The Builder: new instances

What the Builder does

Everything you build normally lands in your main workspace. That is the right home for dashboards and for most apps, because they share the same data connections and the same audience.

The Builder creates a new, separate instance alongside it, with its own database and its own address. Two instances on the same box share the hardware and share nothing else. A change in one cannot affect the other. You do not set it up yourself: your coach builds it for you.

When a build deserves its own instance

Most work belongs in your main workspace. Creating an instance for every dashboard means eleven things to maintain instead of one. Four situations genuinely justify the separation.

Keep it in your main workspace when the answer to all of these is no. Shared context is a feature: a dashboard sitting beside your other dashboards inherits the definitions you have already taught the box.

Requesting one from your coach

Copy this, fill in the parts in <angle brackets>, and send it to your coach. Delete the optional lines you do not need.

Please build a new instance for us.

Name: <instance-name>
Purpose: <one sentence, e.g. "The customer-facing order portal.">

Optional:
Template: <URL of the example to start from, e.g. https://rapiddashboard.ai/built-with/rapid-kiosk>
Audience: <who logs in, and whether they are inside our organization>
Data: <the sources it needs, or "none yet">

Please send the credentials to connect when it is ready.

Naming, so future you can tell them apart

You will have four of these within a year, and the person opening them may not be you. A name that says what it is and who it is for beats a clever one.

Rules that keep everything predictable: lowercase, hyphens rather than spaces or underscores, no dates in the name, and a -sandbox suffix on anything you intend to delete.

Starting from an example

If one of the Built with RapidDashboard examples is close to what you want, put its URL on the Template: line of your message. Your coach starts the new instance from that build instead of from a blank page. Any single dashboard in the gallery works too: copy the address from your browser.

What you get back

Moving existing work into a new instance

A common path: something you built in your main workspace grew up and now needs its own walls. Tell your coach which app should move, plus the name and purpose of its new home. They plan the move with you, pick a quiet hour, and send the credentials for the new instance when it is done.

Managing what you have

Instances accumulate, and each running one holds a share of your box's memory even when idle. Every quarter, look at what you have and ask your coach to stop what is not being used.

• Stop what you are not using. The fastest way to make a slow box fast again.
• Keep experiments named as experiments. A -sandbox suffix makes the quarterly cleanup a two-minute job.
• Ask before adding the fifth. If instances are multiplying, that is worth a conversation about whether the box is sized right for what you are now doing with it.