Use the Orion Console

Orion itself is API-first; everything in this book is plain HTTP. Orion UI is the operations console on top of that API. It has live dashboards, a System Map of every channel, workflow and connector, workflow logic visualization, trace drill-downs, and a Data Console for test requests.

Before you start

Tested with Orion 1.8.1. You need Docker and a running Orion server on port 8080. The command below starts the console on port 8081. On Linux, host.docker.internal may need Docker’s host-gateway mapping; the Orion UI repository documents the alternatives.

The video shows the full creation loop. You import a workflow (paste, validate, dry-run, activate) and watch its logic render as a graph. Then you give it an endpoint with the channel form, send a request from the Data Console, and see the service on the System Map.

Run it

The UI ships as a container image (nginx, multi-arch):

docker run --name orion-console -p 8081:8080 \
  -e ORION_URL=http://host.docker.internal:8080 \
  ghcr.io/goplasmatic/orion-ui:latest

Open http://localhost:8081. ORION_URL points at your Orion server, and the bundled nginx reverse-proxies all /api/ requests to it. To develop against a local checkout, npm install && npm run dev in the Orion-ui repository does the same through the Vite dev server. A docker-compose.yml that brings up server and UI together is in that repository as well.

Note

Keep the console and the server in step. The console talks to the admin API, and 1.0 moved ten of its endpoints under a {"data": …} envelope (details). A console image built before 1.0 renders empty values against a 1.0 server rather than erroring. :latest is fine for a first look; for anything you depend on, pin the tag and move both together.

Verify

Open the Operations dashboard. It shows live request rate, error rate, latency percentiles, outcomes by channel, top channels and recent traces. It also lists anything that needs attention: open circuit breakers, idle channels, recent failures.

What you get

System Map

Pick any channel and trace it through the workflow it runs, the channels it calls in-process, and the connectors it touches. The view is a live topology graph. Every node links to its detail page.

Workflow logic, visualized

Workflows are managed through a guided import wizard: paste JSON, validate it, import as a draft, dry-run it against a sample payload, then activate. On the detail page, each task’s JSONLogic renders as a flow graph, with tabs for relationships, dry-run testing, version history, and the raw JSON.

Data Console

Send test requests to any channel, sync or async, with optional per-task profiling. Inspect the response, the request profile with per-function and per-connector timings, and the resulting trace, one click away.

The console also holds channel and connector management with lifecycle actions, circuit-breaker monitoring and reset, the audit log, and trace search and drill-down. A command palette (⌘K) jumps anywhere. Every visual on this page is generated from a live instance by the recording pipeline; re-run record-ui.sh and they regenerate.

Clean up

Stop the foreground container with Ctrl-C, then remove it:

docker rm orion-console

The Console stores Orion definitions through the server, so removing the UI container does not delete workflows, channels, connectors or traces.

Next steps

• Build your first service: the same flow as four administration calls and one endpoint request, if you would rather see the wire format.
• Run the example packages: services to import and click through.
• Monitor and alert: the metrics behind the dashboard, and what to alert on.

Last verified 14 September 2026