# Basedash launch demo 1: What is Basedash

Tom Johnson · 2025-01-28

[Basedash](https://x.com/tomjohndesign/status/1884276839327404463)

This was the first of the demos I posted on launch day, when [Basedash](https://www.tomjohn.design/content/basedash) went live on Product Hunt [(0:07)](#t=7), and it answers the question of what Basedash actually is. It's the first AI-native BI platform. We took business intelligence apps, the Metabase, Looker and Tableau kind of stuff, and reinvented how they work with AI at the core [(0:19)](#t=19).

![A Dockhunt dashboard in Basedash, captioned as I say: “The app is the first AI-native BI platform, and what that means is basically we've reinvented with AI at the core how business intelligence apps work.”](https://nlzkl2bo0qmd3uti.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/talks/clips/what-is-basedash/ai-native-GersmZv10kjYROcoa56If1GER0sFsB.mp4 "Clip")

You connect your data. Here it's the database for Dockhunt, an app we made a while ago, so you can see the table structure and all the data inside it, and then you make dashboards, like this one hooked up to some variables [(0:34)](#t=34). So how technical do you have to be? I can't write SQL, so not very [(0:52)](#t=52). I asked for a list of all the apps sorted by popularity, typo and all, and it knew what I meant, wrote the query, chose the visualization and returned the results. It didn't even need to ask what popular meant [(1:11)](#t=71).

![Basedash generating a chart from my prompt for the apps sorted by popularity, captioned as I say: “I even have a typo in there. It doesn't matter. It's AI, so it's just going to be able to roll right on past that. It knows what I mean, and it's going to write the query,”](https://nlzkl2bo0qmd3uti.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/talks/clips/what-is-basedash/typo-xtGrx7ZWzVySUf4nbyQpP6patzb9zY.mp4 "Clip")

Then I asked for the top apps ranked, a prompt I don't think I'd used before, and it wrote a new query and showed it as a bar chart [(1:34)](#t=94). For user growth over time it wrote the query, hooked it up to the right chart and made it cumulative, a whole bunch of stuff in the background [(1:56)](#t=116).

![The new user growth chart on the dashboard, captioned as I say: “It wrote the query, hooked it up to the right chart, made it cumulative, did a whole bunch of stuff in the background, and that's how you create stuff in Basedash.”](https://nlzkl2bo0qmd3uti.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/talks/clips/what-is-basedash/cumulative-fD2xJilRB7TmQZurxiSXUNzOOKcvcT.mp4 "Clip")

You can drag things around the dashboard, or open a chart full screen to see the full SQL editor and the chart with the whole chat history beside them, kind of like Cursor [(2:09)](#t=129). There's the entire schema to explore and variables to add, and I went through the [charts](https://www.tomjohn.design/content/basedash-charts), the [SQL editor](https://www.tomjohn.design/content/basedash-sql-editor) and [variables](https://www.tomjohn.design/content/basedash-variables) in the demos that followed. But that's Basedash in a nutshell: you hook up your data, you ask the AI to create visualizations for it, and it just does it [(2:29)](#t=149).

When I posted it on X I wrote:

> Launch day, demo day.
>
> First demo: What is Basedash?
>
> First lesson: I need to fix my squeaky chair