Some Web UI friction points and suggestions

[Shihira]

Hi everyone,

I’m a long-time user of Dagster, but I recently moved our whole setup to Hatchet because I really love the architecture. Just having to open a single gRPC port for all workers to connect is a lifesaver. By comparison, Dagster forces you to expose PostgreSQL, gRPC, S3, and so on, which gets annoying very quickly.

That said, after using Hatchet v0.79 heavily for the past month, I feel like the Web UI still needs some work. I’ve put together a list of things that could be improved. Since I’m used to Dagster, I might have some biases :)

Log Viewer

• Multi-line logs: Right now, long multi-line logs get squished into a single line. It would be great if we could click to expand them for full details and have a one-click copy button.
• Formatting: It would be nice if logs supported basic formatting, or at least turned URLs into clickable links.
• Sorting: Allow users to choose whether logs sort in chronological or reverse-chronological order.

Workflow List

• Sidebar: The workflow list is the most used page. If it could be placed in the sidebar (as in Dagster), or go into a secondary menu. It would save a ton of clicking.
• Grouping: The list should let users sort workflows or collapse them into groups.
• Dead workflows: Stale or dead workflows often stick around on the list. I understand why they are kept, but it would be super helpful to have a way to bulk-clear them. I saw someone already discussing about it, will keep an eye on that.

Workflow Trigger & Runs

• Workflow Description: The run description has the same issue as the log, everything gets flattened into one line with no formatting. Most people want to write these in Markdown, so rendering them properly would be a huge plus.
• Presets: It would be awesome to have a "Launchpad" feature where users can save a few common input presets.
• Child workflows: Should logs from child workflows be merged into the parent workflow's view?

For the frontend-only features that are simple enough, I’m happy to help implement (maybe with vibe coding) them

I’d love to hear what the maintainers think. Which of these ideas make sense for the project, and are there any that don't fit how Hatchet is built?

Thanks for building such a great tool!

[mrkaye97]

Hi @Shihira - thank you for writing this up! Sorry we missed it, I don't check the discussions very often. Would you mind moving this into an issue instead, and we can triage from there? Thanks!

[Shihira]

I'd love to. I will file an issue right away.