I’ve been building this personal dashboard called Grand Central for about a week now. It started as a terminal CLI for tracking focus time and daily spending. Then it got a web UI. Then it got panels for media management, blog publishing, and Monday.com integration.

And then I thought… you know what, if I’m going to stare at this thing every day, it should look like the cockpit of a spaceship.

The Motive Orange Problem

The first version of the dashboard used orange accents. My company uses orange for branding, and I just… carried that over without thinking. Which meant every time I opened my personal dashboard, it felt like I was still at work.

That’s not the vibe.

So I ripped it all out and went full synthwave. We’re talking:

  • Cyan neon (#00F0FF) as the primary accent
  • Hot pink (#FF2D95) for secondary highlights
  • Electric purple (#B026FF) for tertiary elements
  • Neon green for success states, neon red for danger
  • Deep navy backgrounds (#0A0A12) that feel like deep space

Every panel has a subtle glow on hover. The active task indicator pulses with cyan. The scrollbar thumb turns cyan when you mouse over it. It’s… a lot. And I love it.

What the Dashboard Actually Shows

Here’s the thing, it’s not just eye candy. Every panel does real work:

Productivity section: Top 3 priorities, task log with time tracking, energy check-ins throughout the day, and a Break Protocol panel with quick-start buttons for walks, stretches, music practice, kettlebell sets, and ear training.

Sports section: A live Tampa Bay Rays tracker that shows the diamond with baserunners during games, countdowns on game days, and box scores after. Right next to it is an F1 panel showing the next race countdown, championship standings, and last race results. Right now it’s showing the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka… in two days. RACE WEEKEND badge is glowing magenta.

Finance section: Daily spend tracker with good/bad ratings, plus a full ledger for monthly expense tracking with category breakdowns and tax estimates.

Media section: Search for movies, TV shows, or music and add them to my library with one click. It talks to Radarr, Sonarr, and Lidarr running on my homelab server.

Intelligence section: Monday.com tasks synced from my work boards, and an AI insights panel that analyzes my spending patterns.

The Status Bar That Changed Everything

At the bottom of the dashboard there’s a status bar with command indicators. Each one shows whether I’ve completed that daily action:

  • ! gcs morning in red if I haven’t run my morning ritual
  • ✓ gcs morning in green once I have
  • ○ gcs focus in muted gray if no active task
  • ○ gcs check in yellow if I haven’t done an energy check-in

At a glance I can see what’s outstanding for the day. It’s like a health bar for productivity. Simple as hell, but it works because it’s always visible.

The CSS Architecture

The whole theme lives in five CSS files with CSS custom properties. Every color, every shadow, every glow effect is a variable. Changing --accent from cyan to magenta would retheme the entire dashboard in one line.

:root {
  --accent: #00F0FF;
  --magenta: #FF2D95;
  --purple: #B026FF;
  --bg-primary: #0A0A12;
  --bg-card: #141422;
  --border: #1E1E32;
}

No hardcoded colors anywhere. Every component references variables. Panels get a subtle border glow on hover:

.panel:hover {
  border-color: var(--border-light);
  box-shadow: 0 4px 16px rgba(0,0,0,0.5),
              0 0 12px rgba(0,240,255,0.08);
}

The section dividers use a gradient fade instead of a solid border. Small detail but it makes the whole thing feel more polished.

Matching Everything

Here’s where it gets fun. I applied the same synthwave palette to my Obsidian vault using a CSS snippet. Same cyan headers, same navy backgrounds, same neon tags. My terminal uses the same color scheme via a tmux config.

So now my dashboard, my notes app, and my terminal all look like they belong together. Consistent aesthetic across my entire workflow. It sounds superficial but honestly… it makes me want to use the tools more. And that’s the whole point.

The Sidebar

Left sidebar has quick links to every service on my homelab:

  • Haven Homepage (system dashboard)
  • Wingman (my private AI chat)
  • Jellyfin, Navidrome (media)
  • Radarr, Sonarr (media management)
  • Uptime Kuma (monitoring)
  • The Aetherion Character UI (more on that another time)

One click to get anywhere. No bookmarks to manage, no typing URLs.

What’s Next

I’m planning to wrap this in a native app using Tauri so it’s a real desktop application with system tray integration, global hotkeys, and notifications. Also working on an Apple Shortcut so I can press the Action Button on my iPhone and interact with Grand Central from my pocket.

But honestly… even as a local web app, it’s become the first thing I open every morning and the last thing I check before closing the laptop. That’s a tool that works.

The synthwave theme was supposed to be cosmetic. Turned out it was the thing that made me actually use it every day.

Grand Central is a personal project. The dashboard runs locally on my Mac with an Express API. All the data stays on my machine.