What's new in v2.0.0

September 2026 · version 2.0.0

v2.0.0 is the largest release since Dashboardx Designer launched, and the first version with AI built in. Agents are not an assistant bolted on the side — they are part of the tool itself: they sit next to your spreadsheet and canvas, they plan before they build, they ask before they change anything, and they check their own work.

This page covers what changed in a way you can see and use. Links point at the page that explains each in detail.

Agents sit where you work

The agent is not somewhere else you have to go and find.

• It docks as a tab on the right edge of the Data Perspective and the Design Perspective, so you can talk to it while your spreadsheet or canvas stays on screen.
• It opens the first time you enter one of those perspectives, then remembers whether you want it open.
• The dock and the full-screen Agent Perspective are the same conversation. Switching is instant and nothing restarts.

See Agent Dock.

Six agents, and you can see which one is working

You talk to one agent; it brings in specialists when a specialist would do better, and the conversation shows who is doing what.

Agent	Handles
Dashboard Master	Your entry point — understands the request, plans, delegates, applies changes, reports back
Data Analyst	Finds the data, cleans and reshapes it, creates datasets
Visualization Professor	Decides what belongs on the canvas and how it should be sized
Dashboard Stylist	Theme, colour, and the overall coherence of the canvas
Data Reviewer	Checks the numbers
Visualization Reviewer	Checks the finished layout against what you asked for

Delegated work can run while the master keeps planning, or be waited for. Each agent can be pointed at its own model in Settings → Agent. You can also open any of them directly and talk to it yourself.

See Agent Perspective Overview.

Plan Mode: agree on the design first

For anything open-ended, the agent now drafts a design and waits.

• While planning it can only look — read your sheets, inspect datasets and widgets. It cannot change anything.
• The plan appears as the actual sequence of steps it intends to run, expandable step by step, with a layout sketch when it drew one.
• Approve & Execute starts the build; Revise sends it back with your feedback.

The Plan / Act toggle in the message box lets you skip planning for a small tweak, or pull an agent back to planning if it started moving too soon.

See Plan Mode.

You can see the reasoning

With a reasoning-capable model, each reply carries a thinking trace. Click the trace chips above a message to open the Agent Trace: the model's working-out with how long it took, the in-flight step, and the sub-agent tree — which specialist was asked what, and what came back.

Nothing is hidden behind a spinner: you can watch progress instead of wondering whether it hung.

See Thinking & Reasoning.

Nothing that matters happens without you

• Anything that writes to your files asks first. The request names the agent, the operation, and what it will do.
• You choose Allow Once, Always Allow, Deny, or Deny for this session, and review what you have granted later in Settings → Permissions.
• Operations that delete data always ask, even with auto-accept on.
• Long tasks no longer stall on you: if the app is in the background, a request arrives as a macOS notification with a Dock badge showing how many approvals are waiting.

Calculations that keep up

Formula recalculation now happens away from the interface thread, so a large workbook stays responsive while charts catch up.

• Aggregates respect the filters you have set on a table, so the result matches the current filters.
• Array formulas shrink correctly when their input gets shorter instead of leaving extra cells behind.
• Both of those used to leave stale numbers on the screen; this release fixes them.

Datasets that load in the open

• Importing a workbook no longer freezes the app: it runs in the background with a progress bar that says which stage it is on.
• A new dataset appears immediately and fills in as its fields become ready; binding is unavailable until it is complete, so nothing binds against half-built data.
• Field bindings survive renames: rebuilding a dataset does not silently unbind your charts.
• When you create a dataset from a contiguous selection, cells an array formula has spilled into that range now contribute their computed values; before this version, a selection containing them was refused outright. A header check tells you what was detected.
• Datasets are capped at 2,000 records × 15 fields — the app says so plainly and suggests aggregating first.

See Datasets and Datasets that load in the background.

Slices that behave

Slicing — a click on one widget filtering the rest of the dashboard — got the attention it needed.

