Help & Documentation

Welcome

Project documentation home

Getting Started

First-run setup, branding, pages, and deployment basics

Quick Setup (TL;DR)

Clone to deploy in 8 steps

Scenario A: Public Site, No User Login

Use your own theme for public pages. Staff-only login for admin tools.

Scenario B: Public Site with User Login

Users log in and use your app with your theme.

Scenario C: Build on SmallStack's Theme

Use SmallStack's built-in theme for everything.

Build a React CRUD App

Build a React frontend with SmallStack's CRUDView REST API

Build a Svelte Inventory Dashboard

Build a SvelteKit inventory dashboard (auth, charts, CRUD) on SmallStack's CRUDView REST API

Build a SolidJS Inventory App

Build a SolidJS app (signals, resources, auth, CRUD) on SmallStack's REST API using the bundled client

Build a Streamlit Data App

Consume SmallStack's API from Python — a server-side Streamlit dashboard with server-computed metrics and charts

Blog & Newsletter

What a blog is here, how visibility works, and where everything lives

Writing posts

Markdown support, slugs, excerpts, cover images, tags, and publishing

Publishing runbook pages

Turn an existing runbook document into a post, and keep it in sync

Newsletter

Subscribers, double opt-in, sending issues, bounces and deliverability

Feeds and APIs

RSS/Atom/JSON feeds, the public read API, the REST write API, MCP and webhooks

Showing posts in your own pages

Render posts in your own templates or a separate front end, and publish from your own code

Calendar

What a calendar dataset is, picking calendars additively, saving a view, and the day panel

Declaring calendar datasets

The protocol: start/end columns, titles, status tints, access levels, and the bundled calendars

Feeds and the events API

Subscribe from a calendar app (.ics), the JSON events routes, saved-view REST and the MCP tools

How it all fits together

The pieces in the order they build on each other: dataset, metric, component, then dashboards, goal lists and reports

What is a dataset?

A named, filterable table of data: the layer between a data source and everything built on it

What is a metric?

A saved filter over a dataset, rolled up to one number: the reusable unit behind every card, goal and report row

What is a component?

A saved card: a dataset filtered for it, or a metric for a single number, drawn by one design, built once and placed on any number of dashboards

What is a dashboard?

A grid of cards over your metrics: reading one, building one, and who can see it

What is a goal list?

Key numbers against their targets, read down in a meeting: on target, at risk or missed

What is a report?

A table of metrics across periods that sorts, drills into its rows, prints and downloads

What is a playlist?

Dashboards and goal lists one after another: paged through in a meeting, or rotating on a wall screen

Weeks, captures and history

How a goal list keeps its numbers as they stood when a week, day or month ended

Dashboards

Metrics, dashboards and reports: what each is, editing a layout, the period bar, sharing

Building a metric

The metric builder: datasets, AND/OR filters, periods, aggregations, thresholds, and the stored JSON

Goals

Key numbers against their targets, in sections: on target, at risk or missed, for reading down in a meeting

Playlists

Dashboards in a sequence: page through them like slides, or rotate them on a wall screen

Agents and the API

Have an AI agent build dashboards over MCP or REST — the tools, the loop, and the access rules