How AI is Disrupting Dashboard Development in .NET with Ivy

Exploring how Ivy's AI-first .NET framework disrupts traditional dashboard systems, reduces costs, and accelerates development cycles.

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How AI is Disrupting Dashboard Development in .NET with Ivy

Who builds faster: a junior engineer, a senior developer, a database architect, or AI? Recently, I sat down with Hampus, a seasoned Power BI consultant fresh from parental leave, to explore this question. Our conversation delved into the pain points of traditional dashboard systems and sparked thought-provoking questions about the future of software development in an AI-driven era. As we push the boundaries of AI-powered .NET development at Ivy, it became clear that tools like ours are poised to disrupt the status quo.

The Hidden Costs of Traditional Dashboard Systems

Dashboard and BI tools, while powerful, come with a hefty price tag. Licensing fees alone can strain budgets, but the real expense lies in the human element: - Building knowledge - Paying competitive salaries - Cultivating experience in areas like database modeling, chart building, and data visualization On top of that, these systems are notoriously rigid. Customizing them often feels like wrestling with inflexible codebases, limiting innovation and adaptability. Hampus and I discussed how this rigidity stifles progress. In a world where businesses need agile solutions tailored to their unique needs, why settle for off-the-shelf tools that resist change? This led us to a bigger question: In an age of AI agentic engineering and generative code, is the traditional approach still the most effective?

AI vs. Human Expertise: A New Champion

Consider database modeling, a cornerstone of BI. Could a seasoned architect outperform an AI agent like Ivy's in crafting Entity-Relationship (ER) models or suggesting optimized charts from a database? And how fast? At Ivy, we believe AI isn't just catching up; it is already surpassing the average engineer, delivering production-ready solutions at a fraction of the cost and time. Unlike traditional SaaS or business intelligence tools, which lock users into proprietary ecosystems, Ivy's AI enables rapid, adaptive development. As AI masters key areas such as analyzing data structures, code generation, and automation, building custom .NET applications with the help of agentic engineering and AI development tools becomes faster and more cost-effective than relying on off-the-shelf solutions.

Industry Shifts: From Klarna to Lovable

The industry is already shifting. In 2024, Klarna, Sweden's fintech giant, ditched Salesforce CRM for an AI-built internal tool, slashing costs and boosting agility. Lovable, a platform for generating React-based websites with a Supabase backend, gained hype in 2025, raising $200 million at a $1.8 billion valuation. It uses large language models (LLMs) to iteratively build React apps, analyzing errors, fixing bugs, and offering full code access. However, Lovable is cute but superficial, a toy for prototypes, hobby projects, and quick demos for those with limited coding skills. Building with Lovable is like using Lego for a front end: fun and fast, but there is no engine for core systems. In contrast, Ivy is designed for enterprise, security, and scalability. It delivers production-ready C# code with .NET ecosystem security standards. Like Lovable, Ivy offers full code access, but it's built for robust, scalable solutions in serious production environments. The trend is clear: generative code and agentic engineering are rapidly advancing, boosting development speed while enterprise frameworks prioritize security and scalability.

Ivy: AI-Powered .NET for the Future

While our product is still in early beta, we've built an enterprise-grade open-source .NET framework that empowers developers to create powerful business applications with unprecedented speed. Key features include:

  • App Generator: Transform any database into AI-powered back-office apps
  • Database Generator: Design and deploy production-quality models using AI
  • Authentication Providers: Built-in options for seamless sign-in integration
  • Dashboard Generator: Create and deploy dashboards quickly
  • One-Click Cloud Deploy: Effortless deployment to Azure, AWS, or GCP

At its core, Ivy's open-source framework handles charts, UI elements, state management (inspired by React), database connections, and more, making it incredibly developer-friendly. The result? You can create and deploy a complete C# dashboard or CRUD application in minutes, with full source code access for further customization in your favorite tools like Cursor or Claude Code. Through our MCP server integration, Ivy works seamlessly with Cursor or Claude Code, letting you focus on business logic while AI handles the heavy lifting. This isn't just automation; it's empowerment, giving developers control and flexibility.

Join the Beta: Build the Future with Us In September, we're

excited to release Ivy in early beta, including the AI agent for business app development and the open-source framework. We're seeking pioneers eager to build their first applications with Ivy. Whether it's a dashboard, CRM, or an AI-empowered internal tool, this is your chance to harness generative AI. For the first 10 clients, we're offering 10 hours of free consultancy to co-develop. You'll learn best practices for integrating generative AI into your workflow, collaborate directly with Ivy engineers, and help shape the future of C# business applications. By building real-world examples on our open-source foundation, we'll make the agent smarter, accelerating future software development cycles and driving true disruption in the space.

Getting Started

# Install .NET 9 SDK 
dotnet tool install -g Ivy.Console

# Initialize a new Ivy project 
ivy init --hello 

# Run locally 
dotnet watch
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