• A slice area belongs to its widget and holds its selection. Reference it from formulas; do not type into it.
• Bindings fail loudly now: a target that is too small, already taken by another slice, or overlapping something reports the conflict instead of quietly clearing your binding.
• Binding from a single cell sizes the slice area for you rather than writing one row and calling it done.
• Selector widgets can carry a starting value — Selected Value under General Settings → Controls — and it now reaches the slice as the document opens, so a dashboard can open already filtered. A chart with nothing clicked is still a perfectly normal starting state.
• Slicing a large source is now capped like any other dataset, which is a good hint to aggregate before slicing.

See Data Slice.

Your folders, and what agents can reach

• A workspace is a folder you choose for a project. Recent workspaces, reopening where you left off, and a Manage Workspaces dialog are all in the File menu.
• Agents work inside the current workspace folder. A path that escapes the folder is refused; touching a different folder needs a separate approval.
• On the Mac App Store version, granting the folder once covers the files inside it — no more per-file prompts, and the grant survives relaunching.

See Workspaces Overview and Manage Workspaces.

Model providers, simplified

• Configure a provider with your own API key: DeepSeek, 智谱 GLM, and 阿里云百炼 ship in this release, with the models that behave best under tool use.
• Your key is encrypted by your operating system's secure store — the macOS Keychain or Windows Credential Manager before it is stored — no plain-text keys on disk.
• Keys verify as soon as you leave the field, and a provider that has not verified does not appear in the model list.
• Set a Global Default Model, a Global Small Model for chores like naming conversations and compacting long history, and a preferred model per agent.
• The Models tab lists what each model can do — Tools, Reasoning, Vision — so you can pick deliberately.

See Providers, Models and Agent.

New chart and widget capabilities

• KPI card — a first-class metric widget in the Display category, with left/center/right alignment, colour thresholds, and a comparison value with trend.
• Map charts pick a sensible basemap for you when you bind data: the geography in your column is checked and a matching basemap is suggested; you can always override it.

See Widgets and Visual Design.

Other fixes

• Heatmap charts no longer come out with the wrong axis types, and a dataset that cannot support a colour scale no longer takes the whole canvas down with it.
• Selecting multiple values in a dropdown is now a real multi-select default.
• Selectable options come from the data you bound, including when a dropdown is fed a single column of values.
• Floating canvas overlays follow the canvas theme, while the right-click menu keeps the application's own appearance.

Presenting that follows your edits

Click Present and the dashboard opens in your browser, served from your own machine, and keeps up with your edits live. Viewers can click charts and drive filters without being able to touch your design — the selection recalculates in a background worker inside their browser tab, so a heavy workbook answers instead of freezing the page — and nobody needs Dashboardx Designer installed. The port range it may use is set in Settings → Presentation.

See Presenting a Dashboard.

Getting started, and smaller things

• Getting Started Wizard — a tour button in the toolbar walks you through the views of whichever perspective you are in: toolbar, canvas, dataspace, dataset views, and the agent.
• Copy, paste, undo and redo now work in text fields in the macOS desktop app.
• Six interface languages — English, 中文, Français, 한국어, Русский, Español — plus Follow OS, which falls back to English for unsupported system languages.
• A perspective has exactly one name per language: the start-up perspective in Appearance now reads Agent Perspective / Data Perspective / Design Perspective, matching the toolbar instead of giving the same thing a third name.
• The context ring beside the input box now reports window usage honestly. Multi-step turns used to count the same prompt once per step, which could push a brand-new dashboard to 100%; the hover breakdown now lists context usage and billing breakdown as separate sections, because they answer different questions.
• Opening a folder that is already open focuses its window rather than opening a second one.
• Removing a workspace never deletes the files on disk, and the dialog says so before you confirm.
• Deleting a project cleans up its conversations and saved approvals rather than leaving them behind.

Where to go next

• Overview — what the app is, in two minutes
• Quick Start — your first dashboard, end to end
• Agent Perspective Overview — the team and how it delegates
• Settings → Permissions — what the agents may do, and how to take that back