Getting Started with the Web UI

The web UI is the main browser-based application for Content Chimera. You log in, see your projects, and work through menus and forms. It was the first interface built and remains the most feature-rich.

When to Use the Web UI

The web UI is designed around individual actions: start a crawl, build a chart, write a rule, edit a report. Each action is a distinct step that you initiate and complete through the interface. This is different from MCP, where an AI assistant can orchestrate multi-step workflows for you — crawling a site, analyzing it, and generating a report in a single conversation.

Both approaches have their place. Use the web UI when you want direct, visual control over what’s happening. Use MCP when you want to describe an outcome and let the assistant figure out the steps.

There are also several things that only the web UI can do — or that work significantly better there:

Interactive charting

Charts in the web UI are live and interactive. You can click bars to drill down, switch chart types, adjust filters, and explore your data visually in real time. Chimera Chat can generate charts too, but the web UI gives you full hands-on control over every aspect of the visualization.

Interactive reports

The web UI is where you build, edit, and present reports. You can drag components around, add narrative text between charts, and use presentation mode to walk a client through findings section by section. Reports created via MCP appear here too — the web UI is where you refine and deliver them.

Live pipeline status

When a crawl, summarization, or analysis pipeline is running, the web UI shows live progress — which step is active, how many pages have been processed, and estimated time remaining. Other interfaces can check status on demand, but only the web UI gives you a continuous, real-time view.

Administration

Managing clients, extents, users, quotas, and archiving are all web UI-only tasks. These are things you set up once and revisit occasionally, so they don’t need to be available in every interface.

Decision-making workflows

Rules, rulesets, assignments, and dispositions — the tools for classifying content and planning what to do with it — live exclusively in the web UI. These workflows involve careful human judgment and benefit from a visual interface.

Importing data

Uploading CSV files and connecting analytics sources (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Matomo) are done through the web UI.

Orienting Yourself

When you log in, you land on the Clients page. Clients are the top-level containers in Content Chimera — each client has one or more extents (projects) underneath it.

To start working with a site:

  1. Select a client or create a new one

  2. Create an extent for the website you want to analyze

  3. Start a crawl by entering the site URL and clicking the crawl button

Once the crawl completes, your data is ready. From there, the most common next steps are:

  • Charts — Go to Assets & Metadata to explore your data visually. Start with a bar chart of pages by top-level folder to get a feel for the site’s structure.

  • Reports — Go to Reports to create a new report or view one generated by MCP.

  • My History — Check the status of any running or completed pipelines.

For a deeper understanding of how crawling and data processing work, see The Crawling Pipeline. For details on charting, see Interactive Charts.

What’s Next?

If you prefer to work conversationally, explore the other interfaces: