Building My Dashboard — First Steps

I’ve started working on a personal dashboard project.
Not for a client. Not for a company.
Just for me — as a playground to test ideas, break things, and add to my portfolio.

Current Progress

Right now, the dashboard has:

A sidebar layout to anchor navigation.
An overview page with my first widget:
a crypto price widget hitting a public API via Next.js server actions.

It’s not fancy. But it’s alive.
And that’s always the hardest part — going from zero to “something works.”

What’s Next?

The next big piece is the API Playground page.
This will be a space where I can experiment with different endpoints, log requests, and maybe even visualize responses.

But before I write a single line of code, I need to figure out the layout.
Structure comes first. Execution second.

⚡ Brutalist Note

This isn’t a finished product.
It’s a log of progress.
If you came here looking for a polished dashboard tutorial, you’re in the wrong place.
This is how I actually build things: messy, iterative, and raw.