AnchorRun your first BI dashboard locally (Metabase)

This tutorial helps you launch a local BI stack (Metabase + Postgres) and start exploring data right away. We’ll use the open-source demo project immoteur/webhooks-ingest-demo↗, which includes a small webhook ingestion API and a Metabase setup that reads directly from the database.

If you’d like to explore the result before running anything locally, open the live demo↗.

Tip: Use make demo for live mode (real webhook traffic via smee.io). If you don’t have a source yet, make demo-with-seed injects sample events so your dashboards are not empty.

• A local Metabase instance you can open in your browser.
• A Postgres database populated with webhook events and analytics-friendly tables.
• A first dashboard you can inspect, remix, and share locally.

• Docker + Docker Compose (v2)
• Node.js 20+ (required by the demo scripts)
• Git + Make
• Free ports on your machine (defaults: 8080, 3001, 15432)

• Demo repository: https://github.com/immoteur/webhooks-ingest-demo↗
• Metabase documentation: https://www.metabase.com/docs/latest/↗
• smee.io: https://smee.io/↗

git clone https://github.com/immoteur/webhooks-ingest-demo.git;
cd webhooks-ingest-demo;

Use live mode (real data) with the full Docker Compose stack + smee.io relays:

make demo;

Example output:

[demo] Waiting for API at http://localhost:8080...
[+] Running 1/1
 ✔ Container webhooks_ingest_api                           Healthy   17.6s
 
[demo] Ready (live mode, no seed):
- API:      http://localhost:8080
- Metabase: http://localhost:3001
- Metabase admin: [email protected] / DemoAdmin!2025ChangeMe
- Metabase public dashboard: http://localhost:3001/public/dashboard/16b57a07-9831-4ec9-b927-b6207d3eaa31
 
[demo] smee relays (send webhooks here):
- classified-notification: https://smee.io/classified-notification-3o41g78qykci2otd
- classifieds-export:      https://smee.io/classifieds-export-holes6hi6y85rx31

What this does for you:

• creates .env from .env.example if needed
• starts Postgres + the ingestion API + Metabase
• bootstraps Metabase (admin user + DB connection)
• generates and starts 2 smee.io relays (one per webhook endpoint)
• prints URLs and credentials (including a public Metabase dashboard URL)

Metabase admin credentials also come from .env (defaults in the demo):

• [email protected]
• METABASE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=DemoAdmin!2025ChangeMe

1. Open http://localhost:3001
2. Log in with METABASE_ADMIN_EMAIL / METABASE_ADMIN_PASSWORD
3. Open the demo dashboard (or the public dashboard URL printed by make demo)

In Metabase, you should see tables like:

• webhook_events: raw ingestion log of received webhook requests (with retention cleanup)
• classifieds: flattened records derived from Immoteur payloads (classified-notification / classifieds-export)
• classified_images: one row per image (joined to classifieds)
• classified_price_history: one row per price change (joined to classifieds)

Try a first question in Metabase’s SQL editor:

select count(*) as events from webhook_events;

Back in Metabase:

• re-run your question or refresh the dashboard
• check webhook_events count increased

To stop containers (keep data):

make stack-down-smee;

To wipe everything (fresh start, deletes Docker volumes):

make stack-reset-smee;

You now have a local BI stack running: an ingestion API that writes to Postgres, and Metabase reading from it to power dashboards. Next, try creating your own question (e.g., “events per hour”), add it to a dashboard, and point the webhook endpoints to a real source when you’re ready.