Admin Web UI

Beacon ships with a bundled admin web interface — an Athena-style query workbench and data-lake admin console. It is built into the Beacon server and the official Docker image, so there is nothing extra to deploy: when a build is present, the server serves it at /admin.

http://localhost:5001/admin

The UI is a React single-page app (Vite, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui) that talks to Beacon exclusively through the @beacon/client TypeScript SDK.

Logging in

The UI is admin-only: a login screen gates the whole app. Sign in with the Beacon server URL and the admin Basic-auth credentials configured on the server:

BEACON_ADMIN_USERNAME=beacon-admin
BEACON_ADMIN_PASSWORD=beacon-password

Credentials are verified against GET /api/admin/check and stored in the browser's localStorage, then sent on every request.

WARNING

This is browser-side gating over Beacon's HTTP Basic admin auth — it restricts who uses the UI, it is not a secret-keeping mechanism. Serve Beacon over HTTPS and expose /admin only to trusted operators.

Features

• Query editor — an Athena-style workbench: a searchable table/column data panel, a CodeMirror SQL editor (run with ⌘/Ctrl + Enter), a results grid, and CSV / Parquet download. Explain renders the query's logical plan as a collapsible tree, and queries can be saved to the browser and reloaded.
• Tables — browse registered tables, their Arrow schemas and table configuration, register an external table over files in the datasets store, and drop a table (DROP TABLE, leaving the underlying files in place).
• Datasets — explore discovered dataset files and inspect each file's schema.
• Crawlers — list, create, run, and delete crawlers.
• Users & roles — manage role-based access control: users, roles, and privileges.
• Server — runtime info, health, and the available scalar / table functions.
• Light / dark / system theme — switch from the top bar; the choice persists in the browser.

Running it standalone

The bundled copy is enough for most deployments. To run the UI from source (for development) it lives in the clients/ npm workspace and depends on the SDK, which must be built first:

# from clients/
npm install                       # installs the JS workspace (beacon-ts + beacon-web)
npm run build -w @beacon/client   # build the SDK so beacon-web can import it
npm run dev -w @beacon/web        # start the Vite dev server

Point it at any running Beacon server; the default CORS policy permits the dev server to call the API directly. The app source is in clients/beacon-web.