Dashboard

The Dashboard is the first screen you see after signing in. It is your studio: your covers, your progress, your readers — and what to do next. The PanelWave logo in the left rail brings you back to it from anywhere.

On a large screen everything is on the page at once; on a laptop the zones stack in the order you most likely need them: Continue → Next steps → Latest works → KPIs → Inbox → Readers → Learn → Blog. Every zone loads on its own, so the page never waits for a slow widget.

The greeting and the team switcher

The top line greets you by name and sums up your studio in one sentence — how many works are in progress, how many are published, whether comments are waiting for you.

If you belong to more than one team, a team switcher sits at the right end of this line. The team you pick applies to the whole Dashboard (works, readers, KPIs, plan) and to the Works library, and is remembered across devices. Members of a single team never see the switcher.

Continue where you left off

The large card shows the work you touched last — its cover at its real aspect ratio, the chapter and panel of your last edit, and the artwork progress bar — with three actions:

• Open editor opens the work on the panel you last saved, so you pick up exactly where you stopped.
• Preview opens the Preview page.
• Share copies the reader link of a published work (the review link for a work that is not published yet).

The last position is remembered per browser: the editor notes it after every panel save. On a new computer the card still opens the work, just on its first panel.

Under the card are the three ways to start something new: New work (the create wizard), Import script (Fountain) and Import pages (AI page split). An empty studio turns this zone into a Create your first work card with the wizard's templates inline, and shows a How do you want to start? card above it with two paths: draw and letter in the editor, or let an AI assistant build it (Connect an AI assistant). That card disappears with your first work or your assistant's first call, and its × hides it for good.

Creator KPIs

Six tiles in two rows summarize the last 30 days (switch to 7 or 90 days with the toggle shared with the Readers chart), each with its value, a change against the previous period and a chart that fills the tile. The first row is about making, the second about reading:

Readers, reading time and completion come from the same nightly aggregation as the Analytics page; until a work is published they show — with the hint appears after your first publish. The change badges need a day of history, so a brand-new team sees plain values first. Until that history exists, the tiles of the first row list your four most recently updated works instead of an empty trend — panels drawn, artwork share and whether each one is live, with + N more below. Each tile links to the page behind it.

Latest works

A row of your six most recently updated works — covers at their real aspect ratio, kept clean, with the title, the status chip, a Live chip that opens the published work and the progress ring in a caption below each cover. Hovering a cover reveals Edit, Preview, Characters and Share. The last tile is + New work; All works → opens the library.

Readers

Reads per day, stacked by work (your top works and Other), for the selected range. Under the chart a short top works table lists reads, completion and trend per work; each row opens that work's Analytics. Before your first publish the zone says so instead of showing an empty chart.

Inbox

The Inbox lists up to eight unread notifications — a comment held for review, a finished export, a publish that went through, an invitation. Clicking one marks it read and takes you to the place it is about; Mark all read clears the list and See all opens the full Notifications page. The bell in the top bar shows the same unread count on every screen.

Next steps

A checklist of ten steps toward a publishable work, worked out from your data — nothing to tick by hand:

1. Create a work
2. Connect an AI assistant (optional) — done once an assistant made its first call (Get started with your AI assistant)
3. Draw your first 10 panels
4. Set a cover
5. Add your cast
6. Add a second language
7. Run validation with no errors
8. Add a paywall rule (optional)
9. Publish a work
10. Share your reader link

Every open step links to the page where you complete it; completed steps collapse under a check. When you come back and a step has been completed since your last visit, a short milestone toast celebrates it — once, for the furthest new step. Dismiss hides the card; the Guide rail (?) or Show again brings it back.

Under the checklist a compact plan card shows your plan, publications used, seats and available Work Passes, with a View plans link. See Plans & Limits.

Learn

Short tutorial videos as 16:9 cards, three per row in two rows — Your first work in 10 minutes, Speech balloons & lettering, Branching stories with the graph editor, Translating your comic, Publishing & sharing, Reading analytics. A card opens the video in a lightbox with captions in your interface language; cards marked Coming soon are videos that are not published yet. Videos you have watched are marked as such in this browser. The same videos appear in the Guide rail of the page they belong to.

From the blog

The three latest posts from panelwave.org/blog in your language, with cover, category, read time and date. If the blog cannot be reached the card quietly links to the blog instead.

Help on this page

Press ? for the Guide rail — a short card that explains the page, suggests three next actions and links here. Most screens of the CMS have one, plus the small help icon next to their title.