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Tutorial — Set up a project from the Dashboard

This walkthrough configures a complete project workspace — a project, a data connection, its storage, and its people — entirely from the web dashboard, no CLI required. It exercises the edit parity added in Phase 42: the dashboard's write actions call the same examlops.* code the exa CLI uses, so anything you set up here is identical to (and interoperable with) the CLI, and any secret you enter is stored in the CLI/serving-readable secrets store.

Every action below is admin-only (project.manage / connection.manage). Log in with the admin password (DASHBOARD_ADMIN_PASSWORD). A viewer sees the same pages read-only — the write controls are hidden and the BFF returns 403 with a human explanation if called directly.

The CLI equivalent is shown under each step so you can see the parity.

Prerequisites

  • The dashboard running (make dashboard-up, or the local-dev recipe).
  • The projectsConsole feature flag enabled (default on).
  • PLATFORM_DB pointing at the same platform.db the CLI uses (docker-compose does this).

1. Create the project

Open Projects → Create. Give it a name (e.g. research) and, optionally, quota (CPU / memory / storage / GPU). Save.

# CLI equivalent
exa project create research --cpu-limit 4 --memory-gb 8 --storage-gb 100

You land on the project detail page — the single anatomy pane (Quota · Budget · Storage · Pipelines · Resources · Members · Connections · Workbenches).

2. Add a data connection

In the Connections card, click New connection:

  • Name — e.g. minio-data
  • Kind — s3 (or uri / dataplane)
  • Config (JSON, non-secret) — e.g. {"endpoint":"http://localhost:19000","bucket":"data","access_key":"minioadmin"}
  • Secret (optional) — the credential. It is written through examlops.secrets (encrypted at rest, CLI/serving-readable) and never returned to the browser afterwards — the row shows only secret set.

Save. Use the per-row Test button to run a reachability probe.

# CLI equivalent
exa connection create minio-data --kind s3 --project research \
    --config '{"endpoint":"http://localhost:19000","bucket":"data","access_key":"minioadmin"}' \
    --secret-value minioadmin
exa connection test minio-data --project research

3. Provision and bind storage

In the Storage card, click Provision storage to create the per-project MinIO layout (s3://$EXAMLOPS_PROJECTS_BUCKET/<project>/{artifacts,datasets,cache}/). To point storage at a dedicated bucket, open the modal again and pick the connection from step 2 under Bind connection.

# CLI equivalent
exa project storage research                          # provision
exa project storage research --bind-connection minio-data

4. Add and manage members

In the Members card, Add member (subject + role: owner ⊇ editor ⊇ viewer). Each member has a Remove button. Roles are stored as D6 authz_relations — the same model the CLI writes.

# CLI equivalent
exa project add-member research alice --role editor
exa project members research

5. See the audit trail

Every action above wrote a dashboard-sourced event. View it in the dashboard Audit page or:

exa audit --last 1d

You'll see project_created, connection_created, project_storage_bound, project_member_added, each with the actor (your admin login) and target.

6. Tear down (optional)

The project detail page has a Danger zone → Delete project. This removes the project grouping and its membership/resource/storage/pipeline rows — but not the underlying models or connections (those are independent resources).

# CLI equivalent — the connection outlives the project unless you delete it too
exa connection delete minio-data --project research

What just happened (how it works)

  • The dashboard write routers (routers/connections.py, routers/projects.py) call the shared examlops.* functions rather than duplicating SQL — so the CLI and dashboard are one implementation.
  • The BFF is the sole enforcement point: viewers are read-only; admins hold project.manage / connection.manage; secrets never cross the wire.
  • See the Projects & Workspaces guide §8, the architecture view §7 (CLI↔Dashboard parity), and the auth & tenancy guide for the capability model.