.

[topstar-ai]

Hi @blkdmr .
I'd like to pick up three small, isolated improvements. Planning to open each as its own sub-issue, then submit three linked PRs.

1. [Dashboard] Detect crashed "running" sessions
   Problem. scanner.py:74-82 flags any unparseable .fn as running by appending . A process killed mid-write stays running forever, breaking the counter.

2. [Dashboard] Cache scanner parses by mtime
   Problem. get_all_sessions re-parses every .fn on every request, and is called by all three view routes. get_session walks and parses every file just to find one, though the session_id matches the filename stem.

3. [Dashboard] Paginated + filterable sessions API
   Problem. /api/overview always returns recent_sessions[:20]; no way to page or filter. No validation envelope for bad params.

If you are ok, I will fix these problems and submit PR.
Please let me know your opinion.
Best regards.

[topstar-ai]

Hi, @blkdmr .
I solved first problem : Detect crashed "running" sessions and
submit PR : issue98 - detect crashed "running" sessions via mtime #1

Please confirm, I will continue to move problem2.
Best regards.

[blkdmr]

Hi @topstar-ai, i'll review your code asap. Meanwhile you can continue with your work!

[topstar-ai]

Hi, @blkdmr .
I solved second and third problem and submit PR.
Please confirm, I will try to find other improvement problems and I will report to you.
Best regards.

[topstar-ai]

Hi @blkdmr .
I pick up three small, isolated improvements. Planning to open each as its own sub-issue, then submit three linked PRs.

1. Auto-refresh resets filter state on running sessions (Bug)
2. Project page scans all .fn files twice per request (Performance)
3. XSS risk in log search highlight (Bug)
   Please confirm and if you agree, I will start to work on these problems.