Dashboard layout editor for Amazon QuickSight

A QuickSight user finishes their analysis, then spends an hour trying to make the output look professional — and discovers they can't reposition sections without rebuilding from scratch, can't touch header formatting, and can't get the layout their stakeholders expect without purchasing add-ons. That's when they start googling.

This gap persists because QuickSight's incentive is to sell compute and storage, not to win on visual polish. The layout editor is a cost center for Amazon — it would require maintaining a complex UI framework that competes with their own add-on upsell. So they leave it deliberately thin.

What users get today: grid-based snapping with no control over section-level formatting, no way to independently style the header, corner, or pane areas, and no reusable layout templates. 'I cannot control the header, pane and corner section formatting easily' is a direct quote from a paying user, and it's not a niche complaint — it's the first thing anyone notices when they try to hand a dashboard to a business stakeholder.

This is a business and not a feature because the need recurs every time someone publishes a new dashboard — which for most BI teams is weekly. A team that produces 20 dashboards a year and spends 3 hours per dashboard wrestling with layout is losing real time, and the output still looks wrong. The alternative is hiring a front-end developer or paying a consultant, both of which cost more than a focused subscription.

What to build

Build a browser extension and companion web editor that layers onto QuickSight's dashboard view and lets users reposition panels, apply section-level formatting (headers, panes, corners), save named layout templates, and export a formatted PDF — without touching the underlying QuickSight dataset or query.

Where to start

Start with QuickSight users who need branded PDF exports of dashboards for executive reporting — it's a pain they feel on a fixed schedule (monthly/quarterly), it's easy to find them in QuickSight user forums, and a polished PDF output is a concrete deliverable that justifies payment immediately.

The hard part

QuickSight can change its DOM or embed API at any time, breaking a browser extension layer — so you're building on a surface you don't control, and a single QuickSight update can create a support crisis.

How it makes money

Per-seat monthly subscription, billed per dashboard publisher (not viewer) — starts with a free tier limited to 3 layout templates, converts to paid when teams need more templates or PDF export volume.