Daniel Brunsdon

Product + DevRel + Growth


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Command Center

2026 · Full-stack engineering, data pipelines, AI integration

A personal operations dashboard consolidating health, finances, tasks, and relationships into a single data-dense interface — built from scaffold to production in one session with AI pair programming.

Context

I was managing my life across too many disconnected tools — Apple Reminders for tasks, spreadsheets for finances, Strava for workouts, a separate app for contacts. I wanted a single, unified dashboard that surfaces everything I need to see each day, with real data flowing in automatically.

The result is Command Center: a Palantir-inspired dark-mode dashboard that consolidates five life domains into one interface, backed by automated data pipelines and an AI financial advisor.

What it does

Home Dashboard — a daily briefing view showing priority tasks (with one-click complete), a 14-day workout effort chart, investment portfolio with sparkline, and recent bank transactions.

Command Center Home
Command Center Home

Health Tracking — 744 historical Strava activities synced via OAuth API, with weekly volume charts, activity type breakdown, and effort visualization. Daily cron keeps it current.

Health Dashboard
Health Dashboard

Task Management — list and kanban board views with drag-and-drop, search, filters by status/priority/project, inline editing, and Telegram integration for quick capture.

Tasks Dashboard
Tasks Dashboard

Financial Dashboard — 12 bank and investment accounts auto-synced via SimpleFIN, 124 transactions, net worth history chart, asset allocation, and accounts split by assets vs liabilities.

Finance Dashboard
Finance Dashboard

Personal CRM — contacts with interaction tracking, groups with stale-contact detection, and interaction logging.

AI Financial Advisor — Claude-powered chat that has full context of all accounts, balances, and profile facts. Auto-extracts new information from conversations.

Architecture

| Layer | Choice | |-------|--------| | Framework | Next.js 16 (App Router), TypeScript | | UI | Blueprint.js v6 (Palantir design system), dark theme | | Database | Neon Postgres (serverless) + Drizzle ORM | | Charts | Recharts | | Auth | WebAuthn passkeys (Face ID / Touch ID) | | Data sync | Strava API, SimpleFIN, daily cron jobs | | AI | Anthropic Claude API (financial advisor) | | Infra | Vercel (app), Hetzner VPS (cron agents) | | DnD | @dnd-kit (task board) |

The data pipeline runs on a VPS with five automated cron jobs:

  • Strava sync — pulls activities nightly
  • SimpleFIN sync — updates bank balances and transactions daily
  • Net worth snapshot — captures daily totals for historical tracking
  • Morning briefing — Telegram message with tasks, health, and finance summary
  • Weekly workout summary — delivered to Telegram every Sunday

What makes it interesting

Built in one session. The entire application — scaffold to production with real data flowing — was built in a single afternoon/evening using Claude Code as a pair programmer. 6,700+ lines of code across 44 files, 6 dashboard pages, 3 data integrations, passkey auth, and an AI chat interface.

Real data pipelines, not mock data. Every number on the dashboard is live — Strava activities, bank balances from SimpleFIN, investment values from Vanguard and M1. The cron infrastructure runs 24/7 on owned hardware.

Information architecture for humans. The Palantir-inspired design prioritizes density and scannability. Every widget earns its screen space. The effort chart replaces a text list. The task checkboxes are one-click, not two-screen.

AI as a system layer. The financial advisor isn't a chatbot bolted on — it has full read access to the database and builds context-aware prompts from real account data, profile facts, and conversation history.

Stack

Next.js 16, TypeScript, Blueprint.js v6, Neon Postgres, Drizzle ORM, Recharts, @dnd-kit, WebAuthn, Anthropic Claude API, SimpleFIN, Strava API, Playwright (screenshots), Vercel, Hetzner VPS.