I Built an AI Dashboard That Runs My 5 Brands. Here’s How You Can Too

I run 5 brands.

Social House. In The Lab. Brown Ballers. HoopTeq. My personal brand.

Each one has its own content calendar, analytics, and pipeline of ideas. Multiply that across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook.

That's a lot of tabs.

I was paying for Metricool, Notion, scheduler, analytics, and project management.

All of them doing 20% of what I needed. None of them talking to each other.

So I built my own.

One dashboard. All my brands. Real-time analytics. A 7-column content pipeline. AI agents that research, write scripts, and edit. A Content Radar that scans trending topics every morning and drops ideas into my pipeline while I sleep.

22 marketing frameworks baked in. Full content calendar. Dark mode.

Running locally on my laptop. No monthly fees. No subscriptions.

I call it the Shut Up & Execute dashboard.

And you can build it today. Zero coding experience required.

I'm serious. If you can copy and paste, you can build this.

Command Center: Shows everything at a glance. Scan results, ideas waiting for review, scheduled posts, performance across all platforms for all brands.

Content Pipeline: A Kanban board with 7 columns: Ideas, Review, Approved, Scripting, Editing, Scheduled, Published. Drag cards between columns, filter by brand, and everything auto-saves.

Content Radar: This changed everything for me. The dashboard uses AI to scan trending topics across your content lanes. It generates personalized content ideas based on what's trending right now. Run it manually or set it to auto-scan every morning. Each idea comes with a hook, a content angle, and a suggested format. Hit "Batch Add All to Pipeline" and they drop straight into your Ideas column.

Performance Analytics: Live numbers from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook. And sparkline charts show if you're trending up or down.

AI Team: Three agents. A Researcher that finds trending topics. A Scriptwriter that writes in your voice. An Editor that tightens your copy. All powered by Claude.

Script Generator: Pick platform. Pick brand. Describe topic. Get a full script in seconds.

Frameworks Library: 22 marketing frameworks built in. AIDA. PAS. Hook-Story-Offer. Build Monetize Scale. All the ones I actually use.

Alright, let's build it.

What You Need Before You Start

Four things. About 10 minutes to setup.

Don't let the technical words scare you. I'm going to walk you through every single step.

Go to nodejs.org and download the LTS version. Install it. This is what runs the local server that connects your dashboard to the APIs.

To check if it worked, open your terminal (Terminal on Mac, Command Prompt on Windows) and type:

node --version

If you see a version number, you're good. If not, you probably just need to restart your terminal.

This is the tool that grabs your Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook stats.

Go to apify.com and create a free account. Once you're in, go to Settings, then Integrations, and copy your Personal API Token. It starts with apify_api_. Save it in a note somewhere.

The free tier is good enough. You won't need to pay unless you're refreshing your data every 5 minutes, which you won't be.

This sounds scarier than it is. You're just telling Google "hey, let me grab my own YouTube stats."

Go to Google Cloud Console. Create a new project. Call it "Dashboard." Or whatever you want.

In the sidebar, go to APIs & Services, then Library. Search for "YouTube Data API v3" and enable it.

Then go to Credentials and click Create Credentials, then API Key. Copy the key. Save it.

The free tier gives you 10,000 units per day. More than enough

Here's where people get confused. Let me clear this up.

Claude Pro ($20/month at claude.ai) is for chatting with Claude on the website. Great product. I use it. But that's not what powers the dashboard.

The dashboard uses the Claude API, which is totally separate. You buy credits at console.anthropic.com. 

Go to console.anthropic.com. Sign up. Generate an API key. Save it. Add $5 in credits. You can always add more.

Two different things. Two different logins. The dashboard needs the API credits, not the Pro subscription.

Once you got all four, you're halfway done.

Create a new folder on your computer. Call it my-dashboard or whatever makes you happy.

You're going to put four files in this folder. That's it. Four files. The entire dashboard.

You have two options here.

Option A: Download the starter files I already built. All four files are ready to go. Drop them in your folder. Skip to Step 4. This takes 2 minutes.

Option B: Build it yourself with Claude using the prompts I'm about to give you. This takes an afternoon, but you'll understand every line of code.

Most people should do Option A. You can always rebuild it later if you want to learn how it works.

If you downloaded the starter files, skip this part.

If you want to build it yourself, I put all 4 prompts in a Google Doc. Open Claude (claude.ai works, Claude Code works too) and run them one by one.

Click here for all 4 build prompts →

Each prompt generates one file. Run them in order. Save each file with the exact name Claude gives you.

By the end, you'll have four files:

Open app.js in any text editor (Notepad works, VS Code works, whatever).

Near the top, you'll see a section called CONFIG.BRANDS. Change the names and colors to match your brands.

Running 2 brands instead of 5? Delete the extras. Running 8? Add more. The dashboard adapts.

If you run an agency, the client management is already built in. You add clients from the UI. No code changes needed.

This is where everything connects.

Start the dashboard first (next step), then click the Settings gear icon in the sidebar.

Enter your three API keys:

Then scroll down and enter your social media handles for each brand. Instagram username. TikTok username. YouTube channel ID. Facebook page name.

Click Save Settings. Click Save Handles.

You're done with setup.

Open your terminal. Navigate to your project folder:

cd sue-dashboard

If you don't know what that means, here's how:

Now type:

node proxy.js

You'll see a message that says the server is running on http://localhost:3001.

Open your browser. Go to:

http://localhost:3001

Boom. Your dashboard is live.

If you see a gold and black screen with a sidebar, you did it right.

Click the refresh button on the overview page.

The dashboard will grab your Instagram stats. Your TikTok numbers. Your Facebook page. Your YouTube channel. Everything.

The first time takes about 30 seconds because it's actually scraping the data. After that, it's instant because everything's cached.

Watch the numbers populate. It's extremely satisfying.

Go to the Content Radar page. Click "Run Scan."

The AI will analyze what's trending in your lanes and generate 10 personalized content ideas. Each one has a hook, an angle, and a suggested format.

See one you like? Click "Add to Pipeline."

Want all of them? Hit "Batch Add All to Pipeline."

They drop into your Ideas column. Drag them through Review, Approved, Scripting, Editing, Scheduled, Published.

That's your entire content workflow. In one board. With AI doing the heavy lifting.

Set it to auto-scan every morning in Settings if you want to wake up to fresh ideas daily.

I do. It's incredible.

You own this. That means you can change whatever you want.

Want to add a new brand? Open app.js, add it to CONFIG.BRANDS. Done.

Want to change the gold to purple? Open styles.css, change --accent-primary. Every button, every highlight, every border updates.

Want a new AI agent? Add it to the AGENTS object in app.js. It shows up automatically.

Want different content lanes? Change the CONTENT_LANES array. The radar scans whatever you tell it to.

Want to access it from your phone? Deploy it to a cheap server (DigitalOcean droplets are $5/month). Run node proxy.js there instead of on your laptop.

There's an optional file in the download called nav-claude-marketing-skills.md.

It's a 15,000-word knowledge base with every marketing framework, content template, and voice rule I use.

Upload it to a Claude Project (you need Pro or Team for this) and every conversation starts with Claude already knowing your voice, your frameworks, and your process.

No more re-explaining yourself every time.

This isn't about the dashboard.

This is about realizing that most tools you pay for monthly are simpler than you think.

And with AI, the gap between "I have an idea" and "I have a working product" collapsed to an afternoon.

I'm not saying cancel all your subscriptions. I'm saying start asking: could I build this?

If the answer is "maybe," the answer is yes.

The people who win aren't the ones using the most tools. They're the ones building exactly what they need.

Custom. Modular. Owned.

DOWNLOAD STARTER FILES →

GET ALL 4 BUILD PROMPTS →

Drop the files in a folder. Run node proxy.js. Open localhost:3001. Done.

Four files.
One browser.
Your entire content system.

—Navin

P.S. I’m documenting every system I build across my 5 brands. Subscribe to Shut Up & Execute for the prompts, workflows, and systems.