Canvas Macro Dashboard

A self-updating dashboard of U.S. macroeconomic data, built for embedding in Canvas course pages. Students see current data every time they open the course.

Live site: https://bryancutsinger.com/canvas-macro-dashboard/

Indicator	FRED series	Shown as
Unemployment rate	UNRATE	percent of labor force
Real GDP growth	A191RL1Q225SBEA	annualized quarterly rate
CPI inflation	CPIAUCNS	12-month change (NSA — matches the headline number)
PCE inflation	PCEPI	12-month change (the Fed's target measure)
Federal funds rate	DFF (tile) + FEDFUNDS (trend line)	effective rate
Recession dates	USREC	NBER dates (in the data file; not currently displayed)

The page shows one card per indicator: the current value, the change from the prior period, and a two-year trend line that reads out past values on hover (or with the arrow keys).

How it works

1. A GitHub Actions workflow runs twice each weekday (after the 8:30 a.m. ET data releases, and again in the afternoon).
2. scripts/build_data.py pulls each series from the FRED API, asserts that the series metadata still matches expectations, computes the transformations, cross-checks them against FRED's own transformations, and writes docs/data/dashboard.json plus a provenance line per series in logs/provenance.jsonl.
3. The workflow commits the new data and deploys docs/ to GitHub Pages.
4. The page (docs/index.html) is fully static — plain HTML/CSS/JS, no frameworks, no build step, no API keys in the browser.

If a series fails to update, its last good data is carried forward and labeled stale, the site still deploys, and the workflow fails so GitHub emails a notification. If the data is more than 4 days old for any reason, the page itself shows a yellow warning banner — students and instructor both see it.

One-time setup

1. Create two repository secrets (Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret):
   • FRED_API_KEY — your FRED API key.
   • PAT_PUSH — a fine-grained personal access token (Settings → Developer settings → Fine-grained tokens): repository access = only this repo, permissions = Contents: Read and write. Pick the longest expiration offered and note the date. Why: GitHub disables cron workflows in public repos after 60 days without repository activity, and commits made with a real user token unambiguously count as activity.
2. Enable Pages: Settings → Pages → Source = GitHub Actions.
3. Turn on failure emails: github.com → your profile → Settings → Notifications → Actions → check "Only notify for failed workflows".
4. Run it once: Actions → "Update dashboard data" → Run workflow. Confirm the live site renders.
5. Embed in Canvas: copy the contents of canvas-embed.html into the Canvas Rich Content Editor's HTML view (</> button). Save, reopen, and confirm the iframe survived.

Maintenance runbook

• Yellow banner on the page / failure email: open Actions, look at the latest "Update dashboard data" run. Most failures are transient (FRED down); click "Re-run all jobs".
• "Scheduled workflow disabled" email from GitHub: open Actions, select the workflow, click "Enable workflow".
• PAT expired (pushes start failing): create a new fine-grained token (step 1 above) and update the PAT_PUSH secret.
• A series' metadata changed (rebasing, renamed series): the run fails with a clear message. Update the expected values in scripts/series_config.py to the new metadata once you have confirmed the change is legitimate.

Local development

FRED_API_KEY=... python3 scripts/build_data.py   # rebuild docs/data/dashboard.json
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests            # run the tests
python3 -m http.server -d docs 8000              # preview at localhost:8000

Standard library only — nothing to install.