In this guide
- The recommended layout
- GitHub notifications and repo stats
- Uptime Monitor for your own services
- GitHub Releases — track your dependencies
- Hacker News front page
- Markets — stock and crypto prices
- Todoist for today's engineering tasks
- Pomodoro for deep work sessions
- Command palette shortcuts developers use most
The recommended layout
Pinodock dashboards are a free-form grid. You arrange widgets by dragging and resizing. For a developer workflow, a two-column layout works well: the left column is status and monitoring (things that need attention), and the right column is reference and focus (things that inform your work).
| Left column — status | Right column — context |
|---|---|
| GitHub (notifications) | Hacker News |
| GitHub Repo (your main repo) | GitHub Releases |
| Uptime Monitor | Markets |
| Todoist | Pomodoro |
To create this layout, open a new Pinodock dashboard (the + button in the dashboard tab bar), name it "Dev", then use the widget picker to add each plugin. Drag to position, resize by pulling the bottom-right corner of each widget card.
GitHub notifications and repo stats
Pinodock has two separate GitHub widgets serving different purposes.
The GitHub widget shows your notification count and GitHub username. It reads these from your open github.com tab using a content script — no API key required. The count turns red when you have unread notifications, green when you're caught up. Clicking the widget opens github.com/notifications directly.
The GitHub Repo widget shows detailed stats for a single repository. Enter an owner/repo pair in the widget settings:
| Field shown | Source |
|---|---|
| Stars | GitHub public API — no auth required |
| Forks | GitHub public API |
| Open issues | GitHub public API |
| Primary language | GitHub public API |
| Last 3 open PRs | GitHub public API — title, number, link |
Use the Repo widget for your most active repository — the one you push to daily. The notification count widget then covers the rest of your GitHub activity.
Uptime Monitor for your own services
The Uptime Monitor widget sends HEAD requests to a list of URLs you configure and shows a coloured status indicator and response time for each:
- 🟢 Green — URL returned a 2xx status within 8 seconds
- 🔴 Red — URL returned an error or timed out
- Response time in milliseconds — turns amber above 1000ms
To configure it, open the widget settings and enter URLs one per line. Examples:
| What to monitor | URL format |
|---|---|
| Your production app | https://yourapp.com |
| Your API health endpoint | https://api.yourapp.com/health |
| Staging environment | https://staging.yourapp.com |
| Internal service on VPN | http://internal.corp/api/ping |
| Local dev server | http://localhost:3000 |
Requests come from your browser, not an external server — so private staging servers, VPN-gated services, and localhost ports all work without any firewall exceptions.
GitHub Releases — track your dependencies
The GitHub Releases widget polls the GitHub API for the latest release of each repository you list. Add the repos you depend on most: your framework, your ORM, your test runner. When a new version ships, the widget shows the tag and release date. Click to open the GitHub release notes.
Enter repositories as owner/repo, one per line, in the widget settings. A reasonable starting list for a TypeScript developer:
vercel/next.jsvitejs/viteprisma/prismamicrosoft/TypeScriptbiomejs/biome
No GitHub authentication required — the widget uses the public releases API, which allows up to 60 unauthenticated requests per hour. With a 5-minute cache, that's well within limits for up to 30 repositories.
Hacker News front page
The HN widget shows the top 5 stories from the Hacker News front page, refreshed on each page load. Each story shows the title (linked), upvote score (colour-coded — amber above 300 points, green above 100), and comment count linked to the HN discussion thread.
This replaces the habit of opening news.ycombinator.com as a separate tab. The stories are visible at a glance — you decide whether to click through, rather than the feed deciding for you.
Markets — stock and crypto prices
The Markets widget shows real-time prices and 21-day sparklines for any stock ticker or crypto symbol you configure. Enter symbols as a comma-separated list in the widget settings: BTC,ETH,AAPL,MSFT.
For developers holding RSU grants from their employer, adding the company's stock ticker means you always know where the vesting price is relative to the current price — without opening a brokerage tab mid-workday. Set a threshold color (amber above $X, red below $Y) in the custom widget builder if you want automatic alerts.
| Symbol type | Examples | Data source |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto | BTC, ETH, SOL, ADA | CoinGecko public API |
| Stocks | AAPL, MSFT, NVDA, GOOG | Yahoo Finance public API |
Todoist for today's engineering tasks
The Todoist widget shows your tasks due today, read directly from your open app.todoist.com tab. It requires no API key — Pinodock reads the task list from the Todoist web app's DOM using a content script. Tasks appear as a clean list with a circular checkbox indicator. When the list is empty, the widget shows a celebration state.
For engineering work, Todoist pairs well with a standard daily structure: one task per PR to review, one per ticket in progress, one for any blocking question that needs answering. The widget keeps this visible on every new tab without requiring you to switch to Todoist.
Pomodoro for deep work sessions
The Pomodoro widget is always visible in the corner of your dashboard. Set the work interval (default 25 minutes), start it when you begin a focused coding session, and let the timer run in the background. When it rings, the tab title flashes the alert.
Pinodock's Pomodoro supports custom durations — useful for developers who prefer longer focus blocks (50 or 90 minutes) rather than the classic 25. Set the work and break durations from the widget settings on the timer face.
Command palette shortcuts developers use most
Beyond the widgets, Pinodock's command palette has several commands that slot naturally into a developer workflow:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/jwt <token> | Decode a JWT — shows header, payload, and expiry without pasting into jwt.io |
/hash <text> | SHA-256 hash of any string — useful for comparing checksums |
/uuid | Generate a UUID v4 and copy it to clipboard |
/json <json> | Pretty-print and validate a JSON string |
/encode <text> | Base64 encode |
/decode <text> | Base64 decode |
/color #hex | Inspect a hex color — WCAG contrast ratio, RGB, HSL |
/regex /pattern/ text | Test a regex pattern and see matches highlighted |
/diff text1 | text2 | Line-by-line diff of two text blocks |
/dark-mode | Apply a dark theme to any page — pick Espresso or Cold Brew for late-night debugging |
All commands run locally — no data leaves the browser. The JWT decoder, hash generator, and base64 tools are particularly useful when working with APIs: paste a token straight from a network inspector and decode it without opening an external tool.
The developer dashboard pays for itself the first time you catch a failing uptime check or a new PR from a teammate before they Slack you. Set it up once and it becomes the ambient pulse of your work — visible every time you open a tab, never demanding your attention.
→ Build a custom widget for your own API metrics