Admin panel (orbit)

The admin panel has moved out of the framework core and into orbit — a separate, pluggable Go module (github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit) that versions and ships independently of Nucleus. The framework core no longer contains a built-in admin panel.

Why the extraction

Bundling a React + TypeScript SPA inside the framework binary required every Nucleus application to carry the admin's transitive dependencies whether or not the app used the panel. Extracting it into a dedicated module lets the core stay lightweight and lets the admin evolve on its own schedule, with its own release tags.

Integrating orbit into your app

orbit is a Nucleus extension module distributed as a separate Go module at github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit. Add it to your project with:

go get github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit@latest

orbit's current tagged release is v1.2.0 (pin @v1.2.0 for reproducible builds). Since its v1.0.0 the public surfaces (the root module and the datasource contract) are frozen for the life of v1.x, enforced by a contract-freeze test in the orbit repo.

Mount it with the standard .Mount() call in main.go:

package main

import (
    "github.com/jcsvwinston/nucleus/pkg/nucleus"
    "github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit"
)

func main() {
    nucleus.New().
        FromConfigFile("nucleus.yml").
        Mount(orbit.Module(orbit.Config{Prefix: "/admin"})).
        Start()
}

orbit is not part of the github.com/jcsvwinston/nucleus module and versions independently. The cluster-telemetry subsystem ships as sibling modules (github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit/proto, github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit/agent, github.com/jcsvwinston/orbit/server); most applications only need the root orbit module for the admin panel.

What orbit provides

• Login page with light/dark theme support.
• Model browser — every registered model becomes a list view with search, filtering, ordering and pagination.
• CRUD UI with form generation from db: and validate: tags.
• Bulk actions with per-row error reporting.
• Import / export — CSV, JSON, SQL, with validation on import.
• Audit log — every CRUD operation is recorded.
• System pulse — Go runtime, DB pool, feature flags, jobs, outbox, cluster nodes.
• Health dashboard — DB / Redis / mail connectivity.
• Migration view — applied vs. pending, with diff hints.
• Job queue inspector — Asynq runtime details.
• File storage browser — works against the configured pkg/storage backend.
• Live traffic inspection — HTTP, SQL, sessions.
• Email stats and deployment info.

Configuration

All orbit configuration lives under modules.orbit.* in nucleus.yml. The admin_* family of config keys that existed in earlier releases has been removed from the framework core (see docs/reference/CONFIG_KEY_REGISTRY.md); consult orbit's own documentation for its configuration schema.

Authorization and RBAC

The Casbin RBAC enforcer is a core framework feature, not an orbit feature. Configure it with the rbac_policy_file key:

rbac_policy_file: ./rbac_policy.csv

The legacy admin_rbac_policy_file alias was removed in v0.12.0 (DEP-2026-004): rbac_policy_file is the only key. Renaming it in your configuration is the entire migration (MA-2026-004).

The enforcer is available to all application code (including orbit) through the Runtime.Authorizer() accessor.

Registering models

Model registration is a core framework concern. Register a model with the application's model registry so that orbit (and other tools) can discover it:

a.Models.Register(&Article{})

App.RegisterModel is the stable method on pkg/app.App.

Multi-tenancy

When multitenant.enabled: true is set, orbit respects the tenant context provided by the framework's request-scope resolver.

Effective-config inspection

The GET /_/config HTTP endpoint that previously shipped with the admin subsystem has been removed from the framework core. Use nucleus config print --effective from the CLI for effective merged configuration inspection:

nucleus config print --effective --config nucleus.yml

See CLI overview → Effective config for the full flag reference.