Implementation Dashboard

Implementation Dashboard

Once a project is in the In Development phase, the Implementation Dashboard becomes your primary tool for tracking progress. It provides a Kanban board view of all implementation stories, a phase timeline, key metrics, and blocker management — all in one place.

What Is a Story?

A story in SpecGraph represents a single unit of implementation work. Stories are derived from the PRD's requirements and acceptance criteria, broken down into chunks that a developer (or AI agent) can complete in a focused session.

Stories have:

• A title and description of the work.
• A status (Todo, In Progress, Done, or Blocked).
• An effort estimate.
• An optional blocker — a description of what's preventing progress.
• Implementation notes — comments and updates added during the work.

The Kanban Board

The Kanban board shows all stories in four columns:

Stories can be moved between columns by changing their status. Each card shows the story title, effort badge, and any blockers.

Creating Stories

Stories can be created in two ways:

Manually — click Add Story and fill out the story details. This is useful for stories that emerge during development and weren't anticipated in the PRD.

Via Story Sharding — for projects that have entered the Story Sharding phase (which comes before In Development), the AI can automatically decompose the PRD's requirements into a full set of implementation stories. This gives you a complete Kanban backlog derived directly from the spec.

Managing Blockers

Blockers are the most important things to track on the Kanban board. A blocked story is one that a developer has started but cannot complete because of something outside their control:

• A decision that hasn't been made yet.
• A dependency on another team's work.
• A technical unknown that requires investigation.
• An external API or service that isn't ready.

Reporting a Blocker

Click Report Blocker on any In Progress story to flag it as blocked. Describe what the blocker is — be specific. A blocker description like "Waiting on the design team to finalize the color palette for the dashboard components" is far more actionable than "Design not ready."

Resolving a Blocker

Once the blocker is cleared, click Clear Blocker on the blocked story. Add a note describing how it was resolved. The story returns to In Progress.

Cross-Project Blockers

Some blockers are shared across multiple projects — for example, a decision about a shared platform component that affects several teams. The Dashboard (not the project Implementation Dashboard, but the main app Dashboard) shows a Cross-Project Blockers panel that aggregates blockers from all projects you have access to, so you can see systemic issues at a glance.

Phase Timeline

Below the Kanban board, the Implementation Dashboard shows a Phase Timeline — a visual representation of how the project has progressed through its phases and how long each phase took. This is useful for retrospectives and for estimating how similar future projects might progress.

Statistics Panel

The stats panel at the top of the Implementation Dashboard shows:

• Total stories in the project.
• Completion percentage — what fraction of stories are Done.
• Blocked stories — how many stories are currently blocked.
• In Progress — how many stories are actively being worked on.

Implementation Notes

Any team member can add implementation notes to a story — comments about progress, decisions made during implementation, technical notes, or questions. Notes are threaded per story and help keep context close to the work.

Implementation notes are included in the project's post-build feedback and knowledge extraction, so lessons learned during development aren't lost when the project closes.

Auto-Refresh

The Implementation Dashboard automatically refreshes every 30 seconds, so you always see the latest story states without having to manually reload the page. This is especially useful in team settings where multiple people are updating stories concurrently.