> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://meridiona-mintlify-ab2cfce6.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Monitor Your Activity in the Meridian Local Dashboard

> Explore the local web dashboard that shows your active session, focus time, category breakdown, and full day timeline, updated in real time as you work.

Meridian includes a Next.js dashboard that gives you a live, browser-based view of everything the daemon is recording. It reads directly from `~/.meridian/meridian.db` and updates in real time as new sessions are written — no refresh needed, no cloud sync required. Open it at any point during your day to see exactly how you've been spending your time, broken down by app, category, and minute.

## Opening the dashboard

The dashboard starts automatically when you run `meridian start` and listens on port 3939 by default. To open it, navigate to:

```
http://localhost:3939
```

Any browser works. You can keep it open as a background tab while you work.

<Tip>
  To run the dashboard on a different port — for example, if 3939 conflicts with another process — set `MERIDIAN_UI_PORT` in `~/.meridian/.env` and run `meridian restart`. The installer bakes the value into the UI launchd agent on the next setup. See the [Configuration](/configuration#core-daemon-settings) reference for details.
</Tip>

## Dashboard views

The dashboard has three main views accessible from the navigation bar.

### Home

The home page (`/`) is your at-a-glance summary of the current workday. It contains four sections:

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Active Session Card" icon="circle-dot">
    Shows the app currently in focus, how long it has been active, and the top window titles seen in this session. Updates on each daemon poll cycle (every 60 seconds).
  </Card>

  <Card title="Daily Stats" icon="chart-bar">
    Summarises today's total focus time, idle time, and away (sleep) time alongside the total session count. Useful for a quick productivity pulse check.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Category Breakdown" icon="chart-bar">
    A horizontal bar chart showing how your focus time is distributed across activity categories. Each bar is color-coded to match the timeline below.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Day Timeline" icon="clock">
    A scrollable, chronological view of every session today, rendered as color-coded segments. Idle gaps and system sleep periods appear as distinct visual breaks.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

### Sessions list

Navigate to `/sessions` to see every completed session for the current day, ordered newest-first with pagination. Each card shows the app name, start and end time, duration, top window titles, assigned category, and confidence score.

### Apps view

Navigate to `/apps` to see all-time usage statistics aggregated by application: total time, session count, average session length, and the last time each app was seen. A focus donut chart at the top highlights your top apps by cumulative time.

## Activity categories

Meridian classifies each session into one of ten fixed categories. Each category has a distinct color used consistently across the timeline, the category breakdown chart, and every session card:

| Category            | Description                                            |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| `coding`            | Active development in an editor or IDE                 |
| `code_review`       | Pull request review, diff reading                      |
| `meeting`           | Video calls, conferencing apps                         |
| `communication`     | Messaging, email                                       |
| `design`            | Design tools such as Figma                             |
| `documentation`     | Writing docs, wikis, notes                             |
| `planning`          | Roadmapping, ticket grooming, project management tools |
| `deployment_devops` | CI/CD, terminal, infrastructure work                   |
| `research`          | Browser research, reading                              |
| `idle_personal`     | Idle periods or non-work apps                          |

## Logs and maintenance

To tail the dashboard's log output:

```bash theme={null}
meridian logs ui
```

If you've pulled an update to the repository and want to rebuild the dashboard with the latest changes:

```bash theme={null}
cd ui && npm run build
```

Then restart Meridian to pick up the new build:

```bash theme={null}
meridian restart
```

<Note>
  The dashboard reads directly from `~/.meridian/meridian.db`. It does not make any network requests and does not send your activity data anywhere. All rendering happens locally in your browser.
</Note>

## Troubleshooting

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="http://localhost:3939 returns an error or doesn't load">
    Check that the UI service is running:

    ```bash theme={null}
    meridian status
    ```

    If the UI service is not listed as running, restart all services:

    ```bash theme={null}
    meridian restart
    ```

    Then tail the UI log to see any startup errors:

    ```bash theme={null}
    meridian logs ui
    ```
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The active session card shows stale data">
    The daemon writes new data every 60 seconds (configurable via `POLL_INTERVAL_SECS`). If the card hasn't updated in longer than a minute or two, check that the daemon is running with `meridian status` and review the daemon log with `meridian logs`.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The dashboard was installed without the UI (--no-ui flag)">
    If you ran `./install.sh --no-ui`, the dashboard was not built. Build and register it now:

    ```bash theme={null}
    cd ui && npm run build
    meridian restart
    ```
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>