On a typical night during the latest escalation between US-Israel and Iran, thousands of people around the world are following the war through open-source dashboards instead of news channels.
A map flashes on the screen. Pins appear over cities. Alerts pop up about explosions, cyberattacks, or troop movements. Aircraft paths sweep across the Persian Gulf. Telegram posts, satellite imagery, and news headlines scroll across multiple panels. It feels straight out of a Mission Impossible movie, simulating what a real war room would probably look like.
But many of them were built over a weekend, by hobbyist developers, with just a few prompts and some basic coding skills.
Across the internet, developers and open-source intelligence enthusiasts have begun “vibe-coding” improvised “war rooms”, that assemble data feeds, maps, CCTV camera feeds, and social media streams using AI coding tools, primarily Claude code.
The trend has accelerated during the war on Iran, transforming how conflicts are observed, analysed and consumed online.
Whether they actually improve one’s understanding or cut through the fog of war is another matter.
Rise of DIY War Dashboards
The phenomenon gained momentum in early March as the Middle East crisis escalated. Developers began releasing AI-powered dashboards that aggregate RSS feeds, social media posts, market signals and satellite data into a single window.
Most of these dashboards were “vibe-coded” in a matter of hours by simply prompting AI tools using natural language instead of writing the code manually.
UI interface of Monitor the Situation. (Sourced by the correspondent)
Some resemble intelligence terminals. Others feel closer to live sports trackers.
One widely shared example is World Monitor, an open-source project that presents a unified geopolitical dashboard combining more than 400 news feeds, live video streams, webcams and AI-generated geopolitical risk signals.
Another, Monitor the Situation, aggregates conflict maps, aviation updates, maritime tracking and real-time news feeds related to the Iran crisis, alongside financial indicators like oil prices and stock market volatility.
A separate dashboard called Iran War Intel displays overlays of missile ranges, naval deployments and nuclear sites alongside incident reports and satellite imagery. Most of them are very similar in nature and user interface, even providing similar data and curating them from similar sources.
The appeal is obvious: wars now generate enormous amounts of publicly available data. Satellites capture images. Civilians upload videos. Flight trackers record aircraft movements. News outlets publish constant updates.
A quick scroll through Reddit and you will find hundreds of programmers openly sharing projects built to track the conflict. Some even attempt to integrate prediction market data in order to detect geopolitical developments before they appear in the news.
AI tools promise to assemble that information faster than any newsroom.
“One of the reasons why there is a spurt in open-source war rooms which are being byte-coded in minutes by net users is because it's possible to do this,” Nikhil Pahwa, cyber expert and the founder of Medianama, told The Telegraph Online.
“Typically information has been very sporadic. It's been on news websites, and there's never really been a single page or a single source of truth for users. So there's a compelling need to have that single source of truth where you can get all the information that you need.”
The idea itself is not entirely new. What has changed is speed.
Generative AI tools now allow developers to assemble similar dashboards in hours rather than months. Advancement in tech has made making these dashboards as easy as generating an image using AI. These dashboards reflect a broader ecosystem of open-source intelligence. Instead of offering analysed investigations, they offer continuous, automated streams of information.
Verification in the fog of war
All of this comes with a big caveat: These sources often rely on incomplete or unreliable data.
"The information that they're collating is from different places, and is based on information on the Web, which may or may not be accurate, and that there's very little fact-checking that's being done of this information,” Pahwa points out.
UI interface of Iran War Intel. (Sourced by the correspondent)
“Plus, this information is being collated live and from multiple sources. So, it becomes difficult for people to also rely on these sources.”
He added: “But in the absence of newsrooms not doing this [debunking misinformation] and news websites not creating their own verified sources of truth, this is filling a gap in the user need.”
Wars generate enormous volumes of digital misinformation. When dashboards ingest such large amounts of information automatically, those errors can spread quickly.
Many dashboards prominently display disclaimers urging users to independently verify information because the data originate from publicly available sources rather than official intelligence channels.
Tool and risk
Eventually, these “war rooms” feed into mankind’s hunger for real-time information about the spectacle of battle.
For journalists, analysts and humanitarian organisations, OSINT dashboards can be powerful tools. They help identify emerging stories, patterns and track developments across large geographic areas.
Pahwa said, “We're seeing it in this war situation, but I think in the future, as and when things happen, creating a website and collating information is going to be something that's easily done in a matter of minutes, and we're going to see more of that. And newsrooms need to adapt to this.”
But they also raise difficult questions.
Highly detailed maps of strikes or troop movements could reveal sensitive information. Automated systems can amplify rumours faster than they can be verified.
Beyond war, the ability for anyone to collect and make public such vast amounts of information with just a few lines raises major questions on surveillance and privacy as well.