Why Our Analytics Are Public
Building a dashboard that shows exactly how few people are watching
(Quiet confession time)
I'll be honest — this might be the most vulnerable thing I've shipped.
Not because it's technically hard. We've built more complex things. But because it shows exactly where we are: a lab with a handful of visitors, a few page views, traffic charts that look more like flatlines than hockey sticks.
And I'm putting it on the homepage.
The Temptation to Hide
Every creator I know has the same instinct. You start building something, you get a few visitors, and the first thing you do is make sure nobody can see those numbers.
Hide the subscriber count until you hit 1,000. Don't show the dashboard until it looks impressive. Fake social proof until you have real social proof.
I get it. I've done it. The vulnerability of small numbers feels like failure made visible.
But here's the thing about hiding: it robs you of the best part of the journey.
What We Actually Built
Today we're shipping the ID8Labs Analytics Dashboard — a premium Plausible-style analytics interface that shows our traffic in real-time. Built with Umami (privacy-first, no cookies), featuring:
- -Animated counters that tick up live
- -Interactive world map showing where visitors come from
- -Traffic-over-time charts with area visualization
- -Browser distribution with horizontal bars
- -Top pages and referrers in terminal-style cards
It's beautiful. I'm genuinely proud of the design — the dark theme, the orange accents, the way it feels like a mission control dashboard.
And right now, it shows single-digit visitors.
The Philosophy of Real Numbers
I don't know about you, but I've been lied to by enough "overnight success" stories.
The founder who "just launched" with 10,000 users (after 18 months of private beta). The creator who "organically grew" to a million followers (with a $50k ad budget). The indie hacker who "bootstrapped" to six figures (with a trust fund safety net).
I'm not interested in that story. I'm interested in the real story.
The real story is: we're at the beginning. We have a handful of people paying attention. We're building tools because we need them, and we're shipping them publicly because that's how we learn what actually matters.
The dashboard doesn't lie. It can't. And there's something clarifying about that.
Why Transparency Builds Trust
Here's the pattern I keep seeing: the things that feel most vulnerable are the things that create the deepest connections.
When I share that Composer came from a real frustration — context rot killing my 90 Day Fiancé scripts — people listen differently than when I pitch features.
When I admit that DeepStack was born from revenge trades that cost me real money, people trust that I understand the problem.
And when I show a dashboard with honest numbers, something shifts. You're not looking at a marketing page. You're looking at a lab that's figuring it out in real-time.
That's the invitation. Not "join the winning team." But "join the experiment."
The Claude Partnership
I built this with Claude over two sessions. Not as a code monkey, but as a creative partner.
The first session: we implemented Umami tracking, connected the API, built the data pipeline. Standard stuff.
The second session: we discovered a bug — a newline character in an environment variable was causing every tracking request to fail. We debugged it together. Fixed it. Verified it. Celebrated together.
That's the story of every feature we ship now. Not "I had an idea and Claude executed it." But "we ran into problems and figured them out together."
The dashboard shows the output of that partnership. Every visitor, every page view, every session — tracked by code we wrote together, displayed in a UI we designed together.
What You'll See
Go to id8labs.app/dashboard. You'll see exactly where we are.
Maybe you'll be visitor number 5. Maybe you'll show up on the world map as a dot in Germany or Japan or wherever you're reading this.
Maybe you'll click through to the essays and register as a page view on the "Top Pages" chart.
Or maybe you'll look at the numbers, decide this isn't for you, and close the tab.
That's fine too. The dashboard will show that honestly.
The Bigger Bet
I'm making a bet: that transparency compounds.
The people who find us now — when the numbers are small, when we're clearly figuring it out — those are the people who'll stick around. Not because we've proven success, but because we've proven we're doing it for real.
Every "about us" page claims authenticity. A public dashboard proves it.
This is the lab mentality. We don't wait until we're polished to open the doors. We build in public because that's where the real lessons are.
The Invitation
Is there anyone else tired of the curated success stories?
Is there anyone else who wants to follow a journey from the actual beginning?
Is there anyone else who believes that small, honest numbers are more interesting than big, inflated ones?
Come watch us grow. Or watch us fail. Either way, you'll see the real thing.
The dashboard is live. The numbers are real. The experiment continues.
I love each and every one of you.
Built with Umami, Recharts, and react-simple-maps. Designed to look premium even when the numbers aren't. Because aesthetics shouldn't require scale.