The fastest way to understand a widget library is to see it solve a real problem. Below are four situations dashboard builders actually hit — and the exact Sextant widgets that answer them, with the install command for each. Every widget ships with loading, empty and error states plus a one-sentence narrative, so you're wiring data, not rebuilding the chart.

1. The Monday board update

You need a one-screen read of company health before a board call: where cash stands, how ARR moved, and whether you're tracking to plan.

Cash runway — balance, projected depletion, months left. npx shadcn add @sextant/fpa-cash-runway
ARR movement waterfall — new, expansion, contraction, churn. npx shadcn add @sextant/fpa-arr-waterfall
Budget vs actual variance — plan vs reality with the biggest driver called out. npx shadcn add @sextant/fpa-variance-bvA

The narratives mean a board member reads the takeaway ("~7 months of runway at the current burn") without you writing a caption.

2. Investigating a churn spike

Revenue dipped and you need to know whether it's acquisition, retention, or expansion.

NRR waterfall — isolates expansion vs contraction vs churn. npx shadcn add @sextant/growth-nrr-waterfall
Retention curve — how cohorts decay over time. npx shadcn add @sextant/product-retention-curve
Activation funnel — where new users drop before they stick. npx shadcn add @sextant/product-activation-funnel

3. The fundraising data room

Investors want defensible numbers, not hopeful ones. These widgets are honest by design — the math is deterministic and the methodology is documented per widget.

Cash-runway forecast with an outcome range, not a single fragile line.
LTV / CAC payback — unit economics at a glance. npx shadcn add @sextant/growth-ltv-cac-payback
Quick ratio — growth efficiency in one number. npx shadcn add @sextant/growth-quick-ratio

4. The ops on-call dashboard

Engineering and ops need to see reliability without squinting at raw logs.

SLO error budget — budget burn against target. npx shadcn add @sextant/ops-slo-error-budget
Latency percentiles — p50/p90/p99, not misleading averages. npx shadcn add @sextant/ops-latency-percentiles
Anomaly time-series — flags the outlier so you don't have to scan. npx shadcn add @sextant/chart-anomaly-timeseries

Starting from your own data

If you're working with an AI coding agent, you don't have to pick by hand. Sextant ships an MCP server: the agent can search the catalog, read a widget's data contract, map your rows onto it, and emit the right npx shadcn add command. New to installing from a registry? Start with the setup guide, then browse the full catalog.