Lattice Dashboard Spec

Lattice is a declarative JSON format for describing dashboards and a companion tool, lattice, that loads, validates, and resolves those documents into a flat, renderer-agnostic tree.

A dashboard document is a single JSON file: a manifest, a recursive root item tree, optional document-scoped variables, and optional document-scoped connections (data sources). Item types and connection types are described by versioned JSON Schemas in a local catalog; each node in the document is an instance of one of those types, referenced by $ref.

lattice does two things with such a document:

• resolve — runs a two-pass validation and prints the resolved tree: a fully validated, interpolated, secret-redacted JSON structure that a renderer (or any downstream consumer) can walk without re-reading the source document or the schemas.
• serve — starts a minimal HTTP server that re-resolves the document on every request and exposes both an HTML structural sketch and a JSON resolved-tree endpoint, with AlpineJS-driven runtime inputs.

This book is the human-facing reference for the format and the schema-catalog conventions, written so a fresh author — or a future renderer implementer — can use the spec without reading the Go source.

Where to start

• New to Lattice? Read the Overview.
• Want to run the tool? See Building & Running.
• Authoring a document? Start with Document Structure.
• Looking for working files? See Examples.

Scope of this effort

This effort delivers the format, the schema catalog, and the resolver. It deliberately does not dial connections, render real charts, or apply styling. The precise boundary is enumerated in Out of Scope; read it before assuming a behavior exists.