Visivo v1.0.81: The Redesigned Explorer (Gamma)

Visivo v1.0.81 ships the redesigned Explorer, internally called the gamma design, and removes the legacy frontend routes that the old UI lived on. The result is a cleaner, faster, more focused home for analysis, and one less layer of UI debt to carry into 2.0.

This is a deliberately small, focused release. There are no sprawling feature lists here. v1.0.81 does two things: it promotes the Explorer's modern design out of the wings and onto the main stage, and it sheds the old routes the previous interface depended on. Both moves point in the same direction, toward the leaner, more confident product that 2.0 will be.

What shipped in v1.0.81

The headline of v1.0.81 is a single, coherent change with two halves:

• The redesigned Explorer (the gamma design) becomes the Explorer. The interface analysts use to build models, define metrics and dimensions, and assemble insights now wears its modern design by default.
• Legacy frontend routes are removed. The old UI paths that the previous design relied on are gone, which means there is only one Explorer now, not a new one shadowing an old one.

That is the release. It is intentionally narrow. When a product is approaching a major version, the most valuable work is often subtraction: removing the old paths, consolidating on the new ones, and making sure there is exactly one way to do each thing. v1.0.81 is that kind of release.

The redesigned Explorer, gamma design

The Explorer is where the day-to-day work of Visivo happens. It is where you connect to a source, introspect a schema, shape models, define the metrics and dimensions that make up the semantic layer, and compose the insights that become charts and dashboards. It is the surface that turns the code-defined parts of Visivo into something you can drive interactively.

The "gamma" name is just our internal label for the third major design iteration of that surface. The first iterations got the Explorer working and proved the model. Gamma is about getting it right: tightening the layout, clarifying the flow from data to model to insight, and removing the friction that accumulated as the Explorer grew feature by feature.

What changes for you in practice is the feel. The redesigned Explorer is cleaner and more direct. The path from "I have a table" to "I have an insight" is more obvious, the chrome is quieter, and the surface gets out of the way of the work. This is the same arc the SQL editor and power-user surfaces have been on: make the common path fast, keep the powerful path reachable, and stop making people hunt.

We promoted gamma to the default deliberately. A redesign that lives behind a flag is a redesign nobody uses. Making it the Explorer, and removing what it replaces, is how a design iteration actually graduates.

Why the redesign matters

It is fair to ask why a UI refresh earns its own release note. The answer is that in a code-first BI tool, the interactive surface is not a nice-to-have, it is half the product.

Visivo's foundation is code. Models, metrics, dimensions, relations, and insights are all defined as version-controlled YAML, reviewed in pull requests, and committed to Git. That foundation is what gives you BI-as-code: diffs, history, testing, and a single source of truth. But code-first does not mean code-only. The Explorer is where you explore the data before you commit a definition, where you see the shape of a model take form, and where the abstract definitions in your repo become something concrete you can poke at.

A clean, fast Explorer is what makes the code-first model approachable rather than austere. When the interactive surface is cluttered or slow, the whole "define it in code" promise starts to feel like a tax. When it is crisp, the loop between exploring interactively and committing a definition gets tight, and that tight loop is the entire point of developer-centric BI. The gamma redesign is an investment in that loop.

Legacy frontend routes removed

The second half of the release is the cleanup. Removing the legacy frontend routes is the kind of change users never see directly and benefit from constantly.

Every product that ships a redesign faces the same temptation: keep the old paths around "just in case." It feels safer. In practice it is the opposite. Two parallel interfaces mean two code paths to maintain, two surfaces to test, two places for behavior to drift, and a confusing experience where the same action lives in two different places. The old routes become dead weight that slows down every subsequent change.

By removing the legacy routes in v1.0.81, we commit fully to the gamma Explorer. There is one frontend now, not a new one with an old one hiding behind it. That has real downstream benefits:

• A smaller, faster surface. Less code to load and less to maintain.
• No drift. Behavior cannot diverge between an old route and a new one when there is only one route.
• A clear runway to 2.0. Carrying legacy UI into a major version is exactly the kind of debt you want to retire first. Removing it now means 2.0 starts from a clean foundation.

This is the same discipline we apply to dashboards as code: when something is superseded, you delete it and let version control remember it, rather than letting it linger and rot. UI debt deserves the same treatment.

What it unlocks

v1.0.81 is small on its own, but it is positioning. By promoting the gamma Explorer and clearing out the legacy routes, this release does the unglamorous work that lets the next, bigger work move fast.

A consolidated, modern Explorer is the surface that 2.0's Insights and the semantic layer will build on. The cleaner the foundation, the less the team has to fight the past while shipping the future. Every redesign that graduates and every legacy path that gets removed is one fewer thing standing between you and the next capability.

If you have not driven the Explorer recently, this is a good moment to update and take the redesigned surface for a spin. You can get started in a few minutes on your own data, or browse the examples gallery to see what the Explorer is for. The Explorer is maturing into its modern form, and v1.0.81 is the release where that form becomes the only form.

Previously in Visivo

In the previous installment, Composable Analytics: The 2026 Build-vs-Buy Decision, we stepped back to look at where an open, code-first BI layer fits in the unbundled modern data stack. This release is that philosophy applied to our own product surface: consolidate on the modern Explorer, remove the old paths, and keep the layer people work in clean and fast.