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The Nerve Centre is the command dashboard at the heart of Vortex IQ. Every metric your connected data sources produce - from Shopify revenue to Google Ads ROAS to Stripe authorisation rates - appears here as a card: a named KPI with a fixed definition, a live value, a sentiment colour, and an alert trigger. When a number moves the wrong way, the card turns red and routes an event into the Actions Kanban before you have had your first coffee.

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What the Nerve Centre tracks

At the time of writing, the catalogue contains 6,034 cards across 200+ connectors. Cards are grouped under 11 connector types that reflect the kind of data each connector provides. By metrics type:

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The 11 connector types

Every connector belongs to exactly one connector type. The connector type determines the baseline set of cards the connector inherits and the default categories shown on its dashboard tab.

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How the dashboard works

When you open the Nerve Centre you see a row of connector tabs along the top - one per connected source, ordered by most recently used on the left. Each tab contains a grid of cards grouped by category. A typical Shopify tab carries categories such as Revenue & Growth, Order Patterns, Customer Mix, and Refund & Recovery. A Google Ads tab carries Executive Overview, Campaign Performance, Budget Monitoring, and Alerts & Anomalies. Within each category, Key Metrics cards render in a larger tile at the top of the group. Supporting Metrics cards fill the secondary grid below. Cards with active alerts show a coloured border - green, amber, or red - so you can scan the entire dashboard in one pass and immediately spot which connectors need attention. The dashboard offers two focused views:
  • Key Metrics only filter (top-right of any connector tab): collapses the tab to Key Metrics cards across all categories.
  • Executive view (toggle on the dashboard header): shows Key Metrics and Cross-Platform Metrics cards across every connected connector in a single scrollable feed - the 60-second morning scan for founders and CFOs.
Each merchant’s workspace renders only the cards for the connectors they have connected. The 6,034 figure is the full catalogue. A typical workspace with eight to fifteen connectors active renders between 200 and 1,500 cards.

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Metrics types explained

Key Metrics cards answer the questions you ask of a connector every day. They are editorially curated - not floated by traffic - and capped at roughly 15 percent of each connector’s card set to preserve scarcity. Examples: Total Revenue on Shopify, ROAS on Google Ads, Authorisation Rate on Stripe. Key Metrics cards appear in the Executive view and in daily morning briefings. A connector typically carries three to five Key Metrics cards.
Supporting Metrics cards cover the deeper breakdowns: conversions by device, CPC by campaign, spend by region, ROAS by hour. They are not less important - an analyst mid-investigation needs them - but they are less universally relevant. Supporting Metrics cards render in the secondary grid and are hidden from the Executive view by default. You can pin any Supporting Metrics card to the top of a category using Dashboard Settings.
Cross-Platform Metrics cards join data from two or more connectors to compute a value neither connector could produce alone. Examples: Active Ads on Out-of-Stock SKUs (Google Ads + Shopify), Revenue at Risk from active incidents (Stripe + commerce platform), LCP-to-Conversion Correlation (Website Performance + GA4). These are the cards that justify an AI OS over a stack of point tools. When you click a Cross-Platform Metrics card, Vortex Mind opens the corresponding diagnostic report.

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How Nerve Centre connects to the rest of Vortex IQ

The card is not just a dashboard tile. The same card metadata powers every other module in Vortex IQ:
  • Vortex Mind - when a card crosses its alert threshold, Vortex Mind starts a diagnostic run with the card as the trigger anchor and walks the connector graph to gather evidence.
  • Ask Viq - natural-language questions resolve to the relevant card. “What was my refund rate last week?” routes to the refund_rate card on your active commerce connector and returns the same number the tile shows.
  • Actions Kanban - promoted alerts arrive as Kanban cards with card metadata, severity, and baseline delta already attached. The owner role derives from the card’s roles field.
  • Vortex Memory - daily snapshots of Key Metrics and Cross-Platform Metrics card values build the longitudinal baseline used in weekly and monthly briefings. Supporting Metrics cards snapshot weekly.

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Explore further

KPI cards

Metrics types, categories, chart types, and how to navigate to a specific connector’s cards.

Alerts

How anomaly alerts fire, the five severity tiers, and how to respond when a card turns red.

Connectors

The 200+ connectors, organised by type, and how to connect a new source